What is the Heroine’s Journey? (part III)
I will make one personal caveat before I start: despite much screeching and near-hysterical insistence that “man” automatically equates to (or conflates with) “human,” the delightfully fascinating Language Log and Grammarphobia have conclusively proven (through both common sense and examination of historical literary precedence) this is not actually the case. That being so, it amuses me to use “heroine” and “woman” the exact same way the conservative (dare I say: reactionary?) grammar mavins would insist on using the equally specific words “hero” and “man.” I shall, therefore, be using the term “heroine” in an equal opportunity sense, including both heroic male, as well as female, protagonists under that rubric.
Personal Independence
For me, this is perhaps the most important element within a personally satisfying fictional heroine. As a child who spent time in a Roman Catholic country, as well as several states in the Southern US, I had the bemused belief that being married meant the woman was somehow horrifically consumed by, or nearly absorbed into the man. She had no outside job nor income any more; she was the housemaid, cook, nanny, and breeder. She had no independent personality: she often lost her true name and family, becoming Mrs. (husband’s name) rather than a person in her own right; she was ceremonially absorbed into the man’s family through her father giving her away to the groom at the wedding; and was consequently generally regarded as the man’s property, or “taken.” She had no future; if he tired of her he could take a prettier mistress or divorce her, while the reverse was certainly not the case — and she knew it, which led to her accepting poor (and sometimes atrocious) treatment from her husband in an effort to keep him from dumping her penniless on the street.
That was what I saw, and so I swore to myself as a child that I’d never do so foolish a thing as to sell myself so to any man. Through the years I’ve continued to do my best to maintain my independence, even when it caused issues. I remember with amusement a single example: while living in Oklahoma I set up a joint checking account for household expenses with my then-boyfriend. I filled out the name and address form with my name first, and my boyfriend’s name second. When the checks arrived, the teller had “helpfully” swapped the names, so the man’s name came first — even though our surnames were different, and it was clear we were not married! Needless to say, the bank reprinted all those checks at their cost.
While I still think this is a surprisingly under-mentioned and critically important gender issue, I’m not quite so furiously adamant about it now. I understand some women truly want to be married, and it’s their choice, not mine. However, I shan’t ever be engaging in it; as Mae West famously noted: “Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.”
Further, over the years several of my friends and lovers have, and still use, the term “fiercely independent” in regards to me — not always as a compliment. ;) What that means for me as a reader is that passive protagonists (whether strong, lovely, clever, or otherwise) who need constant physical or mental rescue by their beaus simply don’t interest me. Likewise I’m not attracted to someone who cannot conceive of themselves as anything outside of their relationship with a man. I like my fictional heroines to be how I think women should be in this world: at the very least capable of thinking and speaking for themselves, and doing their best to support themselves financially. Financial independence is, after all, a powerful metaphor for a strong and independently minded woman.
I would love to be able to simply scrap, as you put it, the parts of marriage I don’t like, and keep the rest. However, it’s been my experience that society doesn’t allow that us privilege — social expectations and pressures are usually a sort of package deal. As an example, what you suggests sounds to be much like saying I can scrap the parts of being female that I don’t like (i.e. lower pay, sexual harassment, glass ceiling, fear of rape, etc.), and keep the parts I do like. Gracious, I sure wish I could do that! :)
Further, for all the social squabbling about what a child really needs to be raised well, we’re still dancing around one huge issue which needs to be brought out for discussion: in US society today, it takes two adults to earn enough money for a comfortable middle-class family. If marriage dictates there are but two parents, and they’re both working… then who takes care of the kids? Further, when (not if) most couples are driven apart into divorce by the stresses of struggling to both work and raise children — how does that affect the poor children themselves?
This is where I think the matrifocal subculture of the Moso of China have a fascinating solution which bears careful consideration in our culture as well: they’ve disconnected marriage and child rearing. In fact, they don’t have marriage at all, and there are no words for “husband” or “father” in their culture. Children are raised by extended families consisting of a matriline: a woman, her children, her daughters’ children, and her granddaughters’ children. Men may visit other family houses to sleep with their lovers, but “their” children are the children of their sisters. As the Moso poignantly put it in the article I read, lovers come and go, but their children always have a stable and loving family.
While I know we can’t simplistically swipe whole-cloth from another culture without significant changes, I still wish we had that healthy an attitude regarding raising children.
I can most assuredly get behind the idea that a heroine, male or female (to use your literary assumption) has to be, as a basic building block, a thinking, feeling person that acts upon the world, rather than having the world act upon them. There are many people out there that don’t even meet this basic requirement, but they are not folks I want to read about for entertainment, unless the story is about them becoming that kind of person. But at the very least, a protagonist of this nature does not qualify as a ‘heroic saga’, and would likely be some other kind of fiction all together.
As far as marriage is concerned, though, I am of two minds about it. While I’ve heard your beliefs on the matter, and tenatively agree that marriage is based in an outmoded place, it seems to me that at least part of what a marriage is is dependant on what you make of it. Just because there are pieces of it that you don’t like, doesn’t mean you can’t scrap the parts that you don’t like. Yes, the laws in regards to marriage are unfair in places, and those are much harder to ignore…ideally, if the relationship works, they’ll never come up. But what if it doesn’t? Ay, there’s the rub.
This brings up a more interesting question: can heroine(s) be married, and still be heroines? I tenatively say yes, but it seems to me the question is going to be addressed in both of Briggs’s ongoing series. Mercy may be more independant than Anna, but she has also chosen to accept a werewolf as a mate, and there has been much discussion in previous books about her not wanting to get romantically involved precisely because Mercy was worried about losing that much cherished independance…