I'll Make a Man Out of You: Mulan's Heroine's Journey

    1. Examine a film with a female protagonist that conforms to the heroine’s journey by reflecting on how either Maureen Murdock’s or Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s versions of that narrative archetype encourages us to understand the narrative.

Mulan, released in 1998, follows our heroine, Fa Mulan, in ancient China during times of military conflict with the Huns. The Huns, led by the ruthless Shan Yu, are attempting to invade mainland China by breaching the Great Wall. The Emperor orders a large-scale mobilization, with conscription notices requiring one man from each family to enlist. Fa Zhou, Mulan’s elderly father and a renowned military veteran, is conscripted. Mulan pleads with her father not to go, fearing for his life. After Fa Zhou refuses, Mulan cuts her hair and takes his armor and sword, disguising herself as a man so she can enlist in his stead.

In today’s blog post, I will focus on Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey and the step ‘shifting from feminine to masculine’. This stage is when our heroine starts to disassociate herself from feminine values and beliefs and shifts to identifying with the masculine.

For Mulan, we see this stage even before she enlists in her father’s stead. Before the Emperor ordered a large-scale mobilization, Mulan was arranged to see a matchmaker to demonstrate her fitness to be a future wife. Here, we are introduced to the ancient Chinese norm that Mulan, and women likewise, must rely on marriage to settle their fates. During the song “Honor to Us All,” we see Mulan visibly in discomfort as her mother and grandmother get her ready to see the matchmaker. Mulan gets dragged around several shops around the village, in which several different women take turns squeezing her in corsets and applying makeup on her. In this image during “Honor to Us All,” we see the ladies around Mulan singing about the importance of ‘good breeding’ and a ‘tiny waist.’

Once she’s ready to see the matchmaker, Mulan enters the chamber to be judged on whether or not she’d make a good bride. Immediately, we recognize Mulan’s differences from her peers because of her awkward movement when they were told to move elegantly. When she went inside the matchmaker’s room, she was immediately deducted points for being too skinny and not ‘fit for childbearing.’ When she was ordered to pour tea elegantly, this ended in chaos as she caused a huge scene. She poured hot tea on the matchmaker, who then fell on a bed of hot coal, burning her behind.

The song “Honor to Us All” and the matchmaker scene show how our heroine Mulan has begun to disassociate with the feminine and is deemed unfit to be a good bride. 

Later in the film, we see Mulan transition to the masculine and leave behind these feminine ideals when she joins the army, especially during the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” During this montage, an awkward Mulan turns into a confident, manly machine. She begins by having difficulty with wielding staffs, catching fish barehanded, and hand-to-hand combat. As she trains and through grit, Mulan takes it upon herself to climb a tall wooden pole that nobody was able to climb, gaining the respect of both her peers and her captain, Li Shang. Here is when we see this transition to masculine. Mulan embraces her new identity of being a male soldier and ends up outworking Li Shang and her peers and even beats Li Shang in a martial arts battle. These scenes represent the latter part of Murdock’s ‘shifting from feminine to masculine.’ After deserting the feminine ideals of Ancient China, Mulan is now a welcomed and important member of the military and is recognized and identified as a ‘real man.’