Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 89

B u ff y t h e V a m p i r e S l a y e r

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power comes from covert action and reaction. The “good girl” response to cultural
readings is not limited to pre-adolescent females. Harper found in a study done
with seventeen-year-old females that they often identified with “good girl” behavior
of compliance, conformity, and self-control in literature.
What’s at stake? Mary Pipher writes about her work with adolescent girls and
describes the “girl-destroying” results of a culture that teaches girls to hide their
strength, their intelligence, and their free will in order to be feminine and desirable—
to be “good girls.” Sadker and Sadker refer to a study in the Michigan schools in
1992 that asked over one thousand students about their feelings as females and
males. Only 3 percent of elementary level boys said they would prefer to be girls
while 15 percent of the girls wished they were boys. Although the percentage of
high school age boys who would have preferred to be female stayed the same,
(3%), high school females who wished they were male jumped to 25%. Perhaps, if
these girls could see more illustrations of strong females in their books, on their
television screens, and in their movies they would feel more positive in the potential
and possibilities of being female today. Ken Tucker suggests that one can consider
“Buffy as [creator] Whedon’s take on [Pipher’s work in] Reviving Ophelia: building
a girl’s self-esteem by first acknowledging the validity of her woes, and second,
suggesting she attack her fears head-on, lest she drive a stake through her own
heart” (22).
The hero archetype has been an important part of narrative structure throughout
oral and written textual history. In most people’s experiences, the vast majority of
heroes are male. Lee R. Edwards posited a theory of female heroism within the
story of Psyche utilizing the narrative structures identified by works from Jung
and Campbell. What I demonstrate below is how Buffy compares to the theoretically
defining characterises offered by Edwards:

Heroes

The hero.. .is nos so much a god, a warrior, or giant as a human
being living at the furtherest extreme of the possible...a
necessary figure when customary responses to such situations
are irrelevant or impotent; when whatever seems rational seems
also in apporpriate;
An honored figure, the hero is also an ambiguous one, acting
on behalf of impulses society must recognize but would prefer
to ignore, society’s agent, but also its hostage;
Absent or if present, hostile parents;
Sense of specialness, of uniqueness, and of isolation;
The hero undertakes a journey - literal or symbolic - to distance
herself from conflicts so that the self can be developed in
isolation.