The Heroine’s Journey, Chapter 4: The Illusory Boon of Success

I’m currently reading the thirtieth anniversary edition of The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock, which was first published in 1990. It’s a topic that’s interested me for some time, and I’m reading it mainly because I might use it as research material for something more substantial that I may or may not write in the future.

In this series of posts, I will summarize each chapter in The Heroine’s Journey, which includes each stage of the journey. I will also add my own thoughts and anecdotes that occur to me as I read the book. This is not a book review, though, so I won’t add my opinions about the book, per se.

I have previously written an introduction about the introductory chapters of the book (including a summary of the journey), as well as chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3.

In this post, I will write about the fourth chapter, which is also the fourth stage of the heroine’s journey.

Chapter 4: The Illusory Boon of Success

The fourth chapter is about the imaginary blessings that we, especially women, believe we will receive when we “succeed” in the patriarchal sense of the word, as well as the pitfalls we most likely fall into along the way.

As with the previous steps, this one also has different scenarios and themes, which are all summarized below.

The Superwoman Mystique

The superwoman mystique is what Murdock uses to describe an ambitious woman who has “succeeded” in the patriarchal world and in the patriarchal sense of the word. Murdock starts by writing:

“During the road of trials a woman transcends the limits of her conditioning. It is a particularly harrowing time, an adventure fraught with fears, tears, and trauma. As a child and adolescent she is shaped to fit a role determined by expectations of parents, teachers, and friends. To move beyond them she must flee the captors of her conditioning, leave the Garden of Protection behind, and slay the dragon of her dependencies and self-doubts” (Murdock, 2020).

Then, Murdock goes through two different routes that the heroine can take. One of them is the academic route, and the other is the world of work. She starts by looking at the academic route and writes that if a heroine chooses this path, “she’ll have to make a decision early on about the focus of her studies. She is awarded her degree, but soon finds that a sheepskin is no guarantee for success. Everyone else out there is competing for the same position” (Murdock, 2020).

If the heroine chooses the work route from the beginning instead (or when she arrives here after her studies), “she begins to take steps to assure her advancement. She climbs the corporate ladder, becomes a middle manager, or starts her own business” (Murdock, 2020). Murdock then goes on to describe what the next steps of this path would usually look like:

“She falls in love and gets married, but her spouse does not define her self-worth. They rent a home with an option to buy and plan for their family. She has their children, continues to work, and juggles child care, groceries, and everyone’s schedule. [...] She enjoys the rewards of her efforts: money, a new car, clothes, and a title. She is on top of the world; she’s having fun and is a force to be reckoned with” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock continues:

“If she has chosen the independent route she publishes her novel, mounts her exhibition, or outdistances the men in the two-hundred-meter race. She finds backing for her play, an office for her practice, or scales her first mountain. She has achieved the power, recognition, and success in the outer world that her mother only dreamed of” (Murdock, 2020).

The heroine has, as Murdock calls it, “found the treasure of her seeking” (Murdock, 2020). Yet, while this journey is seen as successful in a positive light by many people, probably because we are living in a mostly patriarchal world, there will always be criticism towards the woman who chooses this path and becomes successful, and especially if that woman is a mother. Murdock writes, for example, that. “[s]ome women still envy and disparage another woman’s success. No matter how successful she is, she still has to deal with the fact that the outer world is hostile to her choices” (Murdock, 2020). It’s very sad, but it’s also true of the superwoman’s journey.

Reaction to the Feminine Mystique

Murdock then goes on to write that the superwoman journey summarized above was, at least when she wrote this book, a “reaction to the feminine mystique their mothers either endured or enjoyed in the 1950s” (Murdock, 2020). At this time, when women didn’t have the same opportunities as we do today, “[t]he power they could not attain in the outer ‘male’ world was compensated for by the power they wielded in the family” (Murdock, 2020). As a result of this, these mothers “grew to have unreasonable expectations of their husbands, sons, and daughters. What they could not achieve themselves they expected of their family. They controlled, cajoled, and manipulated regardless of others’ feelings.” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock continues by using The Second Stage by Betty Friedan as a reference when she writes:

“Betty Friedan writes about the tyranny of this maternal machismo: ‘That control, that perfection demanded of home and children, that insistence that she always be right, was her version of machismo—her super virtuous equivalent of male strength and power, which she used to counter or mask her vulnerability, her economic dependence, her denigration by society and denigration of herself’” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock continues by stating that these mothers couldn’t or weren’t allowed to express their loneliness and sense of abandonment. Instead, it manifested in an expression of rage:

“This took the form of violent outbursts at her husband and children or a numbness induced by alcohol, food, or excessive spending. Her daughter watched and listened and heard. ‘Don’t do what I did.’…‘Have a career.’…‘Live your own life.’...‘Women have no power.’...‘Wait to get married and have children until you know who you are’” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock continues by writing that the “mother’s self-denigration and self-hate convinced the daughter not to be anything like her. She would be perfect.” (Murdock, 2020). This, then, fed the daughter's need to not become like her mother, to choose differently, to become the superwoman.

The pitfall of this, however, is, according to Murdock, that:

“[I]n an effort not to be anything like their mothers, many young women did become like men. They measured their self-esteem, their self-definition, and their self-worth against masculine standards of production. In the beginning their successes were exhilarating. But the more they succeeded, the more demands were made on their time and energy. Feminine values about relationship and caring took second place to the achievement of goals. And many women began to feel that they could never be ‘enough’” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock gives an example of a woman who worked as an architect and had a husband and children. She felt like she always came up short. Comparing it to how her own father had come home to a prepared meal, she wished she had a wife of her own and that she could come home to someone who took care of her. Murdock continues by writing that:

“What many heroines want is exactly what their fathers wanted and took for granted—someone to take care of them. Someone loving and nurturing to listen to their woes, massage their battle-weary bodies, appreciate their successes, and take away the pain of their losses. They want a relationship to the feminine. They want to let down, be cared for, and be accepted for who they are, not for what they’ve done. There is enormous yearning for what feels to be ‘lost,’ but they know not what is missing, so they fill the pain with more activity” (Murdock, 2020).

And considering we now have smartphones and unlimited scrolling, the tech companies have been really good at making sure most of us never stop long enough to realize we even have a yearning at all.

The Great Pretender

The great pretender is basically a heroine who is successful to some degree but feels like she doesn’t belong in the field where she is successful or like she’s not good enough to be there. The great pretender is a heroine who:

“has learned how to perform well, so when she feels a sense of discomfort she tackles the next hurdle: a new degree, a more prestigious position, a geographical move, a sexual liaison, another child. She soothes her feeling of emptiness by massaging her ego with further acts of heroism and achievement. [...] There is a great adrenalin rush associated with the achievement of a goal, and this ‘high’ masks the deep-seated pain associated with not being enough. She hardly notices the letdown after her goal has been won; she is onto the next one” (Murdock, 2020).

This need to stay busy is hustle culture in a nutshell. But as the heroine keeps busy, she doesn’t realize she’s experiencing a growing sense of loss. The constant hustle has, as Murdock describes it, “come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged” (Murdock, 2020). Forgetting (or being unable) to say “no” is also part of this stage of the journey. It drives the heroine to the brink of exhaustion and, as Murdock writes, she “feels oppressed but doesn’t understand the source of her victimization.” (Murdock, 2020).

It all boils down to what Murdock writes is a need to please the internalized father:

“A woman does not come to terms with betrayal by the father until she recognizes that all she has achieved has been based on pleasing the internalized father. In her desire to be responsive to this father-image she has developed a relationship to an inner male who does not always have her best interests at heart. He may be a critical, insistent driver who completely ignores her needs and wants” (Murdock, 2020).

Daddy-issues suck, don’t they? Very much so, lol.

The Myth of Never Being Enough

Something I believe a lot of women and queer people can relate to is the feeling of not being enough or overcompensating for feelings of inadequacy or fear of being a disappointment. In Murdock’s book, the overcompensation or drive to move forward and to be ambitious is driven by an inner masculine figure. That inner masculine figure, or the inner male, which Murdock calls it, is often based on the father who still has a grip on a woman’s life and self. When that masculine figure is unconscious, it operates without the woman realizing it (aka the unconscious masculine).

With this in mind, Murdock writes that:

“When the unconscious masculine takes over, a woman may feel that no matter what she does or how she does it, it is never enough. She never feels satisfied with completing a task because he always urges her to pursue another. Whatever she is engaged in in the present moment has no value; he urges her to think ahead. She feels assaulted and responds from a place of internal lack. ‘You’re right, I should be doing something more; this is not enough.’ If I’m writing, my driver tells me I should be seeing more clients; if I’m seeing clients he says ‘get busy on the book’” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock then gives a very simple exercise you can use to silence that inner tyrant, which you can find in the book. Then she goes on to write that one reason women feel this lack or that they’re never enough is because there are many, many demands on their time. She especially highlights the mothers who have young children. She continues:

“Time is a scarce commodity, and there are limits to a person’s energy. But most women don’t like to admit they have limits, and women have a hard time saying no. [...] Women don’t like to disappoint others, so they often give their assent with little thought about how it will affect their lives” (Murdock, 2020).

Murdock continues by writing that finding autonomy is important for women:

“Women have to find autonomy before they can achieve wholeness. Examining the meaning of autonomy often involves discarding old ideas of success. [...] The rewards of the outer journey can be seductive, but at some point the heroine awakens and says no to the heroics of the ego. They have come at too high a price” (Murdock, 2020).

According to Mudock, the heroine can finally prioritize herself and her well-being by saying no to the superwoman standards (summarized here) when she acknowledges her own human limitations. It might actually show up as quitting a job, giving up power and prestige, making sure her children and husband play their part in taking care of the home, etc.

Then Murdock finishes by concluding that:

“Finding the inner boon of success requires the sacrifice of false notions of the heroic. When a woman can find the courage to be limited and to realize that she is enough exactly the way she is, then she discovers one of the true treasures of the heroine’s journey. This woman can detach herself from the whims of the ego and touch into the deeper forces that are the source of her life. She can say, ‘I am not all things…and I am enough.’ She becomes real, open, vulnerable, and receptive to a true spiritual awakening” (Murdock, 2020).

And that quote will conclude this post.

If you want early access to my posts, as well as additional content, join my Patreon.

Sources

Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine's Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. Shambhala, 2020 (30th Anniversary Edition) (ebook).