The Heroine's Journey - how to be feminine in society where masculine is the golden standard

By Maureen Murdock, with the subtitle: Woman’s quest for wholeness

This book is a response to the The Hero’s Journey, and the author talks a bit about why it is necessary for women to have their own heroine’s journey. I won’t discuss it here too much, and be sure to read it if you pick up the book, but I was kind of appalled by the role women were given in the earlier book, which seemed to be mainly to support the men in their quests.

It’s already an older book, celebrating it’s 30 year anniversary last year. But practically everything written in this entire book is still completely true and relevant today.

Read this book if…

…you’re a woman!

Seriously! And even if you’re a man too. We can all learn so much about this book. I learned how I can see my own journey in life so far, how I can place within the timeline of this heroine’s journey. I couldn’t believe how well my own choices throughout life, even the ones I considered quite radical and original when I made them, could easily fit within a suitable stage of the heroine’s journey. The book and the journey give incredible insight into how we behave as women, what choices we make and where we can grow towards a stronger and softer balance in a society where the masculine is always the golden standard. Even if you’re thinking to yourself now, well, society is not all that bad, you can’t help but recognize where in your life you have felt forced to let go of your standards, your innate self, your wishes, your feelings  – your feminine – to be able to thrive in our society. Even unconsciously. 

What the book is about (including quotes)

The book is devided into the different stages of the heroine’s journey. As women, to fit into society we go through the different stages. Or at least, that is my own rudimentary explanation and comprehension of what Maureen with all her experience explains so very wise and eloquently: “I feel strongly that it is to heal the split that tells us that our knowings, wishes, and desires are not as important nor as valid as those of the dominant masculine culture. Our task is to heal the internal split that tells us to override the feelings, intuition, and dream images that inform us of the truth of life. We must have the courage to live with paradox, the strength to hold the tension of not knowing the answers, and the willingness to listen to our inner wisdom and the wisdom of the planet”

And don’t worry: I want to assure you that our journey is not a feminist one and we aren’t striving to leave feminine or masculine behind completely either. No, we have all these aspects in us and we want – we need – to figure out how we can merge all of it and become well-balanced people. But I guess Maureen’s words can say this much better than I can:

“The heroine must become a spiritual warrior. This demands that she learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of herself. She first hungers to lose her feminine self and to merge with the masculine, and once she has done this, she begins to realize that this is neither the answer nor the end. She must not discard nor give up what she has learned throughout her heroic quest, but learn to view her hard-earned skills and successes not so much as the goal but as one part of the entire journey. She will then begin to use these skills to work toward the larger quest of bringing people together, rather than for her own individual gain.”

This book is so diverse and gorgeous: if I show you my copy, you’ll see it’s dog-eared and there are underlinings everywhere; I can’t begin to summarize this book in a few paragraphs. I’ll try to show you the magic of this book by copying some of it’s beautiful lines here. Let yourself be transported along in recognition and feel yourself turn softer in your own opinion toward yourself as you slowly start to understand struggles you have encountered in your life so far, and roads where you are headed.

From: Separation from the feminine:

“Women will never be men, and many women who are trying to be “as good as men” are injuriing their feminine nature. Women start to define themselves in terms of deficits, in terms of what they don’t have or haven’t accomplished, and begin to obscure and devalue themselves as women. Devaluation of women begins with mother. […]
To distance herself from her mother and the motherhold on her, a woman may go through a period of rejection of all feminine qualities distorted by the cultural lens as inferior, passive, dependent, seductive, manipulative, and powerless. […]
As she progresses through the stages of her development and begins to understand the roots of the devaluation of the feminine in this culture, she wil realize that her mother is not the cause of her feelings of inadequacy. She is merely a convenient target to blame for the confusion and low self-esteem experienced by many daughters in a culture that glorifies the masculine.”

“The mother/daughter relationship and the seperation from the mother is so complex that in most women’s literature and fairy tales the mother remains absent, dead or villainous.”

From: Identification with the masculine:

 “Approval and encouragement by the father or father substitute […] usually lead to a woman’s positive ego development; but lack of genuine involvement […] can lead to overcompensation and perfectionism or virtually paralyze her development. […]
This type of woman will be seen as professionally successful but difficult to trust in the emotional or relational arena. Her inner masculine figure is not a man with heart but a greedy tyrant that never lets up. […] he drives her forward “more, better, faster” with no recognition of her longings to be loved, to feel satisfied, or even to rest.”

From: Strong women can say no:

“Most women today have spent their early and mid-adulthood developing and fine-tuning qualities that have always been considered masculine, including skills in logical, direct linear thinking, analyzing, and setting short-range goals. Women who brought emotions into the workplace were quickly told they did not belong there.”

“In moving out of a state of spiritual daughterhood in which we serve male role models, there is rarely a Big Daddy saying, “You’ve done a great job… […] Go ahead and make your own way.” Instead the usual response is, “You’re throwing away your career by not taking this position.” “How could you let us down?””

(Did I once tell you I lost my job once because I was too direct in my communication and let my emotions take the lead…?)

From: Urgent yearning to reconnect with the feminine:

“The reverence and fertility once accorded a menstruating woman went underground along with the Goddess. In her absence, some women forgot the deep wisdom of the female body and the mysteries of feminine sexuality. Women know with their bodies.”

“Most women have lost that sense of power connected with their sexuality. Man has demeaned woman instead by calling her a temptress, evil seductress, and devourer. The original power of the goddess’s raw sexual and procreative energy has been seen as an enormous threat to masculine authority.” […] Many women have so much difficulty living inside a female body that they abuse it with food, alcohol, drugs, overwork or overexercise to exorcise the discomfort of being female. If a daughter has become male-identified in pleasing her father, she emphasizes the development of her mind and intellect and rejects her female body. She forgets how to listen to its want and needs. […] Many of us havev been trained to ignore and override communication from our bodies.”

From: Finding the inner man with heart:

“The only way a woman can heal this imbalance within herself is to bring the light of consciousness into the darkness. She must be willing to face and name her shadow tyrant and let it go. This requires a conscious sacrifice of mindless attachments to ego power, financial gain, and hypnotic, passive living. It takes courage, compassion, humility, and time.
The challenge for the heroine is not one of conquest but one of acceptance, of accepting her nameless, unloved parts that have become tyrannical because she has left them unchecked.”

“She heals as she breathes as she recognizes her true nature, breathing knowledge into all of us. The heroine becomes the Mistress of Both Worlds; she can navigate the water of daily life and listen to the teachings of the depths. She is the Mistress of Heaven and Earth and of the Underworld. She has gained wisdom from her experiences: she no longer needs to blame the other; she is the other. She brings wisdom back to share with the world.”

What this book has taught me

This book has helped me to make peace with a lot of the choices I made in my life, where I maybe still felt a bit guilty or regretfull looking back. It made me see that I wasn’t being selfish, but that I needed to make certain decisions to follow my own development, away from the femine and back to it later. This book has also given me the realization that I am indeed so much on a journey, going from one place to the next continuously, never ending. And that that is a good thing. I see where I am in this journey, what challenges are currently lying before me to go through. And that feels good: I now know I am headed in the right direction and will always be travelling on that road.

I’m growing, learning, becoming wiser every day, and isn’t that just a lovely thing to realize?