Mulan and the War Between Masculinity and Femininity

    Disney’s Mulan is probably one of the most beloved Disney princess movies and is also one of the most obvious examples of the Heroine’s journey. However, despite its obvious symbols of masculinity and femininity, Disney’s Mulan uniquely conveys the relationship between these two sides through Mulan's character development and journey toward finding her place in the world. Mulan has three significant moments where it can best be explained by Maureen Murdock’s model of the Heroine’s journey, which takes into account the heroine’s relationship with femininity and masculinity. These stages of the heroine’s journey include the separation from the feminine (represented by Mulan’s introduction), identification with the masculine and gathering of allies (represented by Mulan joining the army), and integration of masculine and feminine (represented by the final battle scene between Mulan and Shan Yu).

Maureen Murdock's Model of the Heroine's Journey

    Almost immediately, the movie begins with an introduction to the heroine, Mulan, and her life as a civilian, and through these scenes, we encounter the first step of Murdock’s model of the Heroine’s Journey: separation from the feminine. The scene opens with the song “Honor to Us All,” which specifically discusses the duties of a lady and how a woman brings honor to her family. “Honor to Us All” makes one thing very clear: the most valuable achievement of a woman is to be a bride. It sings, “A girl can bring her family / Great honor in one way / By striking a good match.” In this scene, Mulan is preparing for a meeting with the matchmaker who evaluates potential brides. Both the song and the visuals emphasize this idea that proper girls should be “primped and polished,” “soft and pale,” calm, and obedient in order to find a husband. These women are further described as “cultured pearls / Each a perfect porcelain doll,” building onto this idealized version of what a woman should be. Mulan is currently trying to live up to these standards but ultimately fails and displays a large disconnect between her and anything remotely feminine. Whenever she tries to do something more traditionally feminine or act in a “lady-like” manner, she comes off as awkward and clumsy or not traditionally feminine at all. For example, as Mulan is walking to the matchmaker with her family, she often gets distracted by the civilians around her, such as making a move for a man playing a board game or returning a doll that a little boy had stolen from a little girl. In one amusing line from “Honor to Us All,” Mulan sings, “Ancestors / Hear my plea / Help me not to make a / Fool of me.” This awkward phrasing further establishes how unpolished or inelegant Mulan is compared to other women going to the matchmaker. Mulan simply doesn’t fit into this rigid mold of femininity, which is only further emphasized by the disaster that is Mulan’s meeting with the matchmaker. A simple task of pouring tea for the matchmaker results in a small fire on the matchmaker’s clothes that Mulan finally puts out by throwing the remaining tea at the matchmaker. The matchmaker finally deems Mulan a “disgrace” and says that she would never bring honor to her family. In these few scenes alone, we see Mulan not fitting into traditional roles of femininity and distancing herself from symbols of femininity. This separation from femininity is further emphasized when almost immediately after, Mulan’s father is called to join the army, but Mulan decides to leave and take her father’s place in secret. By leaving her home, Mulan leaves the part of her life connected to symbols of femininity (e.g., the women who are part of this community, the matchmaker, being home, etc.). In this way, Mulan further rejects femininity, slowly reaching toward traditional symbols of masculinity.

    Another key step in Murdock’s model of the Heroine’s Journey is identification with the masculine, which is quite literally represented in the movie by how Mulan decides to join the army. After the scene with the matchmaker, the Emperor sends letters calling for at least one male member of the family to fight with the army. Of Mulan’s family, her ill father is the only one eligible to fight, but Mulan, worried for her father’s safety, decides to take her father’s place. Through this decision, Mulan begins to identify with the masculine. She takes her father’s sword and armor in the middle of the night, cuts her hair with the sword, and rides on horseback to fight, disguising herself as a young man by the name of Ping. In order to not get caught, Mulan initially copies traditionally masculine mannerisms from the soldiers around her to fit in, such as acting more “tough” or spitting at the ground. As she spends more time in the army, she also begins to grow closer to a couple of other male soldiers, Yao, Ling, and Chien. During the song “A Girl Worth Fighting For,” these three soldiers sing about one traditional goal of a man: to fight for the woman he loves. Mulan does not fit this traditional box of masculinity but still has to act like the men in this song to fit in. Through these allies, Mulan further explores the masculine sides of her.

    The most obvious and biggest example of Mulan identifying with the masculine is through her relationship with General Li Shang, the epitome of masculinity in this movie. He is strong, muscular, and acts tough like a traditional soldier, and he becomes Mulan’s mentor figure in learning how to fight. Mulan learns various skills from Shang, all of which are traditional symbols of masculinity (e.g., hand-to-hand combat, archery, fishing by hand, etc.). During these scenes, Shang sings “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” (arguably one of the best Disney songs of all time), making Mulan’s identification with the masculine even more literal. By the end of the song, Mulan successfully uses two weights to climb up a pole, being the first to do so out of all the soldiers there. In this scene, Mulan’s achievements in the army represent Mulan’s success in identifying with the masculine, with traditional symbols of masculinity and being a man. However, this is not an exploration of Mulan’s inner masculinity. As stated by Murdock about her model of the Heroine’s Journey, "This stage involves an Identification with the Masculine, but not one’s inner personal masculinity. Rather, it is the outer patriarchal masculine whose driving force is power. An individual in a patriarchal society is driven to seek control over themselves and others in an inhuman desire for perfection" (“Heroine’s Journey,” 2022). Mulan chose to join the army to protect her father. Her identifying with the masculine is not out of self-exploration but instead out of external factors and because of the people surrounding her. Her encounter with the matchmaker pushed her away from the sphere of femininity because of her lack of connection to traditional roles of women, while her journey with the army is pushing her towards the sphere of masculinity out of a need to “be a man” and a good soldier for her father’s sake.

    The end of Mulan is arguably one of the most well-crafted scenes in the movie in the way it represents the integration of femininity and masculinity—the last step of Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey model. At the end of the movie, Mulan has a final battle with Shan Yu, the leader of the enemy Hun army. During such a fight scene, you would expect Mulan to fight Shan Yu with a sword, the same way she was taught to fight in the army. However, while Shan Yu uses a sword, Mulan instead uses a fan, a typical symbol of femininity. Using this fan, Mulan cleverly defeats Shan Yu by allowing him to penetrate the fan before collapsing the fan around the blade, twisting it, and ultimately disarming Shan Yu, taking his blade to use against him. In this scene, the fan represents femininity, while the blade represents masculinity. By using the fan, Mulan exhibits a reconnection to her feminine side but not through traditional ways of identifying with femininity. Instead, she uses both symbols of femininity (the fan) and symbols of masculinity (gaining the sword to use herself) to defeat Shan Yu, exhibiting a balance between femininity and masculinity and control over the two worlds. By incorporating this scene with Mulan initially using a fan instead of a sword, Disney shows a unity of femininity and masculinity rather than a constant war between the two sides. This union represents a different kind of femininity and masculinity because of the way Mulan is fighting Shan Yu as her authentic self rather than her male persona from her army days, using both a fan from the film’s introduction when she was navigating through the world of femininity and a sword and combat skills that she acquired from navigating through the world of masculinity. Murdock’s model of the heroine’s journey explains this same unity of the masculine and the feminine, saying that during this final stage, the heroine binds balance between these two sides, which is exactly what Mulan showcases during this scene. Mulan shows growth in finding her own path toward connecting to her femininity and masculinity, using it to her advantage during this final battle in her journey.

    Throughout Disney’s Mulan, several symbols of femininity and masculinity are used to represent Mulan’s connection (or lack thereof initially) to these parts of her identity, which can be further explored using Murdock’s model of the heroine’s journey. Because Murdock’s model emphasizes the relationship between the heroine and the worlds of femininity and masculinity, Mulan proves to be an obvious yet well-written example of the heroine’s journey. The movie is very literal in how it represents Mulan’s relationship with traditional symbols of femininity and masculinity, but Disney does not fail to show the fluidity and union of these two worlds through Mulan’s character development. Rather than a war between masculinity and femininity, Mulan teaches us the importance of both worlds and being true to ourselves.