The Seba library treats Heroine in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Beebe, John, Campbell, Joseph, Kalsched, Donald).
Jung speaks of the most differentiated function of consciousness as the ‘superior function’; this, in a man, is associated with the image of the hero (in a woman, the heroine).
Beebe establishes the heroine as the archetypal personification of the superior function in a woman’s typological structure, making her the direct feminine correlate of the hero in Jung’s model.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis
The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assim
Campbell argues that the heroic journey is structurally gender-neutral, explicitly naming the heroine as a fully valid protagonist of the mythological pattern of trials and transformation.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015thesis
it is only when that happens that a hero or heroine is truly challenged by a different cultural attitude than he or she would normally use. Something like this does happens in the movie Broadcast News (1987) when the overconfident heroine, a producer of TV news from Washington, D. C., played by Holly Hunter as an extraverted thinking type, is confronted by a duel
Beebe illustrates the heroine’s psychological function in practice through film analysis, showing how she is tested by the encounter with typologically opposed cultural attitudes.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis
In our story the heroine’s faith comes from the crone who tells her, just as she told the Queen, twenty years earlier, ‘I have helped those who were not less unhappy than you,’ and then proceeds to give the shepherd’s daughter the elaborate instructions necessary to transform the Lindworm.
Kalsched reads the heroine as the agent of transformative faith who, guided by a transpersonal feminine figure, enacts the psyche’s drive toward integration of its ambivalent, trauma-split Self.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis
Lévène is the heroine’s name. It’s unfortunate that for a long time the French thought that fairy tales were merely childish nonsense or a pure play of fantasy
Von Franz situates the heroine within the specific narrative structure of the fairy tale, emphasizing the importance of authentic textual transmission for accurate amplification of the heroine’s individuation symbolism.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting
The Hainuwele mythologem begins as if the heroine, ‘coco-nut-palm branch’ — for that is the meaning of the word ‘Hainuwele’ — were the Kore Rabie who had now reappeared on the scene, the moon-maiden whose second form was the pig.
Jung identifies the mythological heroine with the Kore figure and lunar symbolism, placing her within a cyclical, chthonic pattern of disappearance and reappearance that characterizes the feminine dimension of the individuation myth.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting
the Opposing Personality (carrying the shadow of the Hero)
This passage from the Jungian handbook clarifies the structural position of the Hero/Heroine archetype in Beebe’s eight-function model, implicitly defining the heroine through her shadow relation to the opposing personality.
, The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting
The hero, symbolising ego-consciousness, embarks on a journey or quest which will involve him in numerous conflicts and struggles. These struggles represent the ordinary hurdles of growing up.
Samuels summarizes Neumann’s account of the hero as ego-symbol, providing the theoretical context within which the heroine’s parallel function — the development of feminine ego-consciousness — is implicitly situated.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
He looked into it and found his wife at the bottom of the well. So he pulled her out, and from the fright she at once gave birth to a boy, who was very beautiful.
Von Franz narrates a sequence from the Lévène tale in which the heroine’s ordeal at the bottom of the well — a classical descent motif — produces renewed life, exemplifying the death-and-rebirth structure of the feminine heroic journey.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997aside