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Shane Storks
Professor Abigail Heiniger
World Masterpieces I 1213-03
28 April 2015
The Epic Heroine: Patterns Surrounding Female Protagonists
Nowadays, films about strong women fighting for justice like The Hunger Games and
Divergent dominate the box office. This is in harsh contrast to past treatment of women as
inferior, even something less than human. They were also portrayed this way in literature and art,
and this is widely known. What does not get enough attention, though, is when this happens not
to be true in creative works. Though women have historically been portrayed as inferior to men
and inhuman, their heroic efforts to overpower men have often been a driving force or symbol
for positive change in creative works. This is apparent in literary works such as The Iliad and
The Arabian Nights as well as visual artwork like the “Florence Triumphant Over Pisa” sculpture
series, and likely stemmed from the concept of a son overpowering his father. The concept is
even found in modern pop culture phenomena such as the Divergent and The Hunger Games
book and movie trilogies.
It is, of course, worthwhile to first look at some of the many examples of women being
treated as inferior to men in literature. One ancient example: the story of Cupid and Psyche. In
this story, Psyche, interestingly a woman, goes on a quest to win the love of Cupid after
betraying his trust. Cupid’s mother, Venus, gives Psyche several tasks she must complete in
order to win her son back. Psyche repeatedly succeeds and Venus continues to give more tasks in
disbelief; Venus eventually gives Psyche a box to deliver that she is not allowed to open, and of
course Psyche succumbs to curiosity and opens it. The box immediately puts her to sleep.
Luckily, though, Cupid comes to save her and complete the quest for her (Apuleius), implying
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that women cannot do anything correctly and need men to finish the job (“The Epic Journey
Home”). Further, the Shakespeare play The Winter’s Tale blatantly belittles women. For
example, Leontes states that when his wife, Hermione, convinces Polixenes to stay with them
longer, it is only the second time she has said anything worthwhile in her life; the first was when
she agreed to marry him (The Winter’s Tale 8.89-9.106). It seems like even recently women were
still being portrayed stereotypically. A study found that from the 1970s to the 1990s, college
textbooks on sexuality, marriage, and family, primarily displayed stereotypical photographs of
women rather than ones with feminist themes (Low and Sherrard). Traditional views of women
have always been everywhere in culture, and the traditional view is that women are inferior to
men.
Sometimes women were not even treated as human. In the first known epic, The Epic of
Gilgamesh, women are treated as dispensable property. Gilgamesh shows his dominance over the
men of Uruk by sleeping with every bride on the first night of marriage before her husband can
(Epic of Gilgamesh 5.73). Gilgamesh did not care for the women themselves, rather for the
power that came with him seducing them. Similarly, in the ancient Trojan War story The Iliad,
Achilles and Agamemnon fight childishly over kidnapped sex slave girls, who were referred to
as prizes, as in this passage from Agamemnon:
Not so quickly, brave as you are, godlike Achilles—trying to cheat me. Oh no, you won’t
get past me, take me in that way! What do you want? To cling to your own prize while I
sit calmly by—empty-handed here? Is that why you order me to give her back? No—if
our generous Argives will give me a prize, a match for my desires, equal to what I’ve
lost, well and good. But if they give me nothing I will take a prize myself—your own, or
Ajax’ or Odysseus’ prize—I’ll commandeer her myself and let that man I go visit choke
with rage (Iliad 81-82)!
Agamemnon clearly did not care about the girls themselves, at least not enough to even refer to
them as human. Even in the traditional fourteenth-century tales of The Arabian Nights, women
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found themselves treated as property, whether it be the woman kept in a glass box by a jinn who
stole her from her husband (Arabian Nights 12), or the woman locked in a secret dungeon and
later slaughtered by a different jinn for being unfaithful (Arabian Nights 115-121). Clearly, there
are several examples of women being treated as something other than human in literature all
through time.
But this is not the only way women have been portrayed; sometimes in literature, women
were able to overpower men—by tricking them. How does this fit into the traditional view of
women that had always dominated? According to Joe Fassler when discussing The Arabian
Nights, it is “because cunning and trickery are the first recourse of the weak” (Fassler), and it
begins to make sense how women could be portrayed this way so long ago. Giving women the
ability to overpower men, but only through deceit, may have just been another way to degrade
them. But if it was, it failed. Regardless of the method, women were given the power to defy and
defeat men in literature, a spark that possibly ignited movements for change later on.
An example of this is again in The Iliad, where Hera used sex to manipulate Zeus and
ultimately cause the fall of Troy, much to the contrary of ancient Greek gender relations. In The
Iliad, goddess queen Hera supports the Achaeans, while Zeus, the king of the gods and her
husband, supports the Trojans. There is a strict rule set by Zeus that no gods are allowed to
influence the war. This rule gradually gets more violated until Hera seduces Zeus and makes him
fall asleep long enough for her to more or less win the war for the Achaeans. For a woman to
contradict her husband so boldly would have been outrageous in this time, when it was argued
that it was best for women to stay inconspicuous (“Women in Ancient Greece”). Even the thenrevered philosopher Aristotle said that “the relationship of male to female is that of natural
superior to natural inferior, and that of ruler to ruled” (Aristotle 364.1254b). Though the same
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rules may not apply to gods like Hera and Zeus, Zeus definitely did not respect his wife as an
equal:
You and your anger—rage away! I care nothing for that. Not even if you go plunging
down to the pit of earth and sea where Cronus and Iapetus make their beds of pain, where
not a ray of the Sun can warm their hearts, not a breeze, the depths of Tartarus wall them
round. Not if you ventured down as far as the black abyss itself—I care nothing for you,
you and your snarling anger, none in the world a meaner bitch than you (Iliad 247).
Hera, goddess or not, was a woman, and for her to trick and undermine her husband, the king of
the gods, was a significant act of defiance for this time period.
Something similar happened in The Arabian Nights, where the educated Shahrazad
intelligently deceived King Shahrayar into sparing her for years in order to save the women of
the kingdom, another interesting role reversal. The king, in a fit of rage over his failed marriage,
decides that he will marry a new woman every day, use her sexually at night, then execute her in
the morning (Arabian Nights 14). Shahrazad, the daughter of the king’s vizier, has an idea and
convinces her father to marry her to the King (Arabian Nights 20). At the end of the first night of
their marriage, she begins to tell a story then ends it on a cliffhanger (Arabian Nights 23). This
makes the king keep her alive for the next night so he can hear more, and she continues this for
hundreds of nights; the story never ends. In this way, she sacrifices her own freedom, but saves
hundreds of women who would have been in her place each night. Instead of just being a
prisoner, she makes the king her own prisoner (Fassler). Consequently, Dr. Susanne Enderwitz, a
professor of Islamic and Arabic studies, recognizes her as a dynamic “heroine, narrator, and
woman” (Enderwitz). Like with Hera in The Iliad, a woman to be recognized as a heroine in
such an old literary work is surely noteworthy, especially since the proof of her defiance has
been remembered for centuries.
A pattern is present between these two works; both The Iliad and Arabian Nights
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personify evil and good with a man and a woman respectively. In both works, there are two
sides. One is a strong and powerful oppressor in the beginning of the story who loses out in the
end, and is personified by a stereotypical hotheaded, antagonistic, and older man with authority.
This man often has a damning mental or physical weakness. In The Iliad, this is Troy personified
by the impulsive and sex-craving Zeus, while in The Arabian Nights, this is the monarchy
represented by the violent but curious King Shahrayar. This side faces off against an initially
weaker and oppressed protagonist, personified by a stereotype-defying clever woman who
succeeds and causes a positive change in the community. This woman may or may not have a
weakness, but it does not cause her destruction regardless. In The Iliad, Hera fills this position
and brings change by ending the Trojan War, while in The Arabian Nights, Shahrazad saves the
women of the kingdom and changes the king’s heart. These female heroes are able to achieve
such feats almost purely with their cleverness and little to no help from others. Among other
things, this repetition will be referred to as the epic heroine model. The women in them are
distinguished by their ability to complete a quest like male epic heroes can, but unlike Psyche
could.
These heroines are not seen only in literature; they can be found in artwork, and the
“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa” series of sculptures holds several allegorical examples where
women overpower men following the same pattern. The series begins with the sculpture
“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa” by Giambologna, which represents Florence’s defeat of its
rival city, Pisa. The towering sculpture shows a stoic woman, supposedly representing Florence,
pinning down a mature man, Pisa, with just her legs (“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa by
Giambologna”). Dr. Cristelle Baskins names this an example of the “ubiquitous personification
of cities in late medieval and Renaissance Italy” (Baskins), but keeping in mind the recognized
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pattern of female protagonists and their male counterparts, this personification has been going on
much longer outside of visual art. The series continues with “Virtue Triumphant Over Vice” by
Massimiliano Soldani (“Virtue Triumphant Over Vice”) and “Virtue Overpowering Vice,”
currently found in the Detroit Institute of Art (“Virtue Overpowering Vice”), which both look
remarkably similar, just cast in different materials and smaller. The two characters in the
sculptures go from personifying cities to personifying virtue and vice, which sounds familiar; it
is easy to imagine these sculptures as allegories for Zeus and Hera, or as Shahrazad and
Shahrayar. These sculptures actually are seemingly sarcastic responses to Michelangelo’s “The
Genius of Victory” (“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa by Giambologna”), which was claimed to
symbolize the struggles of men. This sculpture was exactly alike except that it depicted a young
man overpowering an older man (“The Genius of Victory”). The “Florence Triumphant Over
Pisa” series is another remarkable example of the epic heroine tradition, but why did it originate
from a sculpture of two men?
The men immortalized in the “The Genius of Victory” could easily be father and son,
which follows a different creative tradition of men overpowering and succeeding their fathers,
prevalent in ancient Greek mythology and still being used even in Renaissance works like The
Winter’s Tale. To put it simply, Zeus, the king of ancient Greek gods, only came into power by
destroying his father, Cronus. Cronus came into power by doing the same to his father, Uranus
(“The Epic Journey Home”). This translates into the idea of the patrilineal monarchy found in the
times of The Winter’s Tale, where there needed to be a son in every generation of a ruling family
to maintain political stability (“Revisiting the Epic”). In this story, King Leontes accidentally
causes his own son’s death, resulting in chaos when he no longer has an heir to take his throne
(The Winter’s Tale 48.142). It seems that this long-lasting theme of sons taking the places of
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their fathers inspired the artwork that the epic heroine model originates from. Instead of a strong
young man overpowering his weary old father, the epic heroine is a clever woman overpowering
a stubborn man, and her mental prowess is equated with physical strength specifically in the
“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa” sculptures. It seems, again, that this could be a backhanded
compliment implicitly comparing women to children and men to adults. If it is, it is executed
poorly since the pattern always ends in a victory for the woman and positive change for the
community.
This pattern repeats itself across history all the way to today’s film industry, and finds
itself in the Divergent book and movie series. In Divergent, protagonist Tris Prior fights for
peace and rights for everyone in the divided post-apocalyptic city of Chicago. Her mind is the
focus of the story; she is considered Divergent because her personality cannot be classified into
one of five factions that rule the city. She overcomes both male and female villains with both
trickery and physical strength on her quest (Divergent). It is not until the last installment of the
series, Allegiant, however, that Tris truly fills the epic heroine archetype. Here, she butts heads
with the much older, disabled David, the curator of what actually was a genetic experiment going
on in the city she lived. When David wants to wipe the memory of everyone in the city to reset
the experiment, Tris outsmarts him and uses the same method to erase the memories of the
workers running the experiment at the cost of her own life. This effectively stops the experiment
and allows citizens to live in peace and enter and leave it freely (Roth). Though David killed
Tris, she succeeded by foiling his plan and curing the evil plaguing the city. Her ultimate positive
change as a representative of the people being experimented on in Chicago makes her a perfect
fit for an epic heroine.
Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series also fulfills the epic heroine archetype
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in her struggles with President Snow. In The Hunger Games, Katniss unexpectedly becomes the
symbol of a revolution against the Capitol of her post-apocalyptic society of Panem when she
threatens suicide and tricks the Capitol into letting both her and another boy survive the Hunger
Games, a televised fight to the death among teenagers (The Hunger Games). President Snow, an
old, terrifying tyrant, represents the authority of the Capitol, and repeatedly attempts to preserve
his dominance over Panem throughout the series until he finally loses it in the final installment of
the series, Mockingjay. Katniss does not need to use physical violence to overthrow him; in fact,
her only weapon of choice is the bow and arrow (The Hunger Games), a weapon that requires
skill and mental focus rather than brute force. When she succeeds, the society prospers in peace.
This is the same story that has been told over and over again for millennia in art and literature.
But what is the significance of this observation?
Consider this: what if women were never portrayed as powerful by anyone? What if the
human mind was not even able to imagine circumstances better than it experiences in daily life,
let alone write about them? There would not be much of a reason for women to believe in the
power they could have. Would a fight for women’s rights have ever happened? This simplifies
the mind quite a bit, but is still worth contemplating. These stories could have sparked the
ultimate positive change: women being recognized as equal to men rather than a separate,
inferior species. And if not, it is still interesting that the pattern has endured for so long since its
creation from the tradition of sons overpowering fathers. It is no mistake that these stories are
still being adapted into today’s bestselling books and films. These stories, where women
outsmart men to improve the world, captivate audiences throughout history in literature like The
Iliad and The Arabian Nights, visual art like the “Florence Triumphant Over Pisa” sculpture
series, films like The Hunger Games and Divergent, and much more.
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Works Cited
Apuleius, Lucius. “Cupid and Psyche” in The Golden Ass. 23 Jan. 2001. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.
The Arabian Nights. Trans. Husain Haddawy. Ed. Bernard Knox. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2001. Print.
Aristotle. Politics in Classics of Moral and Political Theory. 5th ed. Ed. Michael L. Morgan.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2011. Print.
Baskins, Cristelle L, and Lisa Rosenthal. Early Modern Visual Allegory: Embodying Meaning.
Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print.
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Print.
Collins, Suzanne. Mockingjay. New York: Scholastic, 2010. Print.
Divergent. Dir. Neil Burger. Perf. Shailene Woodley and Theo James. Summit Entertainment,
2014. Film.
Enderwitz, Susanne. "Shahrazad Is One of Us: Practical Narrative, Theoretical Discussion, and
Feminist Discourse." Marvels & Tales. 18.2 (2004): 187-200. Print.
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Benjamin R. Foster. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Print.
Fassler, Joe. “The Humanist Message Hidden Amid the Violence of One Thousand and One
Nights.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Monthly Group, 25 Jun. 2013. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
“Florence Triumphant Over Pisa by Giambologna.” The Art Fund. National Art Collections
Fund, 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
“The Genius of Victory.” Florence Inferno. Florence Inferno, 28 Aug. 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.
Heiniger, Abigail. “The Epic Journey Home.” Lawrence Technological University. Southfield,
MI. 9 Feb. 2015. Lecture.
Heiniger, Abigail. “Revisiting the Epic” Lawrence Technological University. Southfield, MI. 20
Apr. 2015. Lecture.
The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: The Penguin Group, 1990. Print.
Low, Jason, and Peter Sherrard. "Portrayal of Women in Sexuality and Marriage and Family
Textbooks: a Content Analysis of Photographs from the 1970s to the 1990s." Sex Roles.
40 (1999): 309-318. Print.
Roth, Veronica. Allegiant. New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2013. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale. Ed. Frances E. Dolan. New York: The Penguin Group,
1999. Print.
“Virtue Overpowering Vice.” Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015. Web. 18
Apr. 2015.
“Virtue Triumphant Over Vice.” University of Edinburgh Art Collection. University of
Edinburgh, 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
“Women in Ancient Greece.” Greece: Secrets of the Past. Canadian Museum of History. Web.
19 Apr. 2015.
“I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in completing this work, nor have I
presented someone else’s work as my own.”
Shane Storks