Hero

Hero

The hero archetype is the main character of all traditional stories. Historically, the hero is often a man or a boy but for the purposes of the project I plan to refer to the hero as female. This is because my current vision of the project begins with groups of women working on writing and telling their story.

The hero travels an arc through the story that provides insight for her so she can link to and embrace her strengths while she becomes a leader of her own life.

The hero begins as an innocent and leaves the story as a wise leader who has solved the challenges presented during the story and can succeed again and again if she needs to.

Everyone knows the story of Cinderella. So I will use it as one example of the arc of the hero. In the version presented by the brothers Grimm, the story follows this basic outline.

The hero lives with her mother and father and all is well until her mother dies. Life limps along until a year later when her father marries another woman. This archetypal character is the evil stepmother and she has two selfish daughters who take after her. (Archetypal adversaries will be the subject of other posts.)The hero is quickly demoted to servant and renamed Cinderella. The false family throws Cinderella’s lentils into the ashes and she is forced to pick them out of the ashes or starve The greed of the step daughters is highlighted when the father asks each child what she would like him to bring her when he goes on a trip. The stepdaughters ask for expensive gifts but Cinderella asks for a tree branch. Upon the fathers return, Cinderella plants the hazel tree branch and waters it with her tears. Over time the branch grows into tree and Cinderella develops a daily ritual of going to the tree and praying. The tree is magic and a magic bird lives in its branches. When Cinderella has a need, the bird lets fall gifts from the tree branches. During these daily rituals, Cinderella befriends the bird living in the tree and this in turn creates allies for her of all the local birds.

Then the prince enters the picture. He is looking for a wife and holds a series of parties so he can meet potential wives. Cinderella asks to go to the three-day festival and is told that she can only go if she picks a bowl of lentils out of the ashes in two hours. With the help of the birds, she completes the task in one hour. But the stepmother is evil and instead of allowing Cinderella to go to the festival, she forces her to separate two bowls of lentils out of the ashes in one hour. Cinderella receives help from the birds again and retrieves the lentils in plenty of time but the stepmother still refuses her.

After everyone leaves for the first day of the party, Cinderella goes to her tree and the bird tosses down a dress. Cinderella cleans up well and when she goes to the festival, the prince has eyes for no one but Cinderella. But she runs away when the prince attempts to find out who she is. This goes on for three days and on the last night of the festival, Cinderella loses her shoe and the shoe is the only clue the prince has to find her.

The prince searches the land for the woman whose foot will fit into the shoe. When he comes to the home were Cinderella lives, the stepdaughters hide her and try the shoe on for themselves. The shoe does not fit but the first stepdaughter takes a butcher knife and cuts off her heal. Now the shoe fits! The prince is easily duped and rides off past Cinderella’s tree with the false bride. The bird has to tell him that blood is seeping out of the shoe and at last the prince realizes the deception. He returns to the home of Cinderella and repeats the process with the other stepsister who cuts off her toes to make her foot fit into the shoe. Again the prince is easily duped and the bird flies down to point out the bloody shoe. The prince returns a third time and Cinderella is produced. The shoe fits Cinderella and as the stepdaughters try to take their place as family along side the true bride, the birds come and peck their eyes out so tat they are punished with blindness all the days of their lives.

In the beginning, the hero is innocent. She lives an Eden-like existence with her mother and father in a happy state. This happy state quickly unravels as the drama of life takes over. The hero’s mother dies leaving her lost with a father who remarries and then fails to even notice that she needs protection during the rest of the story. She develops allies and strengths by being good, persistent and hard working as she works her way through the dark part of her story. When the time comes for her to break the pattern, she is ready.

It is no wonder that the prince she finally marries reflects the father’s role by being unable to recognize the shoe imposters not once but twice. He is not the point of the story. The prince is just a symbol of becoming connected to accomplishment. Cinderella struggled with her grief and loss and made powerful allies that helped her throughout the story. She now has access to her inner strengths and the necessities required in culture to function as a producer rather than a consumer. She can now create her place in society instead of begging for scraps. She has in fact matured emotionally physically and sexually and is ready to leave her troubled existence behind her in favor of a world where in she controls the outcomes.

This is just one example of the way that traditional stories can provide a template for working through ones own story from innocence to struggle and finally to a strong healthy outcome.