by Maria Tatar
Mrs. Percy Dearmer, The Frog Princess, 1897
If the hero’s journey maps a quest narrative, marked by a fearless adventurer who goes out into the world, the heroine’s mission is something very different. In the case of “The Frog King,” the amphibian is transformed (and it is his journey that interests Campbell), but the princess (who never leaves home) dashes the erotically ambitious frog against the wall, and, splat! he turns into a prince. Suddenly we see that the behavior of girls is spring-loaded with unexpected forms of insubordination and opposition. But that detail is of no interest to Campbell. Instead he draws attention to the contrast between fairy-tale girls, who can aspire to little more than crossing the threshold between childhood and adult life, and real heroes, who battle their way to glory and some kind of transcendent meaning. As for me, I needed to know more about the princess’s act of defiance and its liberating effect. That was also the part of the story that my students fretted about. What? No redemptive kiss? That was not how they had heard the story.
Campbell concedes that there are in fact some heroines who undertake quests and carry out difficult tasks, and he cites the case of Psyche, only to dismiss her story as one in which the “principal roles are reversed.” For him, the tale is an anomaly. But the second-century Latin prose narrative of “Cupid and Psyche,” written down by Apuleius of Madauros (modern-day M’Daourouch, in Algeria), reveals that a woman on a quest is driven in ways that radically diverge from what motivates heroes on their journeys. Psyche displays all the traits that define the heroic behavior of mythical women: curiosity, care, and determination. On a mission to rescue Cupid after curiosity about the creature who climbs into bed with her under the cover of night gets the better of her—rumor has it that he is a monster—she carries out a series of impossible tasks. Psyche sorts grains, collects wool from malicious sheep, and retrieves water from the source of the rivers Styx and Cocytus. In the end she succumbs once again to curiosity (as do Pandora, Eve, and a host of other knowledge-seeking heroines) on a mission that demonstrates a commitment to caring for others.
Campbell famously placed the hero’s journey at the center of his analysis and emphasized a crusading drive that required audacity and determination, strength and mobility. If heroines possess the first two attributes in abundance, they often fall down on the job when it comes to the last two, for they are depicted as lacking the muscle and agility of heroes.
For many months, I imagined that the title of this book would be something along the lines of “The Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s Ordeal.” Stuck at home, enslaved, exiled, or imprisoned, heroines are handicapped in ways that point to trials rather than journeys. But there is something troubling about the gendered bifurcation of heroism into action on the one hand and suffering on the other. Were women from times past destined to suffer silently and simply endure? And what about heroes like Achilles, Theseus, or Hercules? Don’t they sustain injuries and endure pain, and are their lives also not one long ordeal?
It was then that I came across the Romanian story “The Enchanted Pig,” a variant of Apuleius’s “Cupid and Psyche.” In it and in all the variants of the story I later explored, the princess heroine makes the mistake of trying to break the magic spell that turned her husband into an animal by day. When she fails, her husband is obliged to abandon her. “We shall not meet again,” he tells her, “until you have worn out three pairs of iron shoes and blunted a steel staff in your search for me.”2 The young woman walks on and on until her last pair of shoes falls apart and her staff is blunted. No wonder Kelly Link observes in a short story inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”: “Ladies, has it ever occurred to you that fairy tales aren’t easy on the feet?”3 One final act of sacrifice, and the soon-to-be princess is reunited with her husband in his human form. The worn-out iron shoes are a feature of many fairy tales and a powerful reminder that treks up glass mountains and across frozen expanses can form an important response to the challenges facing heroines. More than that, the impulse motivating the princess is an altruistic one, and, when she travels, she is on a mission, determined to find a happily-ever-after but focused more on rescuing and transforming her beloved than on simply reuniting with him.
The heroines found in the tale type folklorists call “The Search for the Lost Husband” rarely seek to extend their power. Instead they rise to challenges imposed on them by superior forces, sewing shirts with star-shaped flowers on them or cooking and cleaning for stepmothers, witches, and dwarfs. And they form alliances with creatures who become helpers: foxes and doves, fish with golden eyes, and swarms of ants and bees.
Heroines share a crusading spirit, and the goals of their missions (often marital rather than martial) pale by comparison with the shining glory bestowed on heroes. Still, the rebel and her cause are often right there, in plain sight, though not necessarily where the heroic action has traditionally been located. As I was writing this book, it only gradually dawned on me that heroines were habitually bent on social missions, trying to rescue, restore, or fix things, with words as their only weapons. Heroes, by contrast, are armed and ready for battle. They embark on quests and journeys that have as their goal more than a return home. Seeking glory in conflict, often military and martial, they chase down immortality more than anything else. And they secure enduring fame through a process that can be described, plain and simple, as self-aggrandizement and self-mythologization. No wonder that, when asked to list examples of heroes, we quickly rattle off the names of men and gods. It takes a bit longer to come up with the names of heroines.
Words and Deeds
What is a hero? That is a question put to us again and again. It absorbs us from school days onward, when we are asked to define our cultural values and aspirations by sizing up the lives of figures from times past: shining Achilles, cunning Odysseus, brazen Anansi, or the indomitable Sun Wukong. Our collective storytelling archive—rich with histories, myths, parables, legends, and much else—provides countless examples of heroic behavior, and we turn to those well-stocked reservoirs for models of conduct. The academic world has supplied us with abundant definitions, and, as a student, I dutifully took notes on Herculean heroes, figures whose greatness had less to do with goodness than with what was referred to as “the transforming energy of the divine spark.” One of those authorities on the hero described exploits that were an unnerving combination of “beneficence and crime,” “fabulous quests and shameful betrayals,” and “triumph over wicked enemies and insensate slaughter of the innocent.”4 I recall that the phrase about slaughtering the innocent gave me pause, but I continued taking notes.
With studied intensity, we ask ourselves that same question—what is a hero?—when we read headlines or ponder stories from the here and now about those who have acted in ways that inspire admiration, wonder, and appreciation. “New York City Firefighter Pulls Nurse from Burning Building.” “Park Ranger Carries Dehydrated Hiker to Safety Down Treacherous Trail.” “Man Rushes to Pull Driver from Car after Fuel Explosion.” I have plucked these headlines at random from the news, but I could also just say the name “Sully,” and who would not remember the pilot who saved the lives of passengers after a bird strike disabled both engines of US Airways Flight 1549? Heroes are not just role models, they are also protectors. They reassure us, with soothing authority, that the world can become less fragile, safer, and more generous because of their acts of kindness. With help from strong, fearless men, it will evolve into a better place.
Our word “hero” derives from the Greek ἥρως, and it was first printed in the English language in 1522. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), our authoritative source on language usage, offers several definitions, the first of which reads as follows: “A man (or occasionally a woman) of superhuman strength, courage, or ability, favored by the gods.” Some sixty years later, the word “heroine” makes its first appearance in a church document, and by 1609 the British playwright Ben Jonson is using the term to describe women of “a most i
nvincible and unbroken fortitude.”5 The OED defines “heroine” as “a woman distinguished by the performance of courageous or noble actions; a woman generally admired or acclaimed for her great qualities or achievements.” It is impossible to imagine the insertion of “or occasionally a man” in that definition.
Heroes are superhuman, while heroines are distinguished and admired. These definitions suggest that we might be wise to let go of the term “heroine” and turn “hero” into a gender-neutral term for us all. But perhaps not. As The Heroine with 1,001 Faces will show, there are important differences between heroes and heroines, and the features that make them commendable or laudable change over time. Heroes and heroines have deployed different strategies for earning merit—the one rousingly percussive in most cases; the other, stereotypically veiled and still, yet also quietly creative and deeply inspiring. Today we may be expanding our understanding of gender with new nonbinary, gender-fluid identities, but that fact makes it all the more important to understand the culturally scripted performances and inflexible binary codes enacted in the myths, legends, and fairy tales from times past.
In Heroes, originally published in 2018, the actor and writer Stephen Fry retells stories from what he calls the “Age of Heroes.” By that he means ancient times. He reminds us that his subjects are “men and women who grasp their destinies, use their human qualities of courage, cunning, ambition, speed and strength to perform astonishing deeds, vanquish terrible monsters and establish great cultures and lineages that change the world.”6 (He could have added the gloss “and occasionally some women,” for most of his stories feature men and male gods.) Reading through Fry’s volume led me to wonder what the women were doing while the men were out slaying monsters. The relentless emphasis on conquest through brute strength threw a switch and led me to ask whether there were other forms of heroism in our myths and lore.
I want to highlight here Fry’s use of the term “astonishing deeds,” in part because women were for so long excluded from spheres of public action, staying at home while men went to work and to war, to the places where daring feats could be performed, with those deeds later commemorated through a collective heritage. The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt tells us that deeds in particular—fragile and ephemeral—are subject to forgetfulness, existing only at the moment of performance. Through stories, however, deeds come to be preserved in cultural memory and become sources of encouragement for future generations, examples to which we all aspire. Remembrance venerates as it preserves. For this reason the Greeks valued poetry and history, because these conferred immortality on heroes and rescued heroic deeds from oblivion.7 After all, it was Homer who ensured that we would know the names of Achilles, Hector, and Patroclus.
Words and deeds: Arendt’s linkage of language and action sets us thinking, in large part because heroes, in their redemptive vocation, are remembered for performing “astonishing deeds” far more often than they are for making great speeches. Enthralling words seem to matter less than epic deeds when it comes to heroes. Is it possible, then, that in the gendered division of heroic labor, men acquire glory and are remembered for what they do, and women for what they say, tell, or report? The yoking of words and deeds paradoxically calls our attention to the disconcerting bifurcation of speaking and acting when it comes to heroic behavior, with heroes all action and heroines limited often to language alone, words spoken less in public spaces than in the privacy of the home.
Who better to make the case for the sorcery of words (and how women make use of that magic) than Scheherazade, the heroine of The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Laylah wa-Laylah), a collection of folktales from many sources—Arabic, Persian, Indian, and Turkish, to name a few—collected in the Islamic Golden Age. The stories in what is sometimes called The Arabian Nights or The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments were translated many centuries later into English, with the first British compilation appearing in 1706. I will have much more to say about Scheherazade later in this volume, but for now I want to parse the heroic declaration she makes to her sister Dunyazad. Scheherazade has volunteered to marry Shahriyar, a tyrant so maddened by his wife’s infidelity that he murders her, along with her entire libidinous retinue. To ease his humiliation, Shahriyar crafts a plan of spectacular excess, one that requires cruelty taken to an extreme. Each day he will take a new wife, and, on every morning after, he will ritually behead her. Scheherazade has her own plan for survival. “I will begin with a story,” she tells her sister confederate, “and it will cause the king to stop his practice, save myself, and deliver the people.”8 Words are her weapon, and she plans to craft narratives (it will take 1,001—in this case, not an endless number) that will enable her to escape death and transform the culture in which she lives. Shahriyar, as it turns out, takes the bait, ends his reign of violence, and the two marry, living “happily ever after” with the three sons born to them. As both creative storyteller and procreative partner, Scheherazade remakes the world and ensures the possibility of redemption, transformation, and orderly succession.
Scheherazade smuggles storytelling into the bedroom and uses narrative to win over the king. She persuades him that beheadings will not assuage his rage or sate his appetite for revenge. Women today have deployed storytelling in other ways as well, relying less on imaginative fictions that divert and instruct than on real-life accounts that are compelling in their inventory of grievances and offenses. As headlines from the past years reveal and as the #MeToo movement has shown, stories are a powerful weapon for combating forms of social injustice, righting the kinds of wrongs that Scheherazade sought to eliminate. There is no denying the power of narrative as testimony to accuse, indict, and sentence in the courtroom of public opinion, and the extrajudicial arena can operate in influential ways, inflicting punishments that can exceed what is in the penal code of a culture. Telling your story—revealing injuries inflicted and harm done—has come to be invested with unprecedented weight, and it carries with it the same sense of a social mission that drove Scheherazade to risk her neck to save the lives of other women. Women in fairy tales repeatedly made use of that strategy in denunciation narratives that can be found not just in Anglo-American and European folklore but in storytelling repertoires from around the world. These are the old wives’ tales that have been dismissed and discredited as nothing but fairy tales.
Edmund Dulac, illustration for The Thousand and One Nights, 1907
When asked about the woman’s hero journey and whether it was the same “as for a man,” Joseph Campbell paused to reflect. “All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic storytelling of the world are from the male point of view,” he acknowledged. While writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he wanted to include “female heroes,” but discovered that he had to go to fairy tales to find them. “These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective.”9 In fairy tales, we have not just the perspective of women but also their voices. Women may have been silenced in the myths told and retold by bards, but they spoke up in narratives that were told by women not just to children but also to all those who made up sewing circles, congregated in spinning rooms, prepared meals at the hearth, washed clothing, and engaged in what has traditionally been known as women’s work.
Fairy tales often focus on the power of words and stories. Talk can get you in trouble, but there are also times when it can get you out of a bad fix. In the British fairy tale “Mr. Fox,” a woman named Lady Mary draws on the revelatory power of narrative and uses storytelling as a form of exposé. Built into the story is a tutorial about stories as instruments for securing social justice. Mr. Fox, rich and handsome, courts a young woman named Lady Mary, who decides to visit the castle where her suitor lives. With its high walls and deep moat, Mr. Fox’s castle seems impenetrable, but Lady Mary, “a brave one,” enters it and explores its rooms. Over one door is written: “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold / Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.” Lady Mary is too bold for sure, and her he
art’s blood runs cold when she discovers a Bloody Chamber in the castle. “What do you think she saw? Why, bodies and skeletons of beautiful young ladies all stained with blood.” When Mr. Fox appears, dragging a young woman behind him, Lady Mary hides behind a wine cask and witnesses the chopping off of a hand with a ring on it. The hand lands in Lady Mary’s lap and provides her with the evidence she needs to indict her betrothed, a man who has turned in an instant from partner into adversary.10
John Batten, illustration for “Mr. Fox,” 1890
Here is how one version of the tale concludes:
Now it happened that the very next day the marriage contract of Lady Mary and Mr. Fox was to be signed, and there was a splendid breakfast before that. And when Mr. Fox was seated at table opposite Lady Mary, he looked at her. “How pale you are this morning, my dear.” “Yes,” said she, “I had a bad night’s rest last night. I had horrible dreams.” “Dreams go by contraries,” said Mr. Fox; “but tell us your dream, and your sweet voice will make the time pass till the happy hour comes.”
“I dreamed,” said Lady Mary, “that I went yestermorn to your castle, and I found it in the woods, with high walls, and a deep moat, and over the gateway was written”:
Be bold, be bold.
“But it is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr. Fox.
“And when I came to the doorway, over it was written”:
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.
“It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr. Fox.
“And then I went upstairs, and came to a gallery, at the end of which was a door, on which was written”: