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The Emerging Female Hero In The Fiction Of Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, Ursula Le Guin, And Barbara Kingsolver., Rebecca S. Phillips

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

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: (1) the quest itself; (2) mysterious parentage; (3) the magical guide; (4) the slaying of the monster; (5) the boon; (6) (sometimes) the sacred marriage and the return. The elements either unique to the female quest or containing a different emphasis from the monomyth are: (1) enclosure in a patriarchal system; (2) naming …