>looking for a more feminist alternative to the heroic quest narrative
>structure in the mythology
I think this is a topic we could all be interested in! My immediate guess
(though I'd hesitate to back it up with examples (since it is past midnight
here)) is that female quests are less in the mode of hero setting out to make
his fortune and more 'accidental' in the way they come about. Also maybe more
'anti-heroic': not exactly feminist perhaps but a series I fell in love with
many years ago, Jane Gaskell's 'Atlan' sequence, has the protagonist Cija
ending up in all sorts of grotty situations (kitchen maid in a low-class inn,
holed up in tatty garretts, etc quite apart from being incarcerated by her
husband Zerd in an extremely gothic tower for about a third of the second
volume) in fact could be read as proceeding from enclosure to enclosure.
Lesley
Lesley_Hall@msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:29 PDT