Found another piece that relates to Buffy perfectly....
Art & Culture
The Story That Won't Go Away:
By Alex Wainer
Why We Keep Inventing (The Same) Heroes
byFaith Online -
What do Hercules, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Spider-Man, and a thousand other heroes of myth and popular culture have in common? This summer, we are again seeing that movie audiences are ready to make box office hits of characters who, though different in details, share a common lineage"” a basic recurring story pattern that goes back thousands of years. What is this story? Where does it come from? And why does it stay with us?
What we're talking about is "the hero's journey," a phrase associated with the scholar Joseph Campbell's writings on the common "deep structure" shared by most myths, legends, folktales, and many of the heroes of popular culture. The "mono-myth," as it's also been called, goes way back. Think of all the Greek and Norse myths about a hero, gifted with extraordinary skills and courage, who embarks on an adventure that will prove his worth, deliver his community, and result in his high acclaim.... "
"...1. A young man (and it is invariably a young man), often born and raised in obscure circumstances, receives a call to go on an adventure and must decide whether or not to accept it.
2. If he accepts the call, he finds that a mentor, a older man with wisdom and special abilities, who is there to help him in the journey.
3. Eventually the hero discovers he has talents, or powers that will assist him in his quest.
4. He often receives special gifts in the form of weapons, talismans or other items he will find useful in his adventures.
5. As he pursues his quest, he must undergo a series of trials that will test his commitment, purity and character. Obstacles to his goals must be overcome, often painfully, and he discovers who he is as he strives against them."
http://www.byfaithonline.com/CC/CDA.../1,,PTID323422|CHID664018|CIID1840010,00.html
"”Joss obviously put a feminist twist on the mythological model. A hero, Buffy, mentored by a guide, Giles the Watcher.
I wonder, are there historical examples (besides Buffy) of the traditionally male mono-myth for girls? I don't know enough about mythology to say....
"The Female Hero
When the hero of a story is a woman, her quest is somewhat different from the male pattern. (A female hero is quite different from a heroine: a heroine usually exists as the object of a male quest; the female hero has her own journey.) The overall movement is the same, but the kinds of challenges, confrontations, goals, and ends may differ. Female heroes, more frequently than male, fight against what society expects of them."
http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/sfclass/MYTHREAD.html
Hmm....
"Novels written by Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, Ursula Le Guin, and Barbara Kingsolver between 1971 and 1993 demonstrate a pattern of female heroism that both continues and revises the male monomyth as described by Joseph Campbell. The motifs these women's novels share with the traditional monomyth include: * the quest itself * mysterious parentage * the magical guide * the slaying of the monster * the boon * (sometimes) the sacred marriage and the return. The elements either unique to the female quest or containing a different emphasis from the monomyth are: * enclosure in a patriarchal system * naming of one's own reality * the discovery or creation of community * the possibility of marriage. In the novels examined-The Color Purple, Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, The Tombs of Atuan, Tehanu, The Bean Trees, and Pigs in Heaven-the hero's enclosure is gender-related. She is entrapped by the conditions of female life in her society. Conventional marriage and gender-role expectations function as enclosures. She often escapes by learning to trust her own perceptions and to name the world for herself.
The discovery or creation of a community of equals is the female quest narrative's most significant departure from the monomyth; the hero is not set apart from others in a hierarchy of value. (The Potentials?!)
Another departure is the frequent communal nature of the heroism itself, in contrast to the monomyth's emphasis on individualism. Moreover, the female hero seeks alternatives to violence; no monsters are literally slain by the hero. The hero's marriage, when it occurs in Tehanu and Pigs in Heaven, both novels of the 1990's, differs from the marriage of the monomyth, from the romance plot, and from the negative or compromised marriages presented in earlier women's fiction. These marriages represent not merely heterosexual union but movement beyond duality; they constitute a feminist re-imagining of relationships between men and women that will continue reshaping the traditional story of the hero."
https://etd.wvu.edu/etd/controller....tdata&jsp_etdId=115&jsp_pageFrom=assistSearch
