Beauty and the Bodhisattva

Heroines are, by their very nature, oddities. While often times they are described as possessing the qualities that their society values most in a woman (modesty, beauty, obedience, etc.), they must have certain unexpected traits that most people lack in order to become heroines in the first place. It is their ability to rise to the occasion, whether through extreme patience, intelligence, endurance, or skill, that makes them the heroine. This is liable to make anyone unusual in their world. The heroine is often described as an exile, either living in a remote location, an orphan, or shunned by those around her. Rapunzel’s complete isolation would make a lesser woman go mad. Cinderella and Snow White are orphans who have had their ties to the outside world severed in a cruel and murderous world. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series is of mixed heritage, a “mudblood” wizard whose parents are “muggles”, or non-wizards. In the Norwegian folktale “Tatterhood”, we meet a heroine who is described as ugly and ill-behaved who rides a goat and brandishes a wooden spoon. She is so hideous her own mother insists on having a “do-over” child. Yet at the end of the tale it is revealed that she has chosen this life of perpetual rejection in order to ward off those unworthy of her. This physical and psychological isolation is necessary to the heroine’s quest. Solitude prepares her for the trials ahead, and often makes her uniquely capable of meeting these challenges and succeeding. She has known pain, loss, and fear before. They will not surprise her the second time around.

It is perhaps because of the rejection (or ejection) of the heroine by society that she becomes the heroine. Is this heroic nature innate or something she develops through the quest? In this week’s film. Jean Cocteau’s La belle et la bête, we see Belle taunted and abused by her family for her gentle and generous heart. Her sisters are shallow and cruel, the men of her family are brutish, and only her cowardly father seems to value her. When the Beast demands her father send one of his daughters to live in his castle, only she is willing to sacrifice herself. Her life as an outcast within her family has most likely given her a sense of nothing to lose as much as it has given her a sense of duty. However, even Belle’s kind nature is challenged by the Beast. At first she is repulsed by him, but by the end of the story she is in love, her kind heart having won out. Perhaps the answer to the question of nature vs nurture for the heroine is that it is both that make her what she is. Were she not born to be the heroine, Belle would not have survived the trials, or even began them. At the same time, she had to choose to become the heroine. She had to answer the call, and she had to choose to act heroically when asked to do so. She had all the tools she needed at her disposal, but how she used them was entirely her own decision. She could have slayed the Beast, or allowed him to die. She could have relented and married him upon arrival and would probably never have fallen in love with him. She could have taken any number of paths, but she chose the one that was in keeping with her nature: compassion.

Considering her often painful origins, many heroines either choose not to return to the “real world” or leave an open door policy to come and go as they wish between worlds. Where Campbell describes the refusal of the return as being either a failure on the hero’s part or his rejection of an earthly world gone mad, the heroine will often stay in the otherworld as an act of emancipation. Dorothy returns to Oz frequently, and eventually chooses to stay there permanently in book The Emerald City of Oz. Life in Kansas as a poor farm girl and a lonely orphan cannot compare to life in the fantastical otherworld surrounded by magical friends. In the end of La belle et la bête, Belle stays with her Beast in his surrealistic castle, where she has found love and acceptance. Belle’s love has freed the Beast, but his love has equally liberated her from her greedy and manipulative family. The heroine’s decision to stay feels natural, as if she has found her “tribe”. When the heroine is given the option to stay or return but chooses not to, we feel an odd sense of disapproval. In The Last Battle, Susan Pevensie’s decision to stop coming back to Narnia in favor of boys and cosmetics is treated as if she has betrayed her nation. He own brother, Peter, describes her has no longer being a friend to Narnia, as if she has committed high treason for simply choosing to grow up. Although mostly likely this was Lewis’ attempt to portray how adulthood shuts one out from the world of fable, it feels more like a condemnation of Susan’s choices as a woman and shunning her for making herself sexually available.

This decision of whether or not to return from the otherworld illustrates the greatest weapon a heroine has at her disposal: choice. Belle from La belle et la bête is often cited as being a very sexist heroine, bartered like chattel to a monster who holds her captive and uses coercion to get her to fall in love with him. In reality, everything that happens in the story is by her choosing. She volunteers to go to the Beast’s castle to save her cowardly father. She chooses to stay with the Beast. She chooses to return to the Beast, and in the end she chooses to love him. She could have let the poor thing die and been free to return to her life back home. Instead, Belle follows her moral compass and chooses a life of compassion and sacrifice. While these qualities are often viewed as antiquated characteristics foisted on women by a society invested in their docility, they are also the traits that most religions of the world promote as being the first steps towards enlightenment. Belle chooses the path to enlightenment. She is elevated above those that surround her and their petty, selfish ways. The passive heroine, reviled for her lack of “kick-ass” when seen through our modern, feminist filter, is actually a creature who is empowered from within. She chooses her actions or non-actions to benefit others, and not because she lacks self-worth. The creature without self-worth is not a heroine, she is the villainess, the Wicked Stepmother, or the Witch. The woman who does not understand her value lashes out at the world, and other women in particular. She seeks to destroy or steal their worth and make it her own. Instead, these heroines know they have value. This is what keeps them alive, and this is what gives them the resolve to sacrifice for others. The heroine says, “I may not have much, but what I have is yours. I can bear your burdens for you.” She knows she is stronger than those around her, and her capacity for compassion and forgiveness elevates her to a higher level of consciousness. Campbell throws the term “bodhisattva” (one who attains enlightenment but denies themselves Nirvana in favor of staying behind to teach others how to attain enlightenment) a great deal, but he seems not to recognize the heroine’s journey often leads directly to that aspiration.

Campbell, J. (1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Murdock, M. (1990). The heroine’s journey. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

Estés, C. P. (1992). Women who run with the wolves: Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. New York: Ballantine Books.

Baum, L. Frank, and John R. Neill. The Emerald City of Oz. New York: Morrow, 1993. Print.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. N.p.: Scholastic, 1998. Print.

Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, George Webbe Dasent, and William Stobbs. Popular Tales from the Norse. London: Bodley Head, 1969. Print.

Lewis, C. S., and Pauline Baynes. The Last Battle. New York: Macmillan, 1956. Print.

Kimball, Melanie. “From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children’s Literature.” Library Trends Winter (1999): 558-78. Web.

La Belle Et La Bête. Dir. Jean Cocteau. Studio Canal, 1946.