Why I don't want to go on a hero's journey
Also: Why little girls chose the wrong heroine in "Frozen," Celestial Seasonings, and Beautiful Okra
I was thinking about the perennial concept of a “hero’s journey,” and the drama and danger involved, and the stirring victory to be won. But the thought suddenly hit me: Personally, I don’t want to do that. I would never want to do anything remotely like that. Just thinking about it makes me want to go hide under the bed.
Sure, I’d love to see a movie built on that theme, and I could play that role (not very well) in a game. But to leave home, launch out, and actually do something brave, rigorous, and dangerous? Y’all go ahead without me. Maybe I’ll catch up later.
It seems like men and women are different that way. Women can enjoy hearing tales of glory, but men seem to resonate with them in a way we do not. It’s like men are made for danger and heroism, and women are made to admire danger and heroism…from a careful distance.
This is reflected in the choices women make in their own lives. We’ve been celebrating opportunities for women to take on men’s jobs for 50 or 60 years now, but when it comes to the physically demanding and dangerous careers, women don’t choose to take them. There’s been room for women in the Marines since 1918, yet their percentage today is a scanty 5.1%. Same thing with firefighters: the first full-time female firefighter broke the glass ceiling in 1974, but today only 9% of firefighters are female.
Women are welcome to enter these dangerous professions, but it seems they just don’t want to. Why is that?
That brings us again to the obvious, delightful, and very good news that men and women are different. And do you know why that’s so very, very magnificent?
Because it means new life. Babies. That’s the practical purpose this difference is designed for. It’s how we do our part to make the human race keep on keeping on.
As mammal-beasts, we have three imperatives:
1. Find shelter.
2. Find something to eat.
3. Make tiny new mammal-beasts.
And no matter what latest lunacy our cultural overlords are trying to sell us, sex is still fundamentally a drive to reproduce. That’s why the drive is so powerful: it’s literally a matter of life and death.
But there’s a difference between how humans and other mammals fulfill that last imperative. We are one of the few species that are monogamous, one of the few that mate for life. The other mammals we live with—cats, dogs, hamsters—might gleefully party all the time, given the opportunity. But we humans, with our complex brains and self-awareness, get our hearts all tangled up in these things.
And that’s part of the design too.
But what’s the point, the biological purpose, for humans to be monogamous? Why would they mate for life?
Because there’s one other way humans are different from other mammals. It’s that our babies are born, comparatively, very premature. A newborn lamb wobbles to his feet, finds his mother and latches on for his first meal. But a newborn human is weak and helpless, unable to go anywhere or do anything. Without immediate and nearly-continuous care he will die.
The mother is glad to give that care, but who will find her food and shelter? Who will protect them both from danger?
That’s where the father comes in. And he’s diligent about finding food and shelter, but his unique role is to be big and strong. He will keep the mother and child safe. He is ready to sacrifice himself to protect them.
Now try to picture a mother willing to confront danger, to sacrifice herself and even die to keep the father and baby safe. That storyline doesn’t work, somehow. It doesn’t satisfy; it doesn’t ring true. It might be an interesting idea, and it may have actually happened sometimes in human history. But it’s not the story we’re looking for.
We want men to be brave, and women to be—what?
And that got me wondering. God has planted in the male heart the well-known desire to be strong in the face of a challenge, ready to be a hero. But what symmetrical desire has he planted in the female heart?
My husband was walking through the room where two of our grandkids, cousins, were playing on the floor. They were about 4 years old. He asked, “What are you playing?”
The girl said, “We’re playing ‘Going to a wedding’.”
The boy said, “We’re playing ‘Riding in a truck’.”
That brings us to the mystery of why little girls chose the wrong heroine in “Frozen.” If you had a little girl around the house in 2013, you know every beat of that Disney animated film. It seized little girls in a way incomparable to any other Disney movie; only “Cinderella” (1950) would be a runner-up).
Honestly, little girls became obsessed with that movie. They would watch it on a continuous loop if they could. My 8 year-old granddaughter made herself an “Elsa” dress, sewing every stitch by hand. She had me take many videos of her singing Elsa’s big song. My 6-year-old granddaughter asked me to make an Elsa dress for herself and a matching one for her doll. Visiting a friend, I saw her pre-verbal toddler daughter stand in front of the TV as Elsa sang, enacting it wordlessly but with heartfelt gestures and glowing eyes.
There was something about Elsa, all right. But here’s the funny thing: these girls were obsessed with the wrong character. Elsa is not the star of “Frozen;” her brave little sister Anna is. It is Anna who leaves home on a dangerous quest to find Elsa and bring her to safety. It’s Anna who gets to meet-cute with a hunky guy, and gets a funny sidekick, in this improbable case a snowman. It’s Anna who gets a proposal from a handsome prince, then discovers his evil plans. In terms of storyline Anna is everything—yet it was Elsa that the little girls loved.
Elsa was, in fact, initially supposed to be the bad guy. Scriptwriters started with the evil queen in Hans Christian Anderson’s story, “The Snow Queen.” (If you’re not familiar with that wonderful story, here’s a link to me reading it.) It’s about two little children, a boy named Kay and a girl named Gerda, who are the closest of friends. But Kay is drawn away from Gerda by the beautiful Snow Queen (she must have been the pattern for the White Witch in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). Gerda loves Kay and sets out to find him. Though she is small and powerless, it seems that all things conspire to help her. Spoiler alert: Gerda finds Kay and brings him home.
So Anna was originally pictured standing against the evil Snow Queen, but as the story evolved, Elsa became her older sister. Elsa was born with a dangerous gift; she could conjure up ice and snow. But once when she and Anna were young, while playing high in the snow and ice structures Elsa created, Anna almost fell from a height. Elsa was horrified and realized her gift could cause great harm. She struggled to learn how to control it, but at her coronation as queen she revealed it accidentally. At that, Elsa gave up all hope of living in human society. She fled to the snowy mountains and conjured an immense ice palace where she and her terrible powers could be alone.
That’s when the big song comes in, the part little girls wanted replayed over and over.
“Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don't care what they're going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway.”
Now, during this scene, Elsa changes magically from the modest dress of a Scandanavian princess to a slinky blue dress with a slit up past the knee, and her tidy hair tumbles down into an elegantly disheveled braid. She looks stunning.
And here’s the sing-along version! Now you too can be a 6-year-old girl!
“Why do little girls love Elsa so much?” I asked a younger friend. “It’s the dress,” she said.
It’s the dress in “Cinderella” too—it’s the moment when the fairy godmother waves her magic wand and a beautiful white ball gown swirls around the little chore girl. It’s the dress that makes weddings so fascinating to little girls. That’s not a new phenomenon; in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1856), a doll-dressmaker waits outside a church to see what the latest wedding dress looks like, beside a cluster of little girls who want to see the same thing.
There’s something about that moment when a young woman, clothed in an extraordinary dress, is the focus of everyone’s admiration and attention. That’s the moment that is so deeply desired. The intensity with which little girls linger on that image is an index of how primitive and powerful it is.
It’s the dress. Or rather, it’s the girl in the dress, who is so superlatively beautiful that all anyone asks is just to go on looking at her.
It seems to me that this is, at least in part, what women are yearning for. I’m trying to think my way through here. And I’m aware that women are not supposed to think this way, but rather focus on competing with men in the world of paid employment. (Even though many women, including successful ones, still put a lot of thought and money into clothing, hair, and makeup).
I think the reason this moment is so powerful is that it links to the memory of being a baby, and being the entire focus of her parents’ attention. Those are memories of utter and complete safety. As long as her parents’ eyes engage with hers that way, as long as they are utterly lost in love for her, she is safe.
It must be hard for men to realize how aware women are of being smaller and weaker. In the company of men, we are inevitably at risk. (Especially when fashion makes you wear clothes and shoes that would make it hard to run away.) Because there are bad men out there, a woman needs a good man, one who will love her and protect her. She is most certain that he will stand beside her, even in front of her when danger comes, when she sees in his eyes a look like the one she saw when she was her parents’ whole world.
So that’s part of the design, too. That vulnerable mother with a newborn needs to know that the baby’s father is captivated. If she’s got that—if she knows the baby’s father is that deeply in love with her, and only her, then she knows she’s safe.
Many more things are going on in real human beings who undertake this primal new-mammal-beast project. She doesn’t think of him solely a machine calculated to protect and provide; she loves him, loves that he’s brave and strong and muscle-y. He loves her, he loves her delicacy, her small hands, her soft voice. They bond with each other; their complicated hearts intersect and lock together. When it’s love, true love, all the pieces work together—and new babies just keep coming along.
But what’s in it for a man? Why would he want to stay with one woman? And why in the world would he stick around “for life,” once the kids are raised? Stay tuned for next week.
Tea-lovers will recognize this as the setting on a box of Celestial Seasonings’ “Sleepytime” chamomile tea. Celestial Seasonings (Boulder, Colorado) has a wonderful tour which includes this photo op.
“They had the most beautiful okra I’ve ever seen” said no Yankee ever.
I love okra, but I can’t defend it. Picture the ad: “Combines slimy and hairy in one great taste sensation!”
But try it stewed with tomatoes and rice. Heavenly. Also fast-friendly, for you Orthodox Christians out there, if you skip the bacon.
Here’s the recipe, from the well-loved copy of “Charleston Receipts” we received as a wedding present back in 1974. Charlestonians call it “okra perlo.”
The next recipe down is for Hoppin’ John, and it’s a venerable Charleston tradition to eat some on New Year’s Day, for luck in the coming year. Nobody knows why it is called hoppin’ John, or where the tradition comes from, and no one believes it has anything to do with luck. It’s just an enjoyable tradition.
It now occurs to me that we don’t eat it except on New Year’s Day, though it would be delicious any time. It just seems to be hallowed for New Years. But I’d like some right now.
In Orthodoxy, we accept one nature, the human nature. The majority of our women Saint virgin martyrs were tortured and killed because they refused to adhere to society's expectations about women, they refused to marry and become mothers, which enraged men in authority and power, including their biological fathers, who often betrayed or killed them themselves (honor killings). The Holy Myrrh Bearing Women, the Myrofores, indeed were more heroic than their male counterparts, the Apostles who fled and hid, and the women disciples of the Lord were rewarded for their courage with the blessing of first witnessing the Resurection, and receiving the ordination to go preach to the men disciples the good news. Actually, orthodox women are known for their courage and heroism. I am not sure where you get your idea that women do not like to be heroic, and prefer to be decorations pleasing to the male gaze by playing dress up? Can it be your protestant background? I hope you can shed your deeply rooted protestant upbringing, especially the wrong ideas about women, as it is directly insulting to our Most Holy Mother of God. Forgive me, your blessing.
As a convert to Orthodoxy and father who raised a daughter (baptized as an infant) in the Orthodox Church, the narrow and rigidly defined boundaries of what the feminine is and is not did my daughter no favors (and likely traumatized her). Holding definitions of what a woman is and should be so tightly can be very harmful. As I understand it, each individual is unique and made in the image of God who has no limits, is infinite, and is beyond definition. Some females conform to this narrow definition very well. Glory to God for that! But others do not. Shouldn’t we give glory to God for them as well instead of forcing them to fit a Procrustian bed? Too narrow and rigid a definition of female risk making many girls outside that definition feel at their core less than, broken, and bad. And this is felt at one of the most formative and vulnerable periods of their life. As a man and a protector of my family, one of my biggest regrets was not protecting my daughter from using a narrow and unrealistic definition of the feminine to measure herself. She was fearfully and wonderfully made and I hate that she doubted this.
It’s taken many years to come to terms with this and I repent for it.