Gender Equality and Feminist Fabulation: The Heroine’s Journey as a New Narrative Paradigm
Abstract
This article explores the possibility of a new narrative paradigm from a critical gender perspective by conceptualising a feminist fabulation. Moving beyond the dominant phallogocentric and patriarchal narrative associated with the monomyth, it investigates the female scopic pleasure and fantasies of othered bodies from an intersectional and trans-feminist viewpoint. Departing from a language-based critique, wherein women have historically been positioned as image/object and men as the subject of the gaze, I propose a comparison between two narrative arcs: Christopher Vogler's Hero's Journey (1992), inspired by Campbell and Jung, and Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey (1990). In doing so, this study analyses and unveils how the substantial differences between the two paradigms may reside within the complex, increasingly pertinent concept of intersectionality, as examined by Marina Pierri (2020). By evaluating key stages of both narrative arcs through Marina Pierri’s (2020) intersectional lens, this study traces their genealogical evolution. It also reveals how their key structural differences align with contemporary theories of intersectionality. The core narrative stages are synthesised in a comparative table to illustrate the internal processes inherent to each journey.
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