The Medieval Parallels of  Edna Earl's Hero Journey in St. Elmo

According to Joseph Campbell, the cyclical hero journey is a universal motif. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes the motifs of the hero journey found in hero stories throughout time and across all cultures. These stories involve a naïve or innocent person (historically a man) who undergoes (often reluctantly) a transformative circular journey, or adventure. The three main stages of the hero journey are departure, initiation, and return. The journey begins when the hero separates himself from an ordinary existence or environment and enters a new territory where he undergoes transformative tests and trials. The hero then returns to his starting point (physically or psychologically), but now as an enlightened individual. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, in their introduction to their translation of Marie de France's medieval Lais, feel that this cyclical journey is a mark of the sophisticated romance plot” (Hanning 91).

The typical Western hero has been male, and this has been particularly true in the mythology of the Old South where medieval ideals of chivalry have lingered. In the North, however, industrialization was in full swing and this led, according to Carolyn Heilbrun, to the birth of the Western female hero. She and JoAnna Stephens Mink both accept 1880 as the date of birth of the Western female hero with the publication of Ibsen's A Doll House and James' The Portrait of a Lady. However, fourteen years earlier, the Southern writer Augusta J. Evans created in her sophisticated romantic novel St. Elmo a female hero, Edna Earl. While Edna satisfies the traditional purpose of the woman (civilizing, or moralizing, the male hero), she also follows a classic hero's journey as she becomes initiated into womanhood. Her journey in many ways parallels the hero journey and initiation of the male hero in the 12th century lai by Marie de France, "Guigemar." The first Western female hero did not originate in the North, but in the South.

Work Cited

Hanning, Robert and Joan Ferrante. The Lais of Marie de France. Durham: The Labyrinth Press,

      1982.