The Heart of the Warrior: Reimagining Gender Divisions in the Hero’s Journey Through Warrior Women from the Nordic and Celtic Mythic Traditions

Abstract

This project proposes a re-visioning of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” as a suitable path for women and female characters in both mythic narratives and real-world scenarios.

It begins with a hermeneutic exploration of the interconnections between Jungian Archetypal Psychology and Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and the socio-cultural context that informs the gendered nuances of both theorist’s work. The conflation of biological sex with gender, and the insistence on rigid gendered structures and attributes within both theorist’s work informs the historically masculine connotations of the hero’s journey model. This also includes an exploration of alternate heroic quest models, as well as the gendered associations or lack thereof inherent to each.

This dissertation argues for the possibility of women in the hero’s journey through a deconstruction of the gender coding within narrative models, and its associations with psychology. Through an exploration of modern neuroscience, and a multi-disciplinary approach to the categories of sex and gender and gender studies, it argues that many of the features that define the hero’s journey as masculine are socially constructed and far more malleable than the original theories suggest.

The fluidity of gender as a social category is an integral aspect to the representation of gender roles in myth. This interconnection is explored through mythic figures that challenge the gender categories inherent to the work of both Jung and Campbell, chief among them the female warrior-hero Hervor and the Goddess Freya, both from the Norse mythic traditions.

This project argues for a description of heroic quests based on narrative modalities rather than on gender and argues that the classic hero’s journey is suitable for individuals of any gender. Positioning the narrative arcs that reflect psychological processes as more fluid makes them more adaptable to present social shifts around gender and gender identity, while also making room for individuals that identify outside of a strict gender binary within the hero’s journey.