Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1988

Thesis Director

Roger L. Whitlow

Abstract

The significant works on the hero have always assumed that the hero is male. However, feminist writers, such as Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, have recently shown many women who are, in fact, heroic in both American and British literature. The main problem is that both cultures have often been unable to recognize female heroism, primarily because of their long-conditioned patriarchal perspectives.

Men go on heroic quests; women either help or hinder them along their paths. Thus, women have been considered as supporting characters only, and they are called heroines. But some authors have created female heroes who are not defined in relation to men. Myths have caused stereotypes, and they have influenced women throughout the years. However, archetypes work as powerful forces within women without their knowledge.

The female hero must first identify the society's patriarchal negative myths--sex differences, virginity, romantic love, and maternal self-sacrifice. Then she must cross the threshold to begin her heroic quest to find her true self. Along the way, she must slay the dragons of society's conditioning. She discovers who her captors and her rescuers are. She combines her natural female qualities and her male heroic qualities to become an autonomous woman. Transformed, she returns to change her community into a better one.

There are two fully developed female heroes in Ernest Hemingway's fiction--Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls and Brett in The Sun Also Rises. Pilar, a revolutionary warrior, carries a gun to defend the Republic. She experiences three archetypal phases, those of the Wanderer, the Martyr, and the Warrior, learning the positive attributes of each. Her journey eventually enables her to gather her guerrilla band into a united front to fight the Spanish Fascists.

Brett develops through the Orphan archetype, but she lives primarily in the Wanderer stage. Since she is a nonconformist, she is criticized by both her men and the critics; she fights the stereotype of bitch. When she gives up Romero to protect him from her and her society, she becomes heroic in her sacrifice.

Both women come from wastelands; Pilar exits from a stagnant cave where a drunken coward rules, and Brett leaves a sterile postwar milieu where rules and values have been twisted and destroyed. They emerge to destroy their sick environments and to create their newly transformed kingdoms. Hemingway's fondness for Pilar and Brett gives them the strength to survive their journeys to become female heroes. Pilar rides off with her people, with their home on her saddle. Brett returns to her society, still an exciting rebel, but now a more maturely compassionate woman.

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