“What you most want to find will be found where you least want to look” (Carl Gustav Jung)
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

Introduction

There is a critical consensus that the study of myths and folktales deepens our appreciation of the human condition and the narratives that shape our world. Numerous studies have contributed to explaining myths and folktales as rich repositories of cultural and historical knowledge. Scholars have examined how myths reflect the beliefs, values, and traditions of societies throughout history. Their findings provide insights into different cultures, worldviews, and symbolic systems within various contexts of societal norms, rituals, and moral codes. Despite cultural variations, myths and folktales often reveal common themes and archetypal patterns that transcend time and place. They address important questions about human existence, such as the origins of the world, the nature of good and evil, the meaning of life, and the struggles and triumphs of human beings, thus exploring the universal human experiences, emotions, and aspirations that link world cultures.

More precisely, what follows examines how folktales reveal psychological insights into the human psyche by depicting human desires, fears, and motivations. The portrayal of some mythical female figures moving from situations resonates with our collective unconscious, helping us gain a deeper understanding of our own inner struggles, dreams, and potentials. The study of the heroine’s quest for wholeness in our context is significant because it enriches our understanding of our cultures while illuminating universal female experiences, providing insights, enhancing our thinking, and helping us find meaning in life.

Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Campbell, to cite just a few prominent scholars who wrote on myths, storytelling, and the hero’s quest for wholeness, argue that folktales are the foundations of communities, groups, nations, and individuals. Thus, they deserve curiosity and investigation. In his seminal and influential work entitled Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Joseph Campbell examines the concept of the hero’s journey and the universal patterns found in myths and stories across Western cultures. In the 2004 preface to the Princeton edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the author uses the word heroine referring to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and reveals what he calls “the spiritual dismemberment of his modern heroine”, a journey that ends with death.

It is important to point out that Campbell does not refer to the female journey or quest as a way of deliverance and liberation. Unlike the male hero’s journey, the female heroine’s journey is not recognized ; it is often not as important as the one undertaken by legendary masculine figures such as Ulysses and Sinbad, whose bold and daring adventures continue to inspire and captivate people’s imaginations. The masculine figures embark on a variety of quests, exploring the unknown, facing great challenges, and ultimately overcoming them to attain personal growth and transformation. Their journey involves a courageous passage to a hard-won victory, and the woman remains one of their gains.

The question to be addressed is : is it possible for a woman to face her inner limitations and local and historical boundaries in order to come to the realization of her ultimate goal ? Although Campbell defines the hero as :

The man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one’s visions, ideas, inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought (18).

He further denies female agency and suggests that the masculine journey is far more important and demanding than that of the female heroine. This journey is exclusively masculine, and the feminine is either an obstacle or a reward. Moreover, Campbell fails to consider the importance of understanding gender and diversity in his analysis. The author focuses mainly on a male protagonist, thus neglecting to highlight the heroine’s quest to avoid binary constructed identities. His work does not refer to the contributions of non-Western mythologies and narratives. He does not include the mythologies of Africa, Asia, and other cultural communities, which contributed to enhancing our understanding of the hero’s journey across a broader range of cultural contexts. By putting emphasis on the mythic and symbolic aspects of the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell also neglects the socio-political and historical contexts in which narratives emerge. Considering historical factors that shape and influence mythological narratives is useful to get a more comprehensive understanding of the hero’s journey.

By writing a work that combines many disciplines and studies myth from Freudian and Jungian approaches, Jordan Peterson in his Maps of Meaning (1999) suggests a new perspective, which makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind while explaining that the woman or the female characters in fiction have “a hero story like men do”. He writes that the feminine in the male hero’s story holds the background while he is facing danger. This place is reversed in the female heroine’s story where the female also has to confront the unknown and garner wisdom and knowledge while the male is in the background. Not so extensively developed as his analysis of the hero’s journey, it appears that Peterson’s primary focus remains on the broader theme of meaning and its relevance to both men and women. Nonetheless, through his work, Peterson acknowledges the unique aspects of the feminine journey and the significance of chaos, relationships, and rebirth in the development of meaning and personal growth for women. The author links the female heroine’s journey to the archetype of the beauty and the beast (2017 00 :23 :00-00 :27 :30).

In a more recent and nuanced work entitled The Hero with an African Face (1999), which can be read as a “writing back” to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Clyde W. Ford provides a broader and more inclusive understanding of the hero’s journey in its manifestations across African cultures. The Hero with an African Face explores the concept of heroism in African cultures and challenges the dominant Western narrative. Its author argues that African cultures have their own heroes and heroines who possess qualities and values that can be compared to those celebrated in Western societies. Ford highlights the diversity of African cultures and their rich traditions of storytelling, mythology, and oral history by analyzing a variety of African legends, folktales, and historical accounts to prove the capacity of African heroes. He emphasizes the importance of community, collective action, and spiritual connection in African heroism, contrasting it with the individualistic and often violent heroism of Western narratives. By stressing the impact of colonization and slavery on the African concept of heroism, Ford explores how these historical events misrepresented and marginalized African heroes and how the dominant Western narrative perpetuated stereotypes and misconceptions about African cultures. By challenging the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding African cultures, Ford emphasizes the need to understand forms of heroism found in African cultures. He advocates for alternative narratives and perspectives.

Yet, though we cannot deny that Ford fills in the gaps in Campbell’s study of the hero’s journey by including women, as he asserts in his book preface, our reading of his book reveals, overall, that The Hero with an African Face offers a compelling exploration of heroism in African cultures, challenging the Western-centric view and inviting readers to embrace a more inclusive understanding of what it means to be a hero. Additionally, another limitation of Clyde W. Ford’s study of the African hero’s quest is its focus only on the Sub-Saharan parts of Africa. It excludes other parts like North Africa. This neglect can be attributed to language barriers and the compartmentalisation of the continent into zones by imperial Western powers since the Berlin Conference of 1885.

Among the prominent scholars who wrote about North African myths, the French author and ethnographer Camille Lacoste-Dujardin showed a great interest in the Kabyle society and the oral heritage, especially the condition of women and the way both the masculine and the feminine interact in the domestic and public spheres. The author argues that women included female monsters in the folktales as a means of resisting and rejecting patriarchal dominance (Le Conte Kabyle). Nonetheless, Lacoste-Dujardin’s analysis is very limited when it comes to the universal dimensions of the folktales as they are studied in isolation. Lacoste-Dujardin examines the representation of the most famous female monster in Kabyle folktales, Teryel, by exploring only the dialectic of power and resistance the Kabyle female characters engage in. Represented as an outcast and rebellious woman, Teryel stands for the Kabyle women who show resistance and fight back against the patriarchal Kabyle society. Lacoste-Dujardin tends to depict the female characters as victims of male dominance. The author also ignores the trajectory of the heroine to impose herself in a male-based society.

Therefore, our argument is that the presence of the monster or the ogre is created not just to resist the male machismo, but also the “motheriarchy” or the mother machismo. Our interest in filling in this gap in research is motivated by the fact that, so far, no study has been undertaken to investigate the relationship between the young girl, the beast, and the desire to leave the domestic sphere. As Ibn Khaldun and Leo Frobenius testify, the originality of the Kabyle oral texts deserves attention and exploration. Therefore, what follows investigates the myth of the beauty and the beast in relation to the issue of the heroine’s journey through different female characters in selected Kabyle folktales, which were collected by Leo Frobenius in his second volume Le Monstrueux. The main objective is to show how clever and creative heroines are while growing to an awareness of the oppressive and hostile environment in which they live, how they cope with it, and how they move to bypass it.

1.Theoretical Framework

What makes Maureen Murdock and Jordan Peterson’s theoretical tools and their visions of the Female Heroine’s Journey relevant to our analysis. First, both authors provide interesting psychological insights into both male and female psyches. They portray the depths of human desires, fears, and motivations, and they depict archetypal characters and situations that are relevant to our selected tales. By reading their ways of examining myths and folktales, we can gain a deeper understanding by drawing parallels with our chosen context.

More significantly, the main concern of the two authors is the subversive journey of the female heroine by investigating the ways the female characters adopt revisionary techniques to assert themselves as mature selves. What is mainly interesting is Murdock’s conceptualization of the heroine’s journey, which aims not only at deconstructing Joseph Campbell’s male hero’s journey, which is exclusively masculine, but also explores the issues of the feminine wound, the mother-daughter relationship, and the heroine’s spiritual awakening and rebirth that occur during the journey, which is also a healing process in the selected Kabyle folktales. Similarly, Jordan Peterson’s vision of the heroine’s journey and the desire of the female to tame the beast to come to wholeness is relevant to our analysis.

In the same vein, the importance of Murdock’s analysis of “The Heroine’s Journey: Women’s Quest for Wholeness” lies in her examination of the concept of a feminine journey of self-discovery and transformation. While the traditional hero’s journey, as described by Joseph Campbell, has been widely discussed and applied to various narratives, Murdock stresses the particular aspects of a woman’s journey, which is distinct from the hero’s journey due to the different experiences and challenges faced by women. She argues that women often face specific societal expectations, cultural conditioning, and internal conflicts that shape their personal journeys. She divides the heroine’s journey into several phases. It starts with a woman’s departure from the known and familiar, which is stimulated either by her dissatisfaction or by her desire for change. It is followed by the heroine’s encounters with a variety of challenges, hardships, and counselors who help her develop new skills, awareness, and self-understanding. At this stage, she struggles to overcome her fears and bypass cultural constraints by going beyond limiting beliefs. Murdock insists on the importance of exploring the unconscious and shadow aspects of oneself. This stage involves the heroine’s confronting of her inner demons, unresolved issues, and painful emotions. Her quest for wholeness involves seeking to integrate the various aspects of her identity, reconciling her masculine and feminine qualities, finding balance within herself, and embracing both her vulnerability and her strength. Finally, the heroine’s re-emergence into the world with a renewed sense of self completes the journey. She succeeds in bringing back the wisdom gained from her journey to contribute to her community and empower others.

After providing an overview of the theoretical tools for our study of some selected Kabyle folktales, we apply Murdock’s analysis of women’s journeys by illustrating the stages through which the Kabyle mythic heroine in her quest for wholeness passes. In other words, Murdock’s theoretical framework can be valuable for understanding Kabyle mythic women’s journeys. As with any model or theory, its application and interpretation depend on our chosen context and our personal perspective of reading and interpreting her work. But, before starting our analysis, it might be useful, first and foremost, to provide a brief background of “The Beauty and the Beast” because in Frobenius’s collection Le Monstrueux, the amalgam or the fusion between the Beauty and the Beast, the feminine and the masculine, is a peculiar representation of the desire to be free and challenge the patriarchy. It is significant to mention that the number of tales in which the young beautiful girl marries the beast is significantly greater than the number of tales where the girl marries the agellid. The idea of seducing the beast is thought-provoking. The Beauty seduces the Beast to tame him and thus domesticate the whole institution of the patriarchy.

2. The “Beauty and the Beast”, Origins and Development

The Beauty and the Beast is a worldwide popular fairy tale that has its origins in various literary and folk traditions. The story has evolved through various cultural interpretations and continues to be a beloved and enduring tale today. The story has been adapted and retold several times over the centuries. The themes of inner beauty, selflessness, and the redemptive power of love present in The Beauty and the Beast has resonated across different cultures and times. While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact origins of the tale, several influences have contributed to its development.

Although there is not a specific archetype for the female heroine’s journey in Kabyle folktales, there are common themes and motifs that emerge across different stories. One of the earliest known versions of the story can be traced back to ancient Roman mythology. The tale of “Cupid and Psyche” from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass bears striking similarities to Beauty and the Beast. In this story, Psyche, a mortal woman, falls in love with Cupid, the god of love who is hidden from her and only visits her in the dark. The theme of a beautiful woman falling in love with a mysterious and unseen figure is a recurring motif found in both tales.

In the 16th century, the story reappeared in a French literary version, known as La Belle et la Bête, written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. This version presented the characters of Beauty (Belle) and the Beast (La Bête) in a more elaborate manner. The narrative included elements such as the enchantment, the magical castle, and the eventual transformation of the Beast into a prince. Later on, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont condensed and popularized the tale in her 1756 version. Beaumont’s adaptation simplified the story, making it more accessible to a larger audience. This shortened version reappeared in various European countries. Each version contains common cultural elements (enchanted beings, transformations, and romantic encounters) and nuances due to the influences from folklore and oral storytelling traditions of each country.

For the purpose of our analysis of the heroine’s journey, we shall link The Beauty and the Beast to The Cupid and Psyche myth in Greek mythology, Eros in Roman mythology, which immensely influenced its content. This myth is inserted in The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses by the Numidian Roman author Lucius Apuleius from Madaure, who was born around 125 AD. The Golden Ass is one of the most famous and first novels written in Latin. In Book 4, the author tells the story of Cupid and Psyche, which appears in Greek art and mythology. The story recounts Psyche’s tale, who was the most beautiful of three daughters born to an unnamed king and queen. Psyche’s father asked the help of the gods to understand the reason behind Psyche’s inability to marry. Apollo responded that the father would not have a human son-in-law but a monster that even the gods fear. He says:

On mountain peak, O king, expose the maid
For funeral wedlock ritually arrayed.
No human son-in-law (Hope not) is thine,
But something cruel and fierce and serpentine;
That plagues the world as, borne aloft on wings,
With fire and steel, it persecutes all things;
That Jove himself, he whom the gods revere,
That Styx’s darkling stream regards with fear (Apuleius 61).

With these verses, Apollo prophesies the love between the Beauty and the Beast. Psyche was so beautiful that even the love goddess Venus, Aphrodite in Roman mythology, was offended. She ordered Cupid to shoot Psyche to make her “be seized with a burning passion for the lowest of mankind” as revenge. It happens that Cupid is the one who falls in love with her as he wounds himself with his own arrow. After their marriage, Cupid asks his wife not to look at him and ignore her sisters’ advice. As they visited her, she showed them the luxurious life in the palace with many slaves to serve her and prepare her table (Apuleius 59-66). Jealous and envious, the sisters convinced Psyche that her husband was a wild beast that would devour her and her child. Psyche disobeys her husband and listens to her sisters. She carries out their plan to unveil his face and thus immediately falls in love with him when the monster turns out to be Cupid. Cupid then leaves her saying: “I, the famous archer, wounded myself with my own weapons and made you my wife — so that, it seems, you might look on me as a monster and cut off this head which carries these eyes that love you?” (Apuleius 74). Psyche then wanders on earth looking for her lover in a journey of trials assigned by Venus.

This myth summarizes the struggle of the woman, in this case Psyche, to marry and tame the beast to eventually rise to divinity and marry Cupid as his equal, a goddess. It is in relation to this narrative that Peterson defines the female heroine’s journey as a journey to tame the beast and prove her ability to move beyond the limits of the domesticated self. The beast is a representative of the Alpha male in the image of the modern vampire, the werewolf, the billionaire, the surgeon, and the pirate (2017A: 01 :42 :20-01 :45 :00). It also represents the unknown and the unfamiliar. Peterson uses Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam’s work to explain that women are often fascinated by the narratives of the innocent woman who encounters and tames the productive monster. In 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018), Peterson maintains:

When the females are ready to shed their shells and soften up a bit, they become interested in mating. They start hanging around the dominant lobster’s pad, spraying attractive scents and aphrodisiacs towards him, trying to seduce him. His aggression has made him successful, so he’s likely to react in a dominant, irritable manner. Furthermore, he’s large, healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating (36).

What can be understood from the above passage is that shedding the shell involves leaving the domestic and familiar to the forest, which represents the realm of the monster. This journey is the “imagistic representation of the process by which we make sense of the world” (Peterson 2017B 00 :37 :40-00 :37 :50).

Taming the beast is the process by which the female transforms the monster and, as a result, the world within and around her. The process of separation is displayed in two Kabyle folktales. In the story entitled “M’hamed Aserdun chez l’ogre”, the narrative revolves around a father and daughter relationship. It tells how a daughter asks her father to bring her a magical pair of trousers, “Un pantalon sans couture qui danse tout seul”, which are non-sewn and dance on their own. It appears that only the ogre possesses suchtrousers. The father, then, to please his only child, engages in a long voyage to the hostile and mysterious land of the monsters. The ogre agrees to give him his daughter’s desired object provided that the father accepts to give him his beautiful daughter as a wife. Faced with a dilemma, the father accepts. The daughter is now wed to the beast. She assembles some of her precious objects and leaves her family to live with the beast.

As far as the second folktale, “Le tueur d’ogres”, is concerned, the ogre kidnaps a young and beautiful girl and she is saved later by her brother who, thanks to his prowess, is given the name of “the dragon slayer.” In the two versions, a young and beautiful girl marries the beast.

3. The Heroine in Need of Help of an Ally (Father, Brother)

In the first folktale, the ogre kidnaps a young girl and she is saved later by her brother who becomes “the dragon slayer” (Le Monstrueux 86-91). In the second version, to protect and save her brothers from her husband, the ogre, she hides them inside “Takufit”, which is a big jar of provisions or a supply pit. The wife tries to trick her husband the beast, saying that the human smell is from a peddler. The ogre does not believe her. Thus, upon discovering his wife’s brothers hiding inside the square jar, the ogre suggests a game in which they have to finish eating a whole sheep while he makes a he takes around the house. The wife tricks the ogre to save her brothers (Le Monstrueux 69-85). Although the ogre is endowed with cunning and malice, the heroine succeeds in taming him. Peterson explains that the more challenging the beast is, the more interesting the heroine’s triumph.

In Les sœurs mariées, the youngest daughter asks her father for something that can only be found in the land the ogres. The father then offers her to the beast (Le Monstrueux 116-117). Years go by, and her brothers decide to pay her a visit. The young girl receives her brothers and hides them in her house, lying to her husband, the beast, to protect them. At night, she starts crying and the beast seems to be disturbed by her tears, so he asks three times for the reason, “Dis-moi, pour quelle raison pleures-tu ?” She answers that she is terrified by a recurrent nightmare in which her husband dies and leaves her alone. She voices such a painful experience in what follows :

Depuis ce jour où le marchand ambulant est venu jusqu’ici, chaque soir je fais un cauchemar épouvantable dans lequel c’est toi qui est tué, et moi je me retrouve toute seule, abandonnée sans défense, et sans personne pour me venir en aide ! Depuis ce jour-là, je rêve chaque nuit que tu es mort et que l’on s’empare de ton âme ; mais moi, je ne peux rien faire pour toi (Le Monstrueux 123).

The passage illustrates how the wife invents this scene in her final attempt to discover the exact location of the beast’s soul. Eventually, she convinces in convincing him to tell her the truth and thus succeeds in gaining total control of him.

Furthermore, the tale entitled “Le mauvais génie, ravisseur de jeunes filles”, revolves around a beautiful girl left alone at home under the protection of the Agellid or the King. Both the Agellid and the Vizier show interest in the young girl. However, it is Khtaf Laerayes, a genie who kidnaps young girls, who takes her to his palace to marry her. The young girl, however, tells him that she will only marry him if he reveals the location of his soul. She explains that she wants to marry only the man who trusts her, asserting:

Je veux épouser celui qui me fait confiance et à qui je peux faire confiance. Je veux épouser celui qui me mérite vraiment et non celui qui risque de m’humilier un jour ! Prouve-moi que tu as vraiment confiance en moi : dis-moi où se trouve ton âme et je te donnerai la mienne ! (« Le Monstrueux » 135).

What the above excerpt shows that the young girl gains the beast’s trust. He then informs her of the place of his soul. In this way, she gains total control of the beast.

In these tales, the brothers or the male figures are transformed into the allies the female characters needs. Taming the beast by knowing the location of his soul is also a way to prove her worth and her courage in front of her father or brother. Words like luahc or waɣzen represent the ogre, the beast, and a terrifying monster. In Kabyle, a woman may refer to her husband, father, or sometimes brother as “d luahc” to mean that his actions are awful, symbolizing the weight of the patriarchy. In this context, Peterson explains that the association of masculinity with the beast results from the negative relationships women have with males, affecting their ability to distinguish between “productive competence” and “arbitrary power” (2023 00 :10 :00-00 :11 :10). Productivity is the ability to protect and provide, while arbitrariness is related to control and harm. This explains the different versions of the story, as sometimes even the married woman leaves her husband to marry the beast.

Peterson argues that women are interested in unveiling the balance between “productive generosity and the capacity for aggression.” When applied to Frobenius’s collection of Kabyle folktales, it can be pointed out that the ogre and the youngest daughter are the most frequent characters. A recurring theme is that either the daughter is kidnapped by the beast and then given to the beast as a wife by the father, or she willingly chooses to marry the beast. Peterson states that young women are often seduced by the beast because he represents the aggressive male who can control the psychopath inside him. He is the productive male who “can keep the monster at bay” (2018 00 :23 :00-00 :27 :30). It is also a way to find support and acceptance in the masculine realm.

The tale of The Seven Sisters, “L’histoire des Sept Sœurs”, recalls the story of the father who refuses to marry off his daughters. One day, he decides to go on a long voyage for two years and asks his girls not to leave the house. The need for water pushes the eldest to wander away until she comes to the house of the seven ogres. The first ogre is immediately seduced by the beauty of the girl. Therefore, he invites her to share his meal, something unusual as the ogre never shares his meals. In this tale, the ogre lets the girl get water from the well. Furthermore, he is tricked by the girl, who pushes him into the granary. She takes all she needs from the house and leaves. In seven different ways, she tricks the seven ogres, mocking them. Upon the father’s return, the ogres threaten the father to kill him unless he gives one of his daughters as a wife for their youngest brother. He agrees, but on the day of marriage, the girl runs away with the help of an old woman. While hiding from the ogres, she meets the “human-serpent”, an “animagus”, “l’homme-reptile”, who offers shelter and protection (Le Monstrueux 177-189). Here again, a masculine figure offers the heroine the assistance she needs.

Lacoste-Dujardin explains that these folktales are an integral part of the group’s system of representations, as they coincide with the realities of the community (Le conte Kabyle 12). These “sacred” tales mainly serve an educational purpose as they are told by mothers to children (22-23). In Des mères contre les femmes : maternité et patriarcat au Maghreb, Dujardin describes the relationships between men and women in the Mediterranean, especially in Kabylia, as contradictory. It is a place where patriarchal despotism reigns. Public and domestic life are considered differently from the male and female perspectives (13-14). This type of relationship is transmitted through oral tradition, which explains why the masculine figures in the tales are both allies and adversaries or monsters.

Our reading of “La femme ingrate” reveals a married woman betraying her husband. She helps the beast to heal and then marries him. With the help of an old woman, the young man returns from death in the form of a beast and saves the beautiful daughter of “Lamin”, the village elder, from a devouring hydra. She falls in love with him. The story then turns into a reversed Cinderella Story where Lamin uses the shoe left by the young man to find him and give his daughter as a bride (“Le Monstrueux” 99-100). Both the ogre and the husband are transformed into beasts. Both win the interest of the female for their nerve and canniness. The human beast saves the princess from the cannibal beast, as is the case in the tales of “M’hamed Lahcayci et la jeune fille à marier” (“Le Monstrueux” 206) and “Les femmes-pigeonnes” (“Le Monstrueux” 213).

In this case, it is difficult to denote who the beast is, as the husband in both is “a monster” in physical strength, cunning, and bravery. What is important is the existence of supernatural allies in the course of the heroine’s quest for wholeness. The female in this story encounters an old woman who assists her along the way. The heroine’s allies vary; they can be animals, spirits, or other magical creatures who provide guidance, protection, or magical gifts to aid the heroine in her journey to self-discovery.

The tale “La mère ingrate”, which is very similar to the tale of “La femme ingrate”, reverses the role of the mother and the wife. It tells the story of a young man who saves his mother from his father’s oppression. However, the mother betrays her son and helps the ogre. The ogre wants to reward her for helping him. She says: “Je ne veux ni ta tête ni ton argent ! … la seule façon de me récompenser serait de m’épouser !” (Le Monstrueux 94). The only reward the woman wants is that the beast marries her. The mother tames her son and then the ogre after him. She succeeds in doing what she could not achieve with her first husband.

Peterson elucidates that the main objective of the beauty and the beast story, which also stands for the female heroine’s journey, is her desire to civilize the beast. He adds that every woman’s dream is to encounter “the monstrous masculine and tame and civilize it so that a joint relationship can be established that is part of the development of long-term intimacy […] as the platform for raising children” (2018 00 :23 :00-00 :27 :30).

On the road to civilizing the beast, the woman gains wealth and wisdom like man. Therefore, the heroine’s journey represents the feminine desire for psychic wholeness through the taming of the masculine. The motif behind this desire is not romance in its pure form; it is rather a tool for leaving the domestic, the mother machismo and rebelling against the patriarchy. The subversion of the norms equals the emancipation of the self. So, Peterson’s vision of the female heroine’s journey as the beauty and the beast pattern is rooted in mythology. It brings into perspective the Egyptian and the Greek mythological figures like Isis, Shamhat and Persephone who become goddesses through saving or guiding a man to being a King. They transform the masculine beast into the king. The heroine becomes the creative force or the chaos that gives birth. Peterson’s vision of the female heroine is linked to the role of the Kabyle mother archetype and the idea that the ultimate role of the female is nurturing in its various forms.

4. The Beauty and Beast within the Kabyle Dimension

From a sociological perspective, there is a clear distinction between the female and the male world. Unlike man, the Kabyle woman does not inherit the family’s name or property. She also does not represent her father in Tajmaɛt, the Kabyle village assembly. The city, the market, the mosque, and Tajmaɛt are the public places that are exclusively masculine. The house, the garden, and the fountain are the spaces of the feminine, as Bourdieu states:

“Le dedans et le dehors [...] s’exprime concrètement dans la distinction tranchée entre l’espace féminin, la maison et son jardin, lieu par excellence de haram, espace clos, secret, protégé, à l’abri des intrusions et des regards, et l’espace masculin, la thajma’th, lieu d’assemblée, la mosquée, le café, les champs ou le marché” (49).

The woman’s awareness of the world and of herself is not solely defined by her biology as a female but is closely related to the economic organization of society (De Beauvoir 79). The Kabyle woman is not looked at as an individual but as part of the Kabyle man’s project, a material cultural heritage to be preserved. She is, in De Beauvoir’s words, the “Other through whom he seeks himself” (85). Thus, she is the Other through whom Kabyle society seeks itself. Such a position is reflected in Kabyle folktales, and this vision can be linked to Peterson’s work Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (2021), where Peterson considers the feminine as chaos and the masculine as order. He clarifies this issue by referring to the primordial goddess as the female monster while the male is the one bringing order. He writes:

“Tiamat, the primordial goddess, is chaos, a female monster, a dragon. She is the terror of nature, creative and destructive, mother and slayer of us all. Apsu, her husband, is the eternal father. He is the order that we depend upon for security, and by which we are simultaneously tyrannized” (52).

Tiamat is chaos. Marduk’s “job is to ensure that the cosmos exist and remain stable” (Maps of Meaning 100). Bourdieu explains that the Kabyle house symbolizes the marriage between the sky and the earth. He says: “La femme, c’est les fondations, l’homme, la poutre maîtresse” (68). In Kabyle, Asalas maintains the house and order, which perfectly aligns with Peterson’s vision of order and chaos.

For her part, Tassadit Yacine points out “l’art de dire sans rien dire en Kabylie”: that is the art of speaking without stating directly but by implying. The oral tradition voices the needs of the woman and her hidden unconscious desires. Yacine looks at the use of indirect language and silence as complex resistance tools. Silence, “lamɛun” or “la parole or langage indirect”, are modes of expression used to avoid confrontation while asserting untold truths. It is the speech of the free and the liberated (08-20).

4.1. Courage and Determination of Female Heroines in Kabyle Folktales

Like their male counterparts, female characters in Kabyle folktales often demonstrate remarkable bravery and resilience in confronting challenges and overcoming adversity. One of the most illustrative tales is that of La jeune fille courageuse. After a dispute with her husband, the wife seeks refuge at her father’s house, where she encounters a lion and an ogress threatening her. Undeterred, she bravely slays both in front of the men from her village who watched. Her husband, astonished by her feat, pleads for her return:

“N’as-tu pas encore compris que je me suis enfuie de la maison parce que je ne veux plus de toi ! […] réplique-t-elle sèchement. Je préfère me battre avec un lion et une ogresse que de me quereller avec toi !” (“Le Monstrueux” 248).

The heroine’s journey toward self-realization prompts her father to acknowledge her courage, stating, “Ma fille est fière et courageuse. Elle n’est vraiment pas faite pour toi !” (“Le Monstrueux” 248).

Furthermore, the wife confronts and defeats the ogress and the lion, symbolic representations of the terrible mother and the masculine beast, before returning to her tamed husband, who offers her luxuries at home. Despite this, the husband remains simplistic, innocent, and childish, failing to understand the heroine’s attraction to the beast and disregarding her wishes. Murdock explains that Psyche’s defiance of her husband’s directives “challenges the myth of male supremacy” (18). Peterson similarly argues that “there is no fun in taming somebody who is already tamed”, as exemplified by the husband in this case (2017A 01 :46 :10). Masculine power is embodied either through men or through the inner animus, thus rebelling against the masculine is also a battle against the inner animus.

The desire to tame the beast is not merely a rebellion against patriarchy and masculine authority but also against “motheriarchy”. Murdock discusses how mother machismo transforms the heroine into a “Great Pretender.” According to Robert Johnson in She: Understanding the Feminine Psyche, Aphrodite as a mother is constantly aggressive and resists change, advocating for tradition (15).

In the Kabyle context, both in traditional and contemporary society to a lesser extent, mothers uphold patriarchal dominance, perpetuating what Bourdieu terms as “symbolic violence”. This gentle yet pervasive violence, operating through symbolic channels of communication and cognition, is acknowledged by both the dominant and the dominated, transforming cultural submission into a naturalized phenomenon (Masculine Domination 1–2).

The conflict between Aphrodite and Psyche, mother and daughter, old and new, tradition and modernity, serves as a catalyst propelling the heroine towards personal growth. The mother embodies traditional moral behavior and values with deep historical roots (Maps of Meaning 247). She shapes her daughter/son to avoid deviation or the unknown. In contrast, the daughter represents the agent of change (Maps of Meaning 1999 275). This conflict is both internal and external, as Johnson explains:

“Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature. It helps to have a framework for understanding the process; if she can see what is happening, she is well on her way to a new consciousness” (11).

Thus, the mother-daughter relationship and the female heroine-male monster archetype are among the frequently depicted archetypal paradoxes in Kabyle folktales. The mother represents the chaos archetype that the daughter must transcend, along with other patriarchal norms. Breaking free from the mother’s control and taming the beast represents two unfamiliar situations demanding sacrifice and challenging established worldviews. Therefore, the Kabyle female heroine courageously ventures beyond the familiar, recognizing the need for transformation. Mobility in this context strengthens the heroine as she undergoes the process of “letting go and transforming” (2017B 00 :24 :00-00 :30 :00). Murdock describes this transformation as a death and rebirth process: “she must die to an old way of being before achieving wholeness” (69). Referring to the myth of Eros and Psyche, the author explains that Psyche’s trials, assigned by Aphrodite, expose her to the underworld and a dragon. Only through these trials is she healed and ultimately welcomed into Olympus. She is rewarded with sanctity and marriage to Eros as an equal.

The Kabyle mother traditionally instructs her daughter to avoid the external world. However, as Kabyle folktales, mainly narrated by women, illustrate, an elderly woman told the story of Psyche and Cupid or Eros to a young girl (Apuleius 88). It is only after the young girl defies the Mother figure that she embarks on a journey toward wholeness, often achieved through taming the beast. This paradox is evident, as the mother is expected to teach submission. Such transformations are not socially acceptable. However, Peterson argues that the transgression of old rules becomes acceptable when necessary and done at the right time. This explains why the girl leaves home in her father’s absence. Peterson notes:

“You don’t sacrifice the old rule unless you have a reason for doing so. The thing you are doing has to be better than the thing you would be compelled to do by the old rule. And then you have to dare to do it. … You are not going to do that unless you are already touched to some degree by the spirit of the snake” (2017A 01 :47 :00-01 :52 :00).

This passage highlights the old rule as being associated with safety, mother, domesticity, familiarity, and patriarchy that must be preserved. The snake represents either evil or recognition of inner chaos. Therefore, the heroine ventures beyond the safety of her world to pursue self-realization. Ultimately, mothers teach daughters to challenge and subvert patriarchy.

4.2. The Power of Love and Compassion in the Folktales

In many Kabyle folktales, the themes of love and compassion are not only recurring motifs but also play significant roles in the heroines’ quests for self-fulfillment. The female characters engage in actions motivated by love, compassion for others, or a desire for justice for the oppressed. One such tale is “La femme ingrate”, which recounts the story of a married woman living peacefully with her husband in a grand palace among ogres after he saved her from his father’s tyranny. However, over time, the wife’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she opens a forbidden door where she finds an ogre severely injured by her husband. Despite her husband’s warnings, she takes pity on the ogre, secretly nursing him back to health and eventually falling in love with him:

“Prise de pitié, la jeune femme entreprit de le soigner et lui donna à manger. Peu à peu, elle tomba sous le charme du géant, et, séduite, commença à lui rendre visite chaque jour, dès le départ de son mari à la chasse” (“Le Monstrueux” 21–22).

Her compassionate actions lead her to assist the ogre in killing her husband and then marrying the ogre instead. This folktale illustrates a heroine seeking independence and freedom from societal constraints, challenging traditional gender roles and expectations. In Kabyle culture, a woman who disobeys her husband risks dishonoring and humiliating him, referred to, in Kabyle, as “t cemmet-it”, yet her defiance can also be seen as pushing boundaries toward freedom and self-empowerment.

Peterson’s concept of taming the beast – a female fantasy – is relevant here, as the heroine’s journey involves subverting established orders to find fulfillment. She challenges both the “motheriarchy” and patriarchy by disobeying husbands, fathers, or brothers, opting instead to live with beasts she has tamed or tricked. These stories, often narrated by women, serve likely to inspire through tales of defiance against patriarchal norms.

Conclusion

The analysis through Maureen Murdock’s framework of the heroine’s journey and Jordan Peterson’s interpretation of Beauty and the Beast reveals that Kabyle heroines undergo profound personal transformation and self-discovery. They confront and overcome societal restrictions, advocating for equality and justice. By taming or overcoming obstacles – whether beasts, societal norms, or oppressive figures – the Kabyle heroine achieves self-discovery and fulfillment, challenging and reshaping her destiny.