I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. ~ page 51 of Wild by Cheryl Strayed
One thing about Wild that kept jumping out at me, was how brave the author was in her willingness to hike the trail alone. Even when Cheryl could have hiked with others, she often preferred to remain alone.
A woman alone. I think this is a good discussion topic.
I hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail with a friend in my early twenties (just a couple of years earlier than when Strayed went on her trip only ours was only for a week and on the opposite coast). When we got off the trail at the end of our hike and returned to civilization, all the locals we encountered were shocked that just the two of us would hike for so many nights out on the trail…two women alone.
Just as the forest ranger seemed to relish telling Strayed and her trail buddies all of his horror stories about all of the terrible things he’d witnessed, the locals did the same thing with us after we got off the trail for good. And boy, were we glad we hadn’t known more before our hike. It was hard enough to sleep. Afterwards, folks could not wait to tell us how the government wanted to expand the trail and how, in protest, local dissenters were booby-trapping the trails by hanging fish hooks at eye level. We heard about women disappearing, getting raped, etc. And on and on and on. I don’t necessarily remember all the stories, but I remember that they were delivered with emotion and amazement. How could we be so foolish?
Women are not supposed to be alone. It’s not safe. Right?
And yet the redemption that comes to Strayed seemed to depend on facing her journey, both external and internal, alone.
If you are familiar with The Hero’s Journey, as discussed by Joseph Campbell and others, you may remember that a Hero’s success in any particular quest typically has much to do with his alliances.
And yet, Strayed’s success in restoring her feeling of wholeness by going on her wilderness hike seemed dependent on her insistence on being alone, again and again, no matter how many times she connected and reconnected with others she came to know and like. She had alliances but so much of the story was about letting those old ties go.
Is this the Heroine’s Journey then? And is being alone an important factor in the Heroine’s Journey?
Have you been on a journey that was more like Strayed’s—more like a heroine’s journey? Or have you read other books that describe something similar?
Is Strayed describing The Heroine’s Journey…or is there no such thing separate from The Hero’s Journey? What do you think?
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“Is Strayed describing The Heroine’s Journey…or is there no such thing separate from The Hero’s Journey? What do you think?” Technically, there is no difference.
Whether heroine or hero, the journey is the same, and Strayed follows many of the steps Campbell describes. Being alone is an important part of the journey but accepting help at crucial times is also essential to success. There are so many fine bits and examples of this, like the feather that she accepted early. Years later as she reflects on her journey, it is still attached to her pack.
Women aren’t expected to journey alone. Some of this is due to cultural and historical and societal expectations, and some of it is the reality of mothering, which for most of time has started early in a young woman’s life and continued throughout, lifespans being much shorter in years past and birth control non-existent. To be alone for a woman in past centuries might have required entering a nunnery, working as a servant in someone else’s home, or being dependent on extended family for your support–but completely alone on a journey through the wilderness–not so likely.
Cheryl’s book is a celebration of the trials and tribulations of embarking on a journey to discover who you are in your soul, what you are capable of enduring, and to learn that you can survive, alone, without a living, breathing mother to guide you if you remain alert to the gifts and help the universe offers in whatever form such aid might appear, and select judiciously, as Strayed does, only those that are most necessary and that set you free.
What great questions… and I don’t have real answers, just some thoughts.
There are two journeys in this book… the physical journey of the hike, which creates the arc that holds the rest, and the emotional journey she takes which starts far earlier and is dealt with, a lot, in flashback as well as in “real time.” I think the emotional journey does have many of the elements of The Hero(ine)’s journey… the physical journey not so neatly, but it doesn’t need to be.
Even in Joe Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero(ine) always, inevitably, is alone in the deepest of ways. Must be alone for the transformation to happen. Allies don’t take the journey for us, they merely help us along the way. So, in this way, I don’t think there is a masculine/feminine difference in the archetypal journey.
In real life, true we are not encouraged to be alone as women. But a woman alone is not always a target, and even if she is, I believe that if you are smart and prepared, it’s worth the risk. Because the option of staying home, “protected,” means taking a different kind of risk: the risk of NOT taking the journey is worse on the soul than the risk of taking it.
I have traveled alone lot. For me, it’s always been a statement of my
embodied feminism to defy those voices that say “don’t do it alone.” Far more than that, however, it taught me how to be alone, how to take care of myself, and it’s given me the experience of filtering the world through only my own eyes, not through somebody else’s lens.
I am now having my daughter read Wild, because I KNOW she will relate to it. Last year, aged 18 (weighing 90 lbs with a huge backpack herself), my daughter traveled alone for 2 months throughout Europe. People were incredibly shocked and afraid for her. People were incredibly kind to her. Yes, she faced some hard times (sick, alone in a new country, unable to find a place to stay). Though it was often terrifying for me, I believe it was the best thing she could have done to move the grief of her father’s death when she was 16. She came back so whole, so grown, so HERSELF.
I think the journey for either a hero or heroine is the same, but agree women are not expected to travel alone. Sometimes we even pathologize women who journey on their own. I don’t think we apply the same standard to men.
Women who are alone are either foolish (for putting themselves at risk) or frigid (can’t attract a companion). Men who are alone are self-assured, strong and capable. I believe women can do the same solo travel as men, and that it pays off in self-confidence and life experience. That said, I was worried for Cheryl when the sandy haired jerk came back and acted so threatening.
Ultimately, I think we do make the emotional journey through life on our own. Yet there is no way to separate our selves from the complex social context that shapes our identities. Motherless, fatherless, grown up or not, we are the product of the social environment and social learning. You cannot strip that away even if you set out on a trail for a 1,000-mile solo adventure. What you can do is see the social environment, social learning and cultural expectations and filters with much greater clarity. I think Strayed shows that in Wild.
These are excellent questions. My off the cuff response is
half-formed (maybe quarter-formed), I know…
I think it matters (big picture Literary Cannon matters) that the story is a Hero’s Journey, and is such with a female protagonist who survives. She is powerful female, but the source of her power isn’t her sexuality or anger (though remarkably she is both sexual and angry), but from her own agency. It matters that she just keeps going, in a wholly self-determined way. She is a mixed bag though – vulnerable,
feminine, afraid, self-conscious and also strong, sexual, brave, intelligent. She is a whole complex person who doesn’t become a Warrior Woman on a Hero’s Journey, embracing one half of each dichotomy. She completes the journey and survives, but/and she is still a messy complicated whole self. There is resolution, but not an earth-shattering all-is-right-with-the-world because of the boon received from the journey resolution. All of this makes it an important narrative in my view.
I believe Strayed needed to be alone on her heroine’s journey to reach the wholeness she was seeking. I think people too often look to others to find wholeness when they should be looking within. I admire Strayed’s realization that she needed to heal after her mother’s loss and needed to do something extraordinary to find her state of wholeness – thus her journey becomes a heroine’s journey in my eyes.
Just finished. Hated it to end. I was afraid for her being physically alone. Heck I am not brave enough to hike alone in the huge city park I live near.
Yet for the internal, healing journey I do believe we need to be alone and that at times is more terrifying than anything. I do not see a difference between the Hero or Heroine’s journey-I think it’s a human journey to search for Self. And like Strayed, we can form alliances along the way that may offer comfort and even guidance, in the end we need to do the work alone.
It was a journey of transformation, and parallels the journeys of the hero/heroine, which is the human journey from darkness through hardship and being tested to the light–or at least some semblance of glimmer of the new life that is possible. She had to prove that she could be her own best friend, having betrayed herself through the ways she acted out after her mother died. By holding to her plan, she set a standard that she wanted to keep–to do it alone, to draw upon her own resources.
I met her in Berkeley last night at a standing room only crowd–such a warm, authentic real person! Will post photos on my blog. Thank you for setting up this book reading challenge and all the thought provoking questions, Christina!
Hi Tony. Did you read the book? Can you say more?
Hi Deb, yes, the giving and receiving of assistance is also big in this story. Strayed seems to become almost magnetic in her ability to attract the help she needs when she needs it most. Good comments there at the end. Consider putting them in a review if you haven’t already. 🙂
This is an intriguing topic, Ericka, about how you felt about your daughter’s trip by herself. It seems like there is a lot more to say here…in your copious free time. 😉
Thanks, Heidi. Can you explain what you mean by, “Sometimes we even pathologize women who journey on their own.”
Thanks for this, Christina. 🙂
Thanks, Gayla. I think there are two journeys going on here, maybe three. There was Strayed’s actual experience, Strayed looking back on the experience and making sense of it, and then there is the reader’s experience of taking the journey with the more informed storyteller. For me, however, the real story was the story of a woman going within, even as much as she was moving “forward” on the trail to reach her destination. Despite the external focus on the PCT, I felt that this was a story of a women who needed to spiral into herself and then pull all that she found back together. It wasn’t a buddy journey or a road trip journey or even Star Wars with Luke, Han, and Leah. It was about Cheryl Strayed being lost and then recovering her sense of self for her own sake. Nobody else benefited from this recovery. She did not “save” anyone but herself. And in this way, it felt to me like a feminine (heroine’s) journey, rather than a masculine (hero’s) journey.
You are welcome. Thanks for participating, Linda. 🙂
I guess I am still contemplating whether or not I think the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey are the same thing. I’m still feeling that the two are not the same. Perhaps because my understanding is that Joesph Campbell himself said to Jean Houston something along the lines of, “I have outlined the hero’s journey, you figure out the heroine’s journey.” And I’ve heard Jean speak about The Wizard of Oz as a heroine’s journey but as far as are they inherently different, I guess I feel that they are, though with many similarities as far as the whole “journey” aspect. But I could be wrong!
Thanks Christina. I posted a review to Amazon.
“Wild” is a celebration of the trials and tribulations of embarking on a journey to discover who you are in your soul, what you are capable of enduring, and to learn you can survive alone, without a living breathing mother to guide you, if you remain alert to the gifts and help the universe offers in whatever form such aid might appear, and select judiciously, as Strayed does, only those that are most necessary and that set you free.
The memoir is gritty, unselfconscious, and brutally honest, revealing even “shameful” aspects of the author’s psyche and behavior. Though some readers state that they wish the author had kept those details to herself, their inclusion makes the reader’s experience of Strayed’s perseverance, her suffering, and ultimate transformation that much more savory.
I agree. I was totally pissed off when the sandy-haired man came back to her camp; I thought if she was a man she wouldn’t have to be dealing with this, how stupid and unfair is that? I also noted that she thought to herself that if he made an aggressive move toward her she would take one of his arrows and stab him in the throat. Ha! But I wish that situation never presented itself, yet it is telling in its own way.
What an interesting thought and question, Christina. I do think it’s useful–important, even–to distinguish between the hero and the heroine because, no matter how much males and females are equal and should be equal to each other, we are not, to varying degrees across societies. In this one, we do not get paid equally, we do not have equal healthcare, traditions continue to pigeonhole us, and on and on.
I’m not certain that I am qualified, in terms of literary or sociological expertise, to determine if gender makes a significant difference in the journey. I would think that it is a human journey. Certain differences must exist if only because there are nuances that do depend on gender. Either way, the journey is equally valid.
Will take a stab at this…I think the journey is much the same; the evolution of self, the crossing of a threshold by overcoming challenges, facing fears, various tests to self-will, that kind of thing. But the way (or the how) of the journey, the aspect of the experiences and the lens through which they are viewed, are different for the hero and the heroine because of the inherent differences of those two aspects. No one greater or lesser than the other, merely different paths to the same end.
When I would read about her missed opportunities, for safety, help, and companionship – I was awe-struck. Amazed @ her strength and determination. How could she be this strong? I think, Cheryl Strayed belongs to both Heroine and Hero’s Journeys. She’s earned it!!