The patriarchal shadow over the female rite of passage: Maxine Hong Kingston's 'The Woman Warrior', Margaret Atwood's 'The Edible Woman', and Paulo Coelho's 'Eleven Minutes'

Joseph Campbell, educator and author, devoted much of his work to the hero archetype, a philosophy that the journey of self discovery is universal, a cross-cultural paradigm applied to ancient and modern times. According to Campbell, the hero journey mirrors the human rite of passage, with one important exception, a separation of the male and female rite of passage experience. Campbell emphasizes that a young male must set out on a journey of discovery, juxtaposed with the female's physiological transition to womanhood, a determination placed upon her at the onset of menses, rather than a mandated quest. This thesis analyzes three female journeys to argue that the patriarchal oversight developed by each represented culture and supported in Campbell's rite of passage rhetoric permeates the protagonist's world and that unification of the rite of passage archetype without gender-specific rhetoric offers a more complete understanding of the journey experience in each novel.