A Heroine's Journey
What Encanto was Really About
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today's topic addresses a critically underappreciated challenge regarding how we view a Hero’s Journey. While the journey is classically masculine-focused, it misses the unique opportunity to understand, appreciate, and embrace a Heronine journey that develops the strength and capabilities of the feminine. Let’s explore the movie Encanto and see that it embodies a powerful Heroine Journey.
Intro
Much of popular culture, movies, books, and more follow a model known as the Hero’s Journey. This classic motif, outlined by Joseph Campbell in the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is a mythic structure in which a protagonist begins in an ordinary world, receives a call to adventure, and crosses into an unknown realm where they face trials, gain allies, confront a central ordeal, and emerge transformed.
Along the way, the hero often meets a mentor, overcomes temptations, and confronts their deepest fears. After achieving a symbolic or literal victory like slaying a dragon or securing a treasure, they return home with newfound wisdom or power and restore balance to their world. The journey reflects a universal path of separation, initiation, and return, emphasizing outward action, individual triumph, and mastery over chaos.
The problem is that this is written with a masculine bias. While it synthesizes thousands of myths, legends, and stories into a single archetype, it is undoubtedly focused on the masculine psyche. So much so that in response to Maureen Murdock’s proposal of a feminine version of the classic Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell responded:
“Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.”
Before you get too upset by that, there’s an angle there that’s important to highlight regarding Campbell’s thoughts. Namely, if we compare this to a description from his book Goddesses - Mysteries of the Feminine Divine:
“The implication is that in embodying the divine, the female operates in her own character, simply in her nature, while the male magic functions not from the nature of the men’s bodies but from the nature of their roles in the society.”
Campbell felt that women were already complete and that only men needed the Hero’s Journey to achieve completeness. However, I agree with Murdock in that there’s something happening today that shows the value of a Heroine’s Journey. Namely, we seem to be deleting the feminine, and that means my daughters, and many like them, will have to struggle to redeem their own feminine identity; they need to go on a Heroine’s Journey.
The Heroine’s Journey
While Campbell’s model centers on outward quests like slaying dragons, claiming treasures, and returning triumphant, Maureen Murdock’s heroine’s path is an inward descent into the self. It begins with the rejection of traditional feminine roles and an over-identification with masculine achievement. After a period of external success that feels spiritually hollow, the heroine faces a crisis that drives her into an inner journey. She descends to confront emotional wounds often caused by a broken relationship with the feminine and a wounded relationship with the masculine. Her path is not about defeating enemies but healing divides within herself.
If we pause here, this sounds a lot like what we explored in Rat Race Feminism, and Chaos and Order regarding how women are being measured against masculine achievement and how our culture is starting to realize that’s spiritually hollow.
This is where a Heroine’s Journey holds the answer, as it culminates in reintegrating masculine and feminine qualities and achieving psychic wholeness rather than social conquest. Unlike the hero who masters the world, the heroine learns to heal herself and, through that healing, can transform her relationships and community.
This model is rooted in relational power, emotional authenticity, and self-acceptance. The journey validates traditionally “feminine” values like healthy empathy, vulnerability, and collaboration as heroic in their own right. In doing so, it addresses the limitations of Campbell’s masculine monomyth of integration and transformation.
Heroine’s Journey Example
Disney released the animated film Encanto in 2021, and I’ve watched it a couple of times with my kids. It’s an enjoyable film, but it was odd. What was it about? To summarize, it’s a story of the Madrigal family, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a magical house powered by an enchanted candle. Each family member is blessed with a unique supernatural gift—except for Mirabel, who struggles with feeling ordinary in a family of extraordinary individuals. When the magic sustaining their home and powers begins to fade, Mirabel sets out to uncover the cause.
Encanto is a perfect example of a Heroine’s Journey.
Mirabel begins her journey feeling excluded due to her lack of a magical gift, symbolizing a separation from the feminine essence within her family. However, what is perceived as feminine strength because of their magic gifts isn’t, and almost all of the characters exhibit negative feminine Jungian archetypes:
Abuela Alma: Embodies the Devouring Mother, whose overprotectiveness stifles growth. She is stern and demanding to the point of suffocating her son, Bruno, who speaks the truth about her behavior
Isabela: Represents the Perfectionist Maiden, constrained by expectations of flawlessness and trying to please everyone
Luisa: Symbolizes the Overburdened Caregiver, whose identity is tied to her strength and utility. She can’t Ask For and Accept Help
Pepa: Illustrates the Emotional Anima, whose suppressed emotions manifest as uncontrollable weather. She’s an empathic, emotive, feeler whose emotional elephant is always out of control of her rational rider.
The result is the magic house's literal fragility and the feminine's fracturing magic. As the house crumbles, Mirabel faces a crisis that drives her into an inner journey. She descends to confront emotional wounds caused by women's broken relationships with the feminine. She also confronts the wounded relationships with the masculine as they confront her grandfather’s sacrifice and her banished Uncle Bruno. (though we don’t talk about him)
Her path is not about defeating enemies but healing divides within herself and her family to integrate the healthy feminine with the healthy masculine to create antifragility. As the movie unfolds, Mirabel faces down the dark feminine traits and helps her relatives overcome and redeem the strength of the feminine goddesses:
Abuela Alma: Her confrontation with Mirabel leads to a transformation into the nurturing Great Mother, fostering an environment where each family member can thrive
Isabela: Through Mirabel's encouragement, Isabela embraces her authentic self, transitioning into the Creative Maiden who values self-expression over perfection
Luisa: Mirabel helps Luisa recognize the importance of vulnerability, allowing her to embody a balanced Caregiver who acknowledges her own needs
Pepa: By validating Pepa's feelings, Mirabel aids her in achieving emotional equilibrium, transforming her into the Wise Woman who harnesses her emotions constructively
Encanto is a wonderful example of a Heroine’s Journey and how it’s different from the classic masculine-centered Hero’s Journey. There are also dozens of journey overlaps as each family member, sucked along by Mirabel, also experiences their own versions of the journey. This just emphasizes how interwoven and connected the Heroine's Journey truly is. She doesn’t defeat enemies; she heals her family.
Summary
The purpose of the Hero's Journey is to transform the protagonist through trials and revelations so that they return with wisdom, power, or healing that benefits both themselves and their community. It’s typically about individual integration and preparation to face the world's outside dangers.
The purpose of the Heroine’s Journey is to heal the fragmentation within the self by reconciling the feminine and masculine aspects of identity. This leads to inner wholeness and authentic connection with others. It is about community integration and strengthening the community from within.
Together, they create antifragile systems that help us flourish as humans. They’re a Yin and a Yang, two halves making a complete whole. Mirabel’s Heroine Journey provides a great example of how we don’t have to chase the masculine measures of success. In fact, in today’s society, I think we need many more heroines to heal our divides, and that’s the call to adventure I want to ensure my daughters understand.
What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.
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You nailed this one! I loved it and really hadn't seen Encanto that way.
Completely agree with your closing thoughts and thoroughly enjoyed the piece. I believe both the Hero and Heroine Journey as you’ve outline can be explored and achieved on various scales by both genders based on context and needs of a given individual. Campbells book and concept is incredibly powerful but there is a yin to every yang like you said.
One of my favorite books that hit me at the right time in my life is Extreme Ownership. What I especially loved was what Jocko followed up that book with - Dichotomy of Leadership. Too much of anything, even the “good” stuff can be limiting.
Your article does a phenomenal job of exploring the dichotomy of the hero and/or heroines journey and has left me thinking I’m going to attempt to be journey fluid going forward…