The Heroine's Journey: A Guidebook
Breaking down a mythic narrative often used for stories of grief, love, addiction, enlightenment, and more.
Western society loves the Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell, who first identified this mythic structure in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, described the Hero’s Journey as the “monomyth”—that is, the “one” myth repeated across cultures, civilizations, and time periods. We return to this structure so often that some academics1 argue that the Hero’s Journey is the only story we’ve ever really told.
I disagree.
Not that the Hero’s Journey isn’t resonant or worth telling, but it’s not the only narrative model that describes human experience. Stories of grief, addiction, parenthood, horror, and enlightenment often don’t map cleanly to the Hero’s Journey structure.
Instead, they may follow a different narrative archetype known as The Heroine’s Journey, first identified by psychotherapist Maureen Murdock in her 1990 book, The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness.
This article serves as an introduction to the Heroine’s Journey. We’ll walk through the basic concept and how it differs from the Hero’s Journey, then focus on each of the model’s steps in turn. As we go, I’ll also provide real-world examples from one of my favorite movies, The Terminator, so you can see how the Heroine’s Journey can be put into practice.2
Fair warning, though: This post is meaty (>4,000 words), so it might get cut off as an email. If so, just click through to read the full post. Also, don’t worry if you can’t make it through: I do plan to provide shorter, more digestible follow-ups in future articles!
What is the Heroine’s Journey?
The Heroine’s Journey is a story of agency and power. A Heroine begins her story a powerless victim, then embarks on a journey of awakening that reveals the power within. Her story ends with her coming into her own, achieving a state of ultimate strength, wholeness, and agency.
Unlike the Hero’s Journey, in which a Hero explores the world in order to find his authentic self and his role in society, the Heroine’s Journey is an inward process of self-discovery. The power the Heroine unlocks has been inside her all along; she just needs to discover it.
In 45 Master Characters, author and screenwriter Victoria Lynn Schmidt describes the Feminine Journey (also known as the Heroine’s Journey) thusly:
The feminine journey is a journey in which the hero gathers the courage to face death and endure the transformation toward being reborn as a complete being in charge of her own life. Her journey starts by questioning authority, then gaining the courage to stand up for herself, and finally embodying the willingness to go it alone and face her own symbolic death.
How Does the Heroine’s Journey Differ from the Hero’s Journey?
At first glance, the two mythic structures share lots of overlap, and I’ve encountered some confusion over which stories are Hero’s Journeys and which are Heroine’s Journeys. In my opinion, the easiest way to distinguish the two is through their narrative structures.
A Hero’s Journey narrative typically follows an “ascent” structure. Think of it as a mountain: The Hero starts at the foot of a mountain with nothing, acquires friends/tools/weapons as he goes up the slopes, confronts the Big Bad waiting for him at the top, then returns down the mountain to share his adventures with the wider world.
Meanwhile, a Heroine’s Journey follows a “descent” structure. Imagine it as n abyss: The Heroine starts at the highest point with everything she thinks she needs, has those friends/tools/weapons stripped away from her as she descends, reaches the bottom of the abyss where she dies and is reborn, then rises back out of the abyss a new person.
In the seminal work The Writer’s Journey (which helped popularize the Hero’s Journey in Hollywood circles), screenwriter Christopher Vogel describes the difference between the two models as “linear vs. spiral”:
Men’s journeys may be in some sense more linear, proceeding from one outward goal to the next, while women’s journeys may spin or spiral inward and outward. The spiral may be a more accurate analogue for the woman’s journey than a straight line or a simple circle. Another possible model might be a series of concentric rings, with the woman making a journey inward towards the center and then expanding out again. The masculine need to go out and overcome obstacles, to achieve, conquer, and possess, may be replaced in the woman’s journey by the drives to preserve the family and the species, make a home, grapple with emotions, come to accord, or cultivate beauty.
Putting the Heroine’s Journey in Context
As we explore the Heroine’s Journey in more detail, keep a few things in mind:
Like the Hero’s Journey, the Heroine’s Journey is gender-neutral. I use the pronouns she/her below, but you don’t have to identify as female to embark on a Heroine’s Journey, no more than you must identify as male to embark on a Hero’s Journey.
The Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey do not exist as opposites, but complements. You’ll probably see some overlap between the two narrative structures. That’s okay. Indeed, a character (or a person) can experience both the Hero and Heroine’s Journeys in their lifetime, or neither.
The Hero & Heroine’s Journeys are not the only valid mythic models. For example, another popular story archetype is the Journey to the West, named for the classic 16th century Chinese novel. This comic travelogue, in which a highly spiritual character enlists the assistance of a physically strong chaos gremlin for a cross-country pilgrimage, has served as the narrative inspiration for kung fu movies, anime, novels, concept albums—even Dragonball.
What are the Steps of the Heroine’s Journey?
Several models of the Heroine’s Journey exist, each with slight differences. That’s largely because the original myth on which the structure is based, The Descent of Inanna, also possesses several variations and translations.
Rather than the structure Murdock first laid out, which she rooted in her experiences as a psychotherapist, I tend to prefer the more literary breakdown from 45 Master Characters, as cited above. Schmidt, a prolific screenwriter, makes the archetypes very accessible; and her work served as my introduction to the Heroine’s Journey3.
According to Schmidt, there are nine steps to the Heroine’s Journey. They are:
The Illusion of A Perfect World
The Betrayal or Realization
Awakening—Preparing for the Journey
Descent—Passing through the Gates of Judgement
The Eye of the Storm
Death—All Is Lost
Support
Rebirth—The Moment of Truth
Full Circle—Return to the Perfect World
Source: Me. As you can see, Graphic Design is my passion.
To illustrate these nine steps, I’ll pull from one of my favorite movies: James Cameron’s The Terminator. Cameron relies on the Heroine’s Journey structure quite a bit, including in Aliens, The Abyss, and Titanic. But The Terminator is my favorite of the lot—and in my opinion, it’s one of the best movies ever made!
Enough preamble. Let’s dive in.
1. The Illusion of a Perfect World
The story opens with a Heroine enclosed a bubble—a perfect, fragile world designed to protect her from discomfort and pain. Although our Heroine is secure, she’s also prevented from taking risks or maturing fully. She exists in a kind of stasis or slumber, ignorant of her true power.
That’s not to say the Heroine is blind to her circumstances. Deep down, she knows this perfect world isn’t so perfect, so she employs one or more coping strategies to help tolerate this world. These may include:
Naivete: Telling herself, “I’m not like those other girls; I’m a good girl.”
Helplessness: Believing she needs a male protector to survive
Exceptionalism: Trying to fit in as “one of the boys” or suppressing her feminine characteristics
People-pleasing: Rejecting her true wants and needs in order to make others happy
Disappointment: Wrapping herself in cynicism and bitterness as an excuse not to act
Regardless of her coping mechanisms, the Heroine knows something’s wrong, even if she can’t identify what it might be.
Example: The Terminator
Sarah Conner is an ordinary twenty-something. She works a dead-end job, has an overbearing mother and a rich boyfriend who strings her along, and suffers her roommate’s boundary-pushing “creep” (her words) boyfriend. Sarah copes with these circumstances by being an extreme peoplepleaser who can’t stand up for herself.
Right before a big date, her Prince Charming cancels at the last minute, with barely an apology given. Frustrated, Sarah takes herself out to a movie, where she can distract herself from her shitty circumstances by watching fantasy people live out lives with more meaning and purpose than her own.
2. The Betrayal or Realization
Enter the inciting incident: Something outside the Heroine’s control pops the bubble. The perfect world is revealed to be an illusion, a lie, a prison, a cage. Everything the Heroine values is taken from her, and nobody she trusts comes to her defense or rescue.
Suddenly, the Heroine realizes the coping strategies she’s developed no longer work. She feels betrayed. An Antagonist arises, someone or something that wants to keep her powerless. But for our Heroine, there’s no going back to her former helpless state.
Example: The Terminator
Cracks in Sarah’s worldview emerge via news reports she sees of women with her name being executed, one by one. She looks herself up in the phone book and realizes that she’s next in line. She isn’t as safe as she thinks.
On her way home, Sarah notices she’s being followed by a shady-looking man. Scared this might be the killer, she ducks into a night club, hoping the crowd will scare him off. She calls the cops (who fail to help her). The Terminator arrives, pushing his way into the club. He nearly executes Sarah, all while she stares at him powerlessly, like an animal about to be put down.
Sarah’s mysterious stalker rescues her, telling her “Come with me if you want to live.” (Foreshadowing!) As they flee from the Terminator, the man identifies himself as Sgt. Kyle Reese. He tells Sarah a wild story: He is in fact a soldier from a post-apocalyptic future, who has been sent back in time by her son to protect her against a time-traveling killer robot bent on her destruction.
The knowledge shatters everything Sarah thinks she knows about the world she lives in. She resists Reese—at one point, he has to physically restrain her as she bites him like a wild animal—but eventually, she realizes he isn’t there to hurt her, not like the Terminator.
3. The Awakening—Preparing for the Journey
The Heroine has a choice to make. She can either go forward into the real world, actively face her fears, and attempt to achieve a Goal of her choosing. Or she can stay where she is and remain a passive victim forever. She chooses to move forward.
It won’t be easy. Perhaps the Heroine is still grappling with self-doubt or whatever trauma shattered her perfect bubble. Or maybe she’s approached by one or more people who tell her that they can rebuild her perfect world, that she’s too weak to accomplish her Goal, that even the attempt would be too difficult for her. Ultimately, however, the Heroine decides to ignore the naysayers and set forth on her adventure.
In so doing, she gathers any tools, weapons, even allies she thinks might help her on the journey ahead. Then she bids farewell to her old life and its useless coping strategies. She also makes her first new ally—a mentor, perhaps; someone who will offer her support, but not saving, in the journey ahead.4
Example: The Terminator
The Terminator tracks down Sarah and Reese. A car chase ensues, and the Terminator crashes. The police arrive and take Sarah and Reese into custody. At the station, the cops assure Sarah this madness will be over soon. They explain the Terminator must have been just a regular human wearing body armor and high on PCP; they even bring in a criminal psychologist to prove Reese is crazy. They try to restore Sarah’s faith in the “perfect world,” and she almost buys it.
Then the Terminator attacks the cop station, killing all the officers sworn to protect her. Desperate, Sarah hides under a cramped, dark, metal desk (more foreshadowing!). Reese breaks out of custody and bursts into the room she’s hiding in. Now she must choose whether to leave the safety of the desk and reveal herself—in essence, to trust him—or to stay hidden and let the cops sort it out for her. She reveals herself, and the pair flee the police station in a stolen car.
From this moment on, Sarah “awakens” and starts to express far more agency in the story. It’s her desires and choices that drive the plot forward.
4. The Descent—Passing Through the Gates of Judgement
Now that the Heroine has made her decision, she must actually face the consequences, as well as what holds her back from her Goal. These present as obstacles in her path, like gates that must be opened. She’ll attempt to use the external tools and weapons she brought with her to overcome these obstacles, but they won’t work. So one by one, she abandons the tools, or they are stripped from her. Instead, she discovers the only way to pass through the obstacles is to use her own inner strength, knowledge, and resourcefulness.
These obstacles generally coincide with one or more of seven inner turmoils (which may sound familiar to those who know their chakras!):
The obstacle of fear and survival, resolved by achieving safety and security,
The obstacle of guilt, resolved by knowing and expressing one’s desires,
The obstacle of shame, resolved by defining willpower and gaining one’s own identity,
The obstacle of grief, resolved by learning to give/receive love, form relationships, and accept one’s self,
The obstacle of lies, resolved by communicating and expressing one’s authentic truths,
The obstacle of illusion, resolved by honoring intuition and imagination,
The obstacle of earthly attachments, resolved by finding self-awareness.
Unlike in the Hero’s Journey, the Heroine won’t be able to fight or resist her way past these obstacles. The only way forward is to submit and let go of her unnecessary defense mechanisms. The Heroine must trust her instincts, giving up what she thinks she needs in order to find her way toward what she actually needs: cleverness, intuition, empathy, courage.
In this stage, she’ll also likely come face-to-face with her Antagonist, whatever it might be (whether it’s a person or an abstract, like grief or depression). She’ll survive, but only just barely5.
Example: The Terminator
Sarah and Reese flee the police station, stealing a car. The car runs out of fuel and must be discarded. From the trunk, they retrieve a first aid kit and flashlight. These too are discarded; Sarah uses the first on patching up Reese’s gunshot wound, and the second is no longer necessary once the run rises.
In exchange, though, Sarah is granted the gift of knowledge: Reese tells her about the future and the “legend” of Sarah Conner, the woman who taught her son everything he needed to know to save humanity. Sarah learns that she must have more strength and power within herself than she ever knew.
Sarah starts taking charge of her situation: First, she orders Reese to talk about himself, and he obeys. She makes a field dressing for his wounds. She hitches them a ride to a safe motel, then negotiates with the owner for a better room. At each step, Reese gives her more knowledge: what the future is like, how to build bombs, why to trust dogs, and more.
5. The Eye of the Storm
As the Heroine overcomes each obstacle—maybe even battles the Antagonist—she has a brief moment to catch her breath and assess the damage. She realizes she handled herself well, and she starts to understand that she’s stronger/smarter/more competent than she’d ever realized.
Of course, winning is never that easy. Maybe she gets cocky and takes a chance she shouldn’t; maybe supporting characters convince her that the danger is passed. The Heroine lets down her guard, if even for a second. It is her eventual undoing.6
Example: The Terminator
Sarah calls her mother and, letting down her guard, gives her information about their location—without knowing that the Terminator is on the other end of the line, not her mother.
Back in the motel, Reese shares more about his life. Sarah empathizes with him, strengthening the human connection between them. Reese confesses that the real reason he traveled through time was because he’d been in love with Sarah ever since he saw her in a photograph. Touched, Sarah takes his face in her hands and kisses him, then takes him to bed, where they conceive her son.
6. Death: All Is Lost
In the Death stage, everything goes to hell. The Heroine is caught off guard by the Antagonist, and this time, the Heroine doesn’t have any tools, weapons, or allies left to fight. The Antagonist crushes her. The Heroine loses. She is captured, humiliated, broken. Whatever her Goal is, she has failed at it, and she accepts her defeat.
This stage is similar to the Hero’s Journey’s “Dark Night of the Soul” stage, except that our Heroine isn’t just brought close to the brink of death. She actually dies, literally or metaphorically.
Example: The Terminator
The Terminator finds them. Sarah and Reese escape in a truck, and the Terminator pursues them. During the ensuing chase, Reese is wounded.
Their truck flips, and Sarah and Reese are pinned in the dark, cramped, metal space. (Just like the desk at the cop station!) Sarah briefly passes out. The Terminator carjacks a fuel tanker, killing its owners, and drives the truck toward the trapped Sarah and Reese. Metaphorically, Sarah has died, and her literal death is soon to follow.
7. Support
This stage represents one of the key differences between the Hero’s Journey and the Heroine’s. Whereas the Hero’s Journey is about an individual’s need to prove himself to his chosen group, the Heroine’s Journey is about the individual’s need to prove herself to herself, then share what she has learned with her community.
So in the Support stage, the Heroine accepts help from someone else, thus embracing her community. She turns her head toward the voice of a loved one; she reaches out to grab a helping hand.
Often, however, the expression of support is more subtle: The Heroine finds the support she needs to get through her current predicament by recalling an earlier encounter, when someone special gave her helpful advice or got her out of a jam. Her choices will mirror that earlier moment, reminding the reader (and herself) that she belongs to a broader community that is always with her—in her heart.
Note that whoever this other person is, they are not there to save the Heroine. They are there merely to support the Heroine, who has the strength and self-possession to save herself. That other person is inspired by the Heroine’s example; the Heroine has shown them the benefits of taking the inner journey. But the Heroine must accomplish all the derring-do on her own.
Example: The Terminator
Sarah wakes up first. She calls out to Reese and tries to shake him awake, to no avail. Then she starts to drag him, ordering him to get up and get out of the truck if he wants to live—just as Reese had once ordered her, “Come with me if you want to live.” Her orders bring him back to awareness.
Seconds before the Terminator rams them, Sarah hauls Reese to his feet and to safety. It’s the first time we see the future savior of humanity save another human’s life, and through this, we can see how she has come to embrace her role as the mother of humanity’s last hope and the progenitor of a future community of freedom fighters.
8. Rebirth: The Moment of Truth
The Heroine is reborn. She has found her power, her resolve, her agency. She is no longer afraid to die, because she has already died and come out the other side. Whatever her coping strategy was in the perfect world, she now embodies its opposite: If she was naïve, now she is all-knowing; if she was a peoplepleaser, now she stands up for herself; and so on. She has learned her lessons and faced her fears. Nothing can stop her.
Example: The Terminator
Fleeing the tanker truck, Sarah bodily carries Reese, then leaves him to act as a decoy to the Terminator. Reese blows up the Terminator’s vehicle. At first, it seems the Terminator is destroyed, but on it keeps moving.
Sarah leads them both into a nearby factory. With the last of his strength, Reese turns on the machines to provide her cover. Sarah begs him to get up, but he doesn’t move. Realizing it isn’t working, she orders him to his feet, soldier to soldier, and drags him deeper into the factory.
The Terminator pursues them. Reese uses the last pipe bomb to save Sarah’s life, but dies in the process. Sarah is hit by shrapnel but removes it herself. She lures the Terminator into a hydraulic press—yet another cramped, dark, metal space—as if she is going to hide, like a wounded animal. Instead, she traps the killer robot in the cage and squashes it with the press, destroying the Terminator for good.7
9. Full Circle—Return to a Perfect World
Having achieved her Goal, the Heroine returns a changed woman. Now her job is to share her experiences with her community and help those still in the glass bubble break out.
In the Hero’s Journey, the Hero gets the girl, the job, the kingdom, or some other external reward, but in the Heroine’s Journey, the Heroine gains a sense of strength, awareness, or some other internal reward. There are more battles to be fought, but she knows now that she has the power to face them.
Often, says Schmidt, the Heroine’s Journey feels episodic in nature. Indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Heroine’s Journey is the implication that there is no Happily Ever After: the Heroine’s life continues on; there will be more cycles and more journeys. The ending is never truly the end.
Example: The Terminator
Some time later, a very pregnant Sarah is driving through Mexico, recording tapes for her unborn son. At a gas station, a young boy takes a picture of her—the same picture that her son later gives to Kyle. The boy tries to hustle her out of her money, but Sarah’s too wise and haggles him down.
The boy tells her a storm is coming. Sarah says, “I know,” then drives off into the gathering clouds, ready for whatever the future holds.
The Heroine’s Journey: All Around Us
Now that you understand the structure, you may start to recognize the Heroine’s Journey in all sorts of familiar stories—maybe even in your own life.
In her analysis, Schmidt lists several books and movies following this format, including Thelma and Louise, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, The Wizard of Oz, Working Girl, and American Beauty. I’ll add that genre fiction, like romance and mystery, is full of Heroine’s Journeys, as are family sagas, episodic TV, slasher flicks, and religious texts.
The Hero’s Journey is an excellent “coming of age” story—but “coming of age” stories have their limits. After all, life continues on well after you’ve come of age, and as adults, often our adventures tend to come in cycles: We have multiple kids, for example, or we grieve multiple family members. We experience multiple religious revelations, or reap annual crop harvests, or struggle with repeated episodes of addiction or abuse.
Each of these cycles shares similarities with the experiences that preceded it—but each journey itself is unique. When we complete them, we know ourselves and our own strengths better, and we inspire those around us to discover their own strongest selves by taking their own Heroine’s Journeys, as well.
Footnotes
Up to and including my freshman year World Lit professor—yes, I’m talking about you, Dr. Andersen.
Long-time readers of mine might find some of this text familiar. In the early 2010s, I wrote quite a lot about the Heroine’s Journey for many publications and under several pen names; I even had a podcast dedicated to it, at one point. However, many of those websites have long since bit the digital dust, with no recoverable data beyond my own hard drive. So I built this post on the bones of those archival pieces, which I’m delighted to let see the light of day once more.
I encourage readers interested in variants of the Heroine’s Journey model to explore Maureen Murdock’s writings on the subject or Valerie Estelle Frankel’s From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend.
In the Hero’s Journey, there’s usually a step known as “The Refusal of the Call,” where the Hero turns his back on his destiny and attempts to reintegrate into his former life. Typically, this step doesn’t occur in a Heroine’s Journey. That’s because our Heroine realizes there’s no perfect world any longer to return to. No matter how much she wishes she could go back, she can’t. Importantly, it’s this first choice to move forward that foreshadows her discovery of her innate power and agency.
The “Descent” stage may sound akin to the “Belly of the Whale” stage in the Hero’s Journey. However, this stage can happen more than once (as the Heroine might be grappling with one or more turmoils). Also, the “Descent” isn’t the Heroine’s lowest point, but a critical step towards the reclamation of her power.
Sometimes Stage 4 and 5 repeat, as the Heroine overcomes multiple obstacles in preparation for her eventual death.
Honestly, I could write a book about this movie, but I’ll spare you the tome and just point out that only Sarah has the power to destroy the Terminator. When the cops or Reese alone attempt to do so, they fail. Even when Sarah and Reese work together, it keeps on coming. Sarah’s the only one who can destroy it for good.
Love this. It aligns a bit more with my personal journey than the hero’s journey as well, even though I’m a man.
I do think there is much overlap, or the journeys could even be “aligned” in a way. Like the mountain metaphor (for hero’s journey): you could say that to reach the summit you need to let go of (heavy) baggage, and at the top only the true you (awareness) remains. Then, coming down the mountain, you’re able to share the insights (think Moses) that you learned from your path (of surrender) upwards.