Valerie Estelle Frankel, author of From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine's Journey in Myth and Legend, shows the steps of the journey with art from myth and pop culture. There's also a free book on the topic at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/623348 called Chosen One: The Heroine's Journey of Katniss, Elsa, Tris, Bella, and Rey. Great for educators and students!

1. The Heroine’s Journey
In World Myth and Popular
Fantasy

2. Campbell's Model: The Hero's
Journey
My Model: The Heroine's Journey
World of Common Day World of Common Day
Call To Adventure Call To Adventure- A Desire to
Reconnect with the Feminine
Refusal of The Call Refusal of The Call
Supernatural Aid The Ruthless Mentor & Bladeless
Talisman
Crossing The First Threshold
Belly of the Whale
Crossing the First Threshold:
Opening One’s Senses
Road of Trials Sidekicks, Trials, Adversaries
Meeting With The Goddess
Woman as Temptress
Marriage to the Animus,
Confronting the Powerless Father
Atonement with The Father
Apotheosis
Atonement with the Mother.
Apotheosis through the Feminine
The Ultimate Boon Reward: Winning the Family
The Magic Flight Magic Flight Reinstating the
Family
Master of the Two Worlds Power over Life and Death

4. Common Day
The tale begins in the humdrum world of
kitchen chores and powerlessness.
The heroine lives with an absent mother
and brutal stepmother. The father figure,
if there is one, is equally obstructive.
More than anything, the girl longs for
an escape, an adventure. Here the story begins.

5. Call to Adventure
Without a catalyst, Cinderella might remain in
her kitchen forever. Some event, either a
chance at freedom and happiness or a
devastating act of destruction propels the
heroine from her place of safety and into the
frightening world of the spirit.

6. Call to AdventureWhen her father saw her, he was much
shocked, and declared she was not his
daughter… Then poor Eliza wept, and
thought of her eleven brothers, who were all
away. Sorrowfully, she stole away from the
palace, and walked, the whole day, over
fields and moors, till she came to the great
forest. She knew not in what direction to go;
but she was so unhappy, and longed so for
her brothers, who had been, like herself,
driven out into the world, that she was
determined to seek them.
From the great
heaven Inana set
her mind on the
great below. My
mistress
abandoned
heaven,
abandoned earth,
and descended to
the underworld.
In the oldest forms of
the tale, Persephone
descends without
Hades’ brutality. When
she, as innocent
flower maid, discovers
the wandering spirits
of the dead, she
voluntarily descends
to succor them.

7. Refusing the Call
Here, the hero is
faced with the
unknown. By contrast,
home represents
safety and security, a
place the child is
loathe to leave.

8. Refusing the Call
Sleeping
Beauty
“During puberty, sleep is the refuge in which an adolescent
girl can absorb the new sense of herself that she gains
from the prick of the spindle, and changes from girl to
woman: a transformation more radical than from boy to
man.” –Joan Gould, Spinning Straw into Gold
Brunhilda
Rapunzel
Dreamer
of Malta

9. Hero
• Heroes quest to
defeat the Dark Lord
and rule as the High
King

10. …and Heroine
The heroine quests to save loved
ones, a quest as dangerous as any
journey of the hero.

11. Modern Questors

12. Sword: Male Talisman
• Warrior Woman often have male
weapons, clothes, mentor, nemesis.
• Mu Lan, Atlanta, Athena, Artemis, Éowyn,
Batgirl, Xena, Buffy, Katniss

13. Feminine weapons
• More feminine warriors are more likely to
fight with distance weapons – bows,
spears, the lasso, the whip, and the
chakram.

14. The Heroine’s Treasures
Feminine symbols:
amulet, apple, bag, ball, bird, cauldron, cave, circle,
cloak, clothing, comb, crown, cup, egg, eye, flowers,
forest, girdle, grail, helmet, home, hoop, jewelry,
keys, mirror, moon, night, oven, ring, rose, serpent,
slippers, spindle, spiral, thread, tree, vase, veil, voice,
water, web, well.

15. Threshold
The heroine must
surrender her reliance on
logic and willingly enter the
world of emotion and
fantasy.

16. Sidekicks,
Trials, Adversaries
Animal helpers and advisers
generally represent part of
the heroine’s psyche,
pointing out things she
doesn’t notice and teaching
her how to outwit her
adversary. They guide her
along her path, bolstering
her courage when
the quest
seems daunting.

17. Prince Charming:
The World of Eros
In the game of love, the hero and heroine each view
their partner as a shapeshifter. This “other half” they
must cleave to like themselves has frightening mood
swings and unpredictable desires. Physically, the two
people are opposites, with contrasting desires and
emotions. Hence, many tales appear about enticing
swan maidens from the sea or taming beastly
monsters into Prince Charmings.

18. Prince Charming:
The World of Eros
• Shimchong, The Blindman's Daughter (Korea)
• The Brahman Girl who Married a Tiger (India)
• Bull-of-all-the-Land (Jamaica)
• Pretty Polly (Appalachian America)
• Egle, Queen of Serpents (Lithuania)
• Eros and Psyche (Greece)
• The Lizard Husband (Indonesia).
• Monkey Son-in-Law (Japan)
• The Princess and the Pig (Turkey)
• The Frog Prince (Germany)
• Bluebeard (France)
• The Green Serpent (Italy)
• The Frog Prince (Sri Lanka)

19. Beauty and the Beast Retold

20. Prince Charming:
The Helpless Father
At some point, the heroine returns home to
discover the prince, or father-figure, cannot save
her. She must leave the patriarchy and rely on
herself.

21. Descent
into Death
The heroine
descends into the
realm of darkness
toward initiation and
wisdom, seeking her
own elusive dark side.
There she will find her
greatest challenge …
herself.

22. Prince’s Castle
• While the hero visits the realm of death
(the feminine sphere), The Little Mermaid
and The Six Swans see heroines trapped
in the patriarchy’s tower where they have
no power.

23. Facing the Shadow

24. Atonement with the Mother
Like the witch-queen of
Snow White, the Terrible
Mother is enraged that
she is no longer fairest in
the kingdom. Therefore,
she plots the destruction
of the heroine. Our
heroine descends to the
darkest place of all, and
there, confronts her.

25. Villains: The Child-Killer
• The witch is anti-life, killer of
children. She freezes the world
into sterility, forbidding growth or
change. Frequently, she is the
Jungian shadow for the young
questor.
• Llorona, Mexico (pictured)
• Condenado, South America
• Medea, Greece
• Houmea, Maori (pictured)
• Lilith, Jewish Baba Yaga, Russia
(pictured)

26. Villains: The Child-Killer

27. Villains: Patriarchal Destroyer

28. Reward
Triumphant, the heroine wins what she has
sought for so long. She snatches her lover
from the Fairie Queen’s horse, or saves her
child from certain death. She may find the brief
romance she’s sought for so long. Still, the
quest has not ended, until she returns safely
home.

29. Mastering Life and Death
To achieve the greatest
success, the heroine
becomes a queen or
“goddess” herself. In this
way she achieves
enormous power and
becomes a guardian for
the next generation. Even
if their ascension isn’t to
royalty or goddesshood, all
train successors, passing
on the wisdom they’ve
learned.

30. Ascension
Still, the other side
of the benevolent
mother goddess is
the destroyer:
Medea turns
murderous and Gaia
can destroy as well
as create. For the
heroine as goddess
ascended, it’s a
short distance to her
own shadow: the
Terrible Mother.

31. The Destroyer’s Wisdom
Kali is the great
goddess whose
stomach is a void and
so can never be filled
and whose womb is
giving birth forever to all
things.
Though the Destroyer may
be the enemy, destruction
allows space for creation.

34. HeroinesJourney.net
More on the journey