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Notes -
Do Brontë, Woolf and Austen usually have female protagonists that follow the hero’s journey, or the heroine’s journey? I’m trying to think back to what I remember about Gossip Girls… it may be that there’s a gendered difference in what men and women want to consume. The new heroine’s journey might be building upon an earlier form, as a new variation of the damsel in distress motif. She’s saved not from a charming ideal man but from her own self-actuallyization and capitalist-individualist empowerment. I’m really not familiar enough with female protagonists in women’s literature, but lots of the Disney protagonists have the old motif.
Jane Eyre is an interesting case. It's Edward Rochester who undergoes the hero's journey in the novel, while the eponymous girl has a flat character arc in Thornfield Hall and beyond: she leaves Lowood School a fully-formed character.
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