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I ended up late with this post, with the topic being discussed on the late subreddit, but hey, let's bring it here and pretend it's original.
A lot of fiction uses the same character arc, which is called the positive character arc in the business or the hero's journey by Joseph Cambell:
the hero had a tragic event in the past
the hero has a flaw because of this event
the hero answers a call to adventure
the hero tries using the flawed approach and keeps failing
the hero reluctantly tries using the correct approach as a tool
the hero finally has some initial success, but the flaw bites him in the ass and he almost loses everything
the hero has a cathartic experience, rejects the flaw and adopts the right approach
the hero righteously wields the right approach and overcomes the opposition
This kind of arc is omnipresent: you see it in capeshit, it child-friendly comedies with Jim Carrey or Eddie Murphy, in Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks cartoons.
What I've noticed is that modern heroines do not follow the same arc. On the surface, it follows the same beats:
the heroine had a tragic event in the past
the heroine thinks she has a flaw because of this event
the heroine answers a call to adventure
the heroine lets herself be held back and keeps failing
the heroine tries letting herself go and starts succeeding
the heroine finally has some initial success, but the tragic event comes back and she almost loses everything
the heroine has a cathartic experience, rejects the tragic event and embraces her full power
the heroine righteously wields her full power and overcomes the opposition
When I look at this version of the heroine's journey, which I have tried to express in the most charitable terms, it does still look a lot like the hero's journey. Yes, the flaw being thinking you have a flaw is a weird one, but it's still a flaw. The heroine still overcomes it and the adversity, what's wrong with this arc?
I think it's the duality of the flaw that is missing. In the beginning of the hero's journey the tragic event is in the past. The hero is one with the flaw. He might not be living in the best possible world, like Shrek or Earl from Up!, but everything he has he has achieved with the flaw. The flaw is not pure weakness. You can reasonably construct a reverse story, a story of downfall or corruption:
the hero is pure
the hero answers a call of seduction
the hero tries using the righteous approach and keeps failing
the hero reluctantly tries using the flawed approach as a tool
the hero finally has some initial success, but his idealism bites him in the ass and he almost loses everything
the hero has a traumatic experience and embraces the flaw
the hero wields the flaw and obtains a victory that he learns all too late is hollow
You cannot do this with the heroine's journey, the reverse heroine's journey is just gaslighting that ends with a mental breakdown. The hero goes down and up in his journey (and up and down in his reverse journey), the heroine just goes up and up, there's no moral lesson beyond "don't let yourself be trod upon".
The hero's journey typically starts with the "character vs self conflict", while the heroine's journey you describe is more like "character vs society."
The hero has to overcome some internal conflict before they can succeed in their other conflicts. But a heroine seems to not be overcoming her own internal conflict, but instead figuring out that her internal conflict is actually something imposed on them by society's stereotypes of women. Hell, the heroine's journey may be better parsed as "character vs (character vs self)."
There are movies where the heroine follows the hero's journey. Romantic films are big on them. The internal conflict is typically about which guy to pick, the trauma is some crap relationship from years ago. Lifetime/Hallmark movies do a lot of this, too. You'll see some big city lawyer (female) who has to go and close a deal on some property development in a beautiful small town. She goes and meets a handsome guy, usually they get off on the wrong foot. And he happens to run a failing business, which just happens to be the one she's there to buy. He bitches about how horrible the property developer is, but he has no choice but to sell. She hides that she's working for them. Internal struggle, people find out, everyone hates her, she realizes she loves the dude and hates her job, she quits her job and manages to save the failing business. Happy ending.
Anyways, what I hate in many Hollywood movies is that the female lead doesn't have the initial struggle at all. The story is basically reduced down to just the main conflict, but we go through the motions like there's a character vs character conflict. Instead this is basically just targeted at the audience, it's a "character vs (audience vs society)" conflict or something. Like we're supposed to expect her to fail, to struggle, but she doesn't. Our expectations, as they say, are subverted. And we're bigots if we think that the character should have struggled. Really what we're seeking is for the character to grow. If our heroine happened to meet the enemy at the beginning, it'd be a short film rather than a feature.
I've felt many recent female characters are basically written like one-dimensional villains, but they happen to always win.
This would be really interesting to unpack just because we could make the point that there are many female villains who are actually well-rounded characters because they have some tragic flaw (usually related to their reasons for being a villain) AND they act in an agentic fashion. Indeed they'd have to, or else the plot wouldn't happen! So they don't end up shortchanged in the character department like a female heroine might be.
And then discuss the point that Disney has recently started making films that examine their (female) villain characters and given them backstory... in a way that tends to explain or justify their flaws that led to villainy as not really their fault. In the process arguably making them less interesting.
Somehow I doubt we're going to get a Gaston movie that explains that his extreme narcissism and borderline obsession with Belle is the result of a traumatic childhood that drove him to be an extremely competitive perfectionist or something.
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