Cosmogynesis: The female hero in Tanith Lee’s &lt;i&gt;The winter players&lt;/i&gt;

Eileen Donaldson

doi:10.4102/lit.v38i1.1413

Abstract

The mass appearance of female heroes in popular culture in recent decades may encourage the opinion that the female hero has achieved the same credibility as her male counterpart. This article demonstrates, however, that she continues to generate ambivalence and that the primary reservation of most scholars is that a female hero either cannot or should not perform the masculinity of the archetype. Scholarly arguments tend towards two positions: that a female hero is an oxymoron; or that she should be limited to battles on behalf of women in which she champions feminine characteristics and challenges the belief that femininity is not heroic. Neither of these positions take archetypal heroism into account. Advocating a return to Jungian archetypal theory, I argue that the masculinity of the archetype may be as successfully performed by a female hero as by a male hero. Once this premise is accepted, the female hero should be expected to undergo the same trials and perform the same function as a male hero, in short, she should navigate the heroic monomyth outlined by Joseph Campbell. I illustrate this point through a literary analysis of Tanith Lee’s 1976 fantasy novella The winter players.

Highlights

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Arguments tend towards two positions: that a female hero is an oxymoron; or that she should be limited to battles on behalf of women in which she champions feminine characteristics and challenges the belief that femininity is not heroic
For all her visibility in contemporary popular culture, the female hero continues to generate ambivalence among theoreticians who disagree about what she should do, how she should behave and what constitutes ‘female heroism’. These points of contention spring from two overarching sources: firstly, the term ‘hero’ is seldom clearly defined; and, secondly, a widespread scepticism of the female hero’s masculinity continues to undermine her plausibility. This scepticism surfaces in studies that valorise the female hero’s performance of femininity, arguing that she should have her own ‘feminine’, female hero’s journey that does not adhere to the monomyth

Summary

Original Research

Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. I demonstrate that the female hero can perform the masculinity and femininity of the archetype and discuss how this enables her to successfully navigate the challenges of the archetypal monomyth through a brief, literary-archetypal analysis of Tanith Lee’s 1976 heroicfantasy novella The winter players. The third reason I return to this text is that Lee structures her female hero’s journey along the lines of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth (his plotting of the archetypal hero’s journey) Her protagonist faces the same challenges, undergoes the same development and achieves the same results expected of a male archetypal hero, proving that a female character can perform the actions and function of the archetype. It is necessary to define the term ‘archetype’ and clarify the manner in which I use it throughout this article

Archetypes and the hero

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