Evolving to Immortality 
or
Becoming an Epic Lead
in the Novels of
George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, 
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, 
Sylvia Plath, and Audre Lorde

by 
Clara Eusebi

To the educators who have inspired me: Mrs. Fry, Mr. Hes, Madame Santini, Mr. Cesta, Mrs. Vorisek, Mark Vecchio, Nancy Yanoshak, Jim Monsonis, Leslie Davidson, and Elaine Savory;
To my grandfather Mark Gottlieb, who passed away, and will not get to read this thesis, and to Bubbeh, who has always believed in me and whom I will beg to read this thesis, so that she can congratulate me;
To my friends and family, with a special thanks to mom, Sylvia Eusebi, for all of her help, and to dad, Edward Eusebi, for proofreading help, and for always telling me to do my homework;
To Simon's Rock, for making me believe that an undergraduate can write a thesis, and to Eugene Lang for making the project seem feasible;
And most importantly, to my advisor, Ann Snitow, for great advice and many inspiring conversations, and for guiding me through the process of making this project a reality.
Senior Work Table of Contents
	
Introduction
Chapter I - The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot (1860)
Chapter II - Villette, Charlotte Bronte (1853)
Chapter III - Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gillman (1892) 
Chapter IV - Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928)
Chapter V - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1963)
Chapter VI - Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name, Audre Lorde (1982)
Conclusion
Works Cited / Additional Bibliography

	

Introduction
This paper will look at the ways in which female main characters in several novels reach for grandeur in attempts to establish power in their worlds and are denied and deny themselves of that status. As this paper focuses on the experiences of female main characters as they reach for grandeur, it is also preoccupied with the meaning and implication of achieving heroic status. The characters, in reaching for grandeur, are attempting to become heroic. The paper will ask the questions: What does it mean to become heroic? Is heroism itself gendered and in what ways does gender affect the ability of the characters to become heroic? 
The paper will examine six books from five time periods in chronological sequence. The dates of publication correlate to moments when gender politics and discourse were different and changed. As Maggie Tulliver from George Eliot's Mill on the Floss serves as inspiration to this paper, her experiences will be sought in the experiences of the heroines of the other five novels. As The Mill on the Floss is the anchor book, another novel has been chosen from the same time period in order to give perspective. The novels and their dates of publication are as follows:
The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot (1860)
Villette, Charlotte Bronte (1853)
Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gillman (1892) 
Orlando, Virginia Woolf (1928)
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1963)
Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name, Audre Lorde (1982)
Each of the novels centers on a (more or less) female figure, sometimes one who resembles the novelist. Just as the female leads encounter obstacles in achieving their goals, so do male characters. Yet, a juxtaposition of the experiences of male characters with those of the female characters in the same time and fictional world will yield evidence that the female main characters' experiences are more hindered by the expectations of society.
I will not use the terms hero/heroine to discuss the female main characters in these novels. To use the term hero to describe all female main characters is to use a masculine term as if it were non-gendered. 
	USAGE NOTE: Many writers now consider hero, long restricted to men in the sense “a person noted for courageous action,” to be a gender-neutral term. It is used to refer to admired women as well as men in respected publications, as in this quotation from The Washington Post: “Already a national hero in her economically troubled South Korea, . . . [Se Ri] Pak is packing galleries at [golf] tournaments stateside.” The word heroine is still useful, however, in referring to the principal female character of a fictional work: Jane Eyre is a well-known literary heroine. Ninety-four percent of Usage Panelists accept this usage.

I propose that the term hero is as gendered as the term heroine. Just as I would not substitute the word man for human (which frustratingly contains the word), I will not use the term hero to mean both hero and heroine. While 94 percent of Usage Panelists, whose capitalized titles alone attest to their authority, may disagree with my choice, so would, I expect, at least that percentage of participants in the creation of the American Constitution have disagreed had anyone been present to propose the substitution of the word human for man in the document. As I am discussing female main characters (with the exception of Orlando whose gender changes), I have the liberty to always use the gendered term heroine. Yet this feminized form of the concept is so ladened with cultural and literary historical connotations that I prefer to avoid it entirely. Moreover, if I relied only upon the term heroine, I would face a dilemma in regards to the question of how to apply the term to Orlando. I wish to discuss gender and will therefore be careful to use non-gendered terms except when I specifically mean to imply that behaviors and decisions enacted by the characters are gendered. I am also loath to allow the assumption of a binary gender spectrum. The choice of either-or is particularly frustrating where neither-nor might be equally applicable. Therefore, I will not use the terms hero/heroine. I chose to substitute the terms hero/heroine with the phrase 'epic lead.'
I will continue to use the words heroic and heroism where applicable because they are non-gendered; I use them interchangeably with and hold them to have the same value and definition as the phrase "epic lead".  What is the value and definition of the term heroic? What does it mean to be an epic lead? Lancelot and Galahad, Odysseus, Antigone. How similar are they, and how similar are their actions? 
The aspect of being noble is integral to the composition of an epic lead. In using the word noble I mean to imply not the quality of royalty but of moral uprightness. What is the substance of moral uprightness? The specifics of the moral codes within which epic leads throughout literary history have functioned have differed vastly. It is difficult to compare the actions of epic leads from different times and cultures, impossible to evaluate those actions outside the context of those characters' situations. For example, I will assert that Maggie Tulliver's journey toward heroism pauses at an outcome wherein she is configured as a self-sacrificing epic lead, but that that status is dissatisfying to her. While her achievement of the position of self-sacrificing epic lead is less than ideal to her, still it acts as a marked improvement upon her earlier position in the novel, granting her a more powerful status. If Odysseus enacted that kind of self-sacrifice, his behavior would be scorned as the opposite of noble. Can a comparison be made between these two? If, as I have proposed, Maggie's self-sacrificing experience is less than completely heroic, then I again must ask, "What is the definition of heroic?" It is my task to define the term heroic in a way that is compatible with Lancelot and Galahad, Odysseus, Antigone, and Maggie Tulliver alike: an epic lead gets what s/he wants in a way that does not interfere with his/her own concept of moral judgment.  Becoming an epic lead implies the symbolic overcoming of obstacles and the achievement of a significant social status that is recognized by the community. 

 The notion of an epic lead getting what s/he wants is also problematic. Often the epic leads in these novels do not assert plainly and boldly what they want, so it will be my project to convince the reader of the epic leads' desired achievements where the epic lead itself may subvert them. This will be essential in deciphering the ways in which being gendered as female limits epic leads from becoming heroic. 

Chapter I
For Maggie Tulliver, becoming an epic lead is a complicated process. The lead character of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, makes multiple attempts to become an epic lead, reaching for different forms of heroism. She reaches for those forms of heroism in her relationships with Tom, Phillip, and Stephen, but eventually Maggie secures a status as a self-sacrificing epic lead through rejecting her future with Stephen. 
Maggie's first attempt at heroism is an attempt to secure the heroic independence and leadership possessed by her brother Tom. She does so through a rejection of femininity, which is also a failed attempt to own the status granted to masculine Tom.  Eliot sets up Maggie's early childhood as the juxtaposition of the experience of Maggie with that of her brother in Book I, "Boy and Girl". Maggie looks up to Tom; this is evident in her frequent expressions of love for her older sibling. Tom's responses to her unconstrained protestations of love are often cold and standoffish. Therefore, Maggie yearns for Tom's respect. That she gives this respect such great importance betrays her desire to become Tom's equal. 
One of the earliest scenes of the novel shows Tom as a powerful figure whose anger and disappointment in Maggie hold great sway over her emotions. Tom has returned home and Maggie must break the news that his rabbits are dead. Tom had entrusted the care of the rabbits to Maggie (and Harry). Tom's rage subsides into a cold rejection of Maggie. He tells her, "You're a naughty girl" and that he doesn't love her.  Maggie pleads for his forgiveness, on the basis that if the situation were reversed, she would forgive him, only to be rejected again. At the end of the confrontation, 
Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm eaten shelf with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be - and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if Tom didn't love her? Oh, he was very cruel! 

Throughout the novel Tom uses the privilege of his power over Maggie to control her actions. He often judges her unfairly, and the reader cannot help but feel that his maneuvers are unjust. Tom is a symbol of power, independence and leadership throughout the novel. 
"Come upstairs with me, Tom," she whispered, when they were outside the door. "There's something I want to do before dinner." ...
Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
"What are they for, Maggie?" said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead. ...
"Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie, excited by her own daring, and anxious to finish the deed.
"You'll catch it, you know," said Tom, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors. ...
Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want her hair to look pretty,--that was out of the question,--she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was like an idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.

When Maggie cuts her hair, she rejects the low status femininity that is forced upon her. She attempts to establish her own power through this act of defiance. She rejects the celebrated femininity of her cousin Lucy. Maggie sees that Lucy is not as powerful as Tom and that she could never gain all of the status that Lucy has in adopting the accoutrements of that femininity.
Maggie entreats Tom to participate in the act of cutting her hair. She not only wants him to bear witness to this action, but she also wants him to be a part of it. Maggie had imagined this as a sort of denouncement of her mother and aunts. She had also envisioned the ritual as a means to recognition in a higher status. Her adoption of a more masculine hairstyle, she hoped, would pave the way for her to be accepted as an intelligent person. As one who has renounced Lucy's femininity and tried for the status that Tom has, she had hoped to establish herself as a potential leader and a power.      
Yet her attempt to gain power in this way is doomed from the outset because of the preconceptions of gender shared by her family and society. She makes herself more like the masculine figure of Tom in cutting her hair, proving that she has the right to have boyish unkempt hair. She also attempts to adopt a traditional masculinity through taking violent action. Yet her action does not have the desired effect. Tom's reaction makes Maggie seem ridiculous, and her family interprets the action as a form of self-inflicted injury rather than a seizing of masculine power and dignity. Maggie wants to be an economic contender like Tom, but is disallowed this form of achievement because of prejudice against women and the economic structure of society, which influence her father's actions in regards to her education. 
If not for her father's advocacy, the episode would have been a total failure for Maggie.  " 'Cut it off--cut it off short,' said the father, rashly." Her father's support justifies, if only partly, Maggie's action so that she continues to feel that she has been unfairly constrained. Mr. Tulliver also recognizes Maggie's cleverness saying that she "can read almost as well as the parson." Mr. Tulliver's dual support of Maggie's symbolic masculinity and of her cleverness, however, is incomplete.  He doesn't believe that she should be educated. He recognizes her potential but ultimately rejects it as inappropriate because she is a girl. He reasons that an educated woman is an economic liability and therefore does not allow her to cultivate her heroic potential as an intellectual. Mr. Tulliver's opinion on the matter is partly justified by economic considerations. He feels that educating Tom will make his son more successful, while "an over-'cute woman's no better nor a long-tailed sheep, --she'll fetch none the bigger price for that." While Mr. Tulliver is mostly wrong about the business success that he hopes education will bring Tom, he is right that a more educated woman will not be more successful (financially) in marriage. Maggie's aspirations to be treated like Tom show her desire for the privileged education in which Tom has been enrolled but is not intelligent enough to appreciate. The patriarchal economic structure of society makes formal education an impossibility for Maggie despite her cleverness and her father's favor.  	
Tom's intelligence and application at schoolwork are less than accomplished. Maggie sees an arena (academia) in which Tom has a lesser status. Phillip, son of their father's rival, Wakem, has surpassed Tom in learning. Maggie develops a new vision of heroism, discovering new kinds of power that she might have. Phillip becomes her ideal of heroic accomplishment. In learning with and from Phillip who is willing to take her seriously, Maggie will become different from Tom. She has discovered an arena in which she can shine. Rachel Brownstein defines the urge to become a heroine:
 "To want to be a heroine is to want to be something special, something else, to want to change, to be changed, and also to want to stay the same." 

Through difference from Tom, Maggie hopes to become someone extraordinary.
Maggie is bright and yearns to be scholarly, but her family won't pay for her education or encourage her to learn independently. Phillip alone takes an interest in her learning, and forms an intimate if pedagogical relationship with her. Phillip finds learning vital because he has gained a status as scholar in his family, as in life. Therefore he urges Maggie not to abandon her studies during their meetings in the Red Deeps.  
Maggie has decided to achieve through difference from Tom, but the eldest son, empowered by patriarchal custom, reasserts his power, crushing her hopes for recognition. Maggie's arguments for asceticism and self-denial during her meetings with Phillip in the Red Deeps allude to Tom's power over her while foreshadowing the moment in which he drags her away from there, forbidding her to see Phillip. Maggie has been experiencing this diminution of freedom and it affects her desire to learn. As fulfilling as books, knowledge, and study with Phillip have been for clever Maggie, they have not changed her status in the family, so she is ready to abandon them. The manner in which Tom asserts his power over Maggie makes it appallingly clear that her attempts to gain status as an intellectual were in vain. Maggie looses faith in this path to heroism. The rivalries between Tom and Phillip for influence over Maggie and as contending peers create a tension in Maggie's stormy psyche, which renders her ready to try something new. Her attempts to become someone special and different through study have failed. She turns her eye in a different direction.
Maggie attempts to achieve sexual grandeur (rather than masculine or intellectual grandeur, as in the previous examples) in her relationship with Stephen, vying for a position as the female romantic lead. Yet she is uncomfortable with this role. If Maggie is to become an epic lead, she feels that she must become a moral and noble epic lead. Morality is an essential component of the definition of an epic lead; that Maggie will settle for no less is unsurprising. Therefore, rather than slipping into the role of a deliciously naughty anti-hero, she rejects Stephen. In so doing, Maggie salvages her nobility and morality and becomes a sort of epic lead. Yet her heroism is imperfect because it is self-sacrificing.  
Maggie becomes special because she has become ostracized, she has become the talk of the town, and she is the pariah. Through rejecting the elopement with Stephen and in returning home, Maggie envisions herself as a figure of the unjustly accused, the noble victim. Each of the characters in the novel must war with themselves to determine how they will react to Maggie either as a pariah or as a noble victim. All of the characters are forced to readjust or restate their relationships to her. This gives Maggie Tulliver, as a character in the novel, an unusual power. She causes major change in the life of her town. Her importance as the focal point of the novel is bolstered where her decisions cause a paradigm shift. Yet this newfound power takes the form of predominantly negative attention. Maggie has become special in a negative way, as a pariah. 
Phillip, Lucy, and Mrs. Tulliver struggle particularly and intensely in redetermining their relationships with Maggie. Phillip's forgiveness is like a punishment to her; he is very fair, as Lucy is, yet she feels that she has failed them and that her tarnished reputation makes her unworthy of them. Mrs. Tulliver's actions also stand apart from the reaction of the rest of the town. She mirrors Maggie's self-sacrifice, subverting her needs to those of her fallen daughter. Of the main characters in the novel, Tom is the only one to punish Maggie as completely as the townspeople, siding with public opinion. Tom is vengeful because Maggie's actions have also adversely affected his social status. 
Just when Maggie is in the midst of misery and self-deprecation, the narrative intervenes on Maggie's behalf. Her most recent essay at becoming an epic lead (her rejection of Stephen) was as unsuccessful as the preceding three (cutting her hair, her relationship with Phillip, her relationship with Stephen). The resolution of that scenario (i.e., her new status as self-sacrificing epic lead) is insufficient, unsatisfying for Maggie, who has no power now. How the seas would storm if she were God. The flood levels the town for Maggie, erasing the social scenario and overlaying it with a fantastical situation in which Maggie can become a truly noble epic lead. The flood raises Maggie above the world of the Mill both physically and symbolically. The narrative implies that this character is capable of grandeur, but not within the limitations that the society of the novel has set upon her. Eliot, perhaps due to her strong identification with Maggie, seems to have felt that Maggie deserved grandeur in the novel. The divine will of the author lifts Maggie above the predicament into which Eliot has placed her. 
The ending is artistically weak because, though the action of the novel has been elsewhere realistic, it seems here to be controlled by the wishes and fantasies of the heroine. In her over-identification with Maggie, George Eliot looses sight of that disparity between inward and outward, wish and reality, which is usually a controlling principle in her fictional universe.
 
That Eliot steers away from reality at this juncture in the narrative is apparent, but Paris's claim that this reveals an artistic weakness on the part of George Eliot is unsubstantiated.  Eliot does give in to the wishes of her epic lead, but in doing so she strengthens her argument that Maggie is capable of becoming an epic lead but is denied her rightful heroism due to social constraints. That Eliot did not attempt to bend the potentials of life for Maggie is artful. She was aware that Maggie could not have become heroic realistically and so she shapes the moment in which Maggie becomes heroic fantastically.
The horrific daydream of Maggie's heroism ends abruptly. Eliot cannot do away with the world of the novel entirely. Neither could Maggie, having been once lifted above the world of the Mill, and having achieved that unlikely heroism, return to a world in which she has no power. In order to retain somewhat the heroism that she has achieved, Maggie must immediately meet a tragic fate. In drowning with Tom, Maggie is ultimately remembered forever as her brother's equal. Having established her heroic power through saving Tom, she now dies immortally. This is why Eliot writes of a shared tomb between Tom and Maggie Tulliver, on which it was written, "In their death they were not divided:"
The epitaph seems almost spiteful. Maggie's final big-hearted act of super human heroism has shown her to be not only larger than Tom, but larger than life.  And why not? Why should a bright, creative and fighting character like Maggie even be constrained to the limitations encountered by her dull and brutish brother? Through the epitaph, Eliot declares that Maggie should at least have had Tom's opportunities. Yet through the stunning conclusion that precedes the epilogue, Eliot determines that Maggie deserves better than any Tom, Phillip, or Stephen.    

Chapter II
Perhaps it is impossible to define the 19th century heroine as a type. Indeed, it would not be difficult to look at each heroine of that era in succession and to declare that each is atypical for one or several reasons. Yet it would seem that on the whole, success for these characters within the novels is measured in similar ways, and that many of these characters hold personality traits in common.  Therefore, I pose that it is possible to define three elements that are common to the behavior and story of the typical 19th century heroine. These elements, beyond delineating detailed similarities of the characters, are integral to the achievements of those characters; that is, the 19th century heroine becomes heroic by means of, and in terms of, the following qualities. The first element is finding success, financially and in terms of social status, through marriage. I will refer to this as the "marriage plot". The second element is the cultivation of femininity via material accoutrements. This includes the decorative and at all times stylish arrangement of a heroine's dress and the necessity of a cultured deportment. I will refer to this as "material femininity". The third element refers to the degree to which a heroine's suffering increases her eroticization.  I will refer to this as "eroticized victim".
The purpose of defining the 19th century heroine in these terms is to help explore the ways in which the protagonist, Lucy Snowe, struggles with that figure throughout Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Lucy accepts some elements of that figure and rejects others, eventually to come to terms with her in a way that does not compromise her ambitions. Lucy Snowe approaches the status of an epic lead through rejecting the limiting aspects of the 19th century heroine and cultivating her ambitions independently of, and often in reaction to, that figure.
Before a marriage plot even becomes a consideration for Lucy, she acts independently, supports herself, and is relatively successful in a profession. It would seem that Lucy rejects the potential marriage plot success of the 19th century heroine before she has even encountered such an opportunity. She travels away from her native England to a foreign town, Villette, where she knows no one and is not fully acquainted with the language. Having arrived there, she finds employment and polishes her knowledge of French: in so doing, she secures herself a position within the society of Mlle. Beck's school. For a great portion of the novel, she achieves independently, without friend or ally, earning the respect of Mlle. Beck, a formidable female authority, before ever attempting to seek heroism. Lucy's experiences as an independent person set her apart from Maggie Tulliver. Like Maggie, Lucy searches for heroism through her relationships with men (Graham and M. Paul). Yet unlike Maggie, Lucy first looks for, and achieves a certain degree of, heroism in relation to a woman, Mlle. Beck. Therefore, Lucy's first experience of reaching for heroism (which is a positive experience that takes the form of an achievement - she manages Mlle Beck's unruly classroom) is devoid of any undertones of the marriage plot: there is no implication of romance between Mlle. Beck and Lucy Snowe.  This much cannot in good conscience be claimed in regards to Maggie's relationship with Tom, which, as discussed in Chapter I, is an unsuccessful attempt at heroism.  Just as Tom is Maggie's first icon of heroism, representing power, independence, and leadership to Maggie, so is Mlle. Beck a symbol of heroism for Lucy throughout the novel. Lucy looks first and finally to Mlle. Beck for an ideal of, and a means to, heroism.  
Lucy rejects the first marriage plot that she is involved in because, like Maggie in her relationship with Stephen, she rejects the self-image that is inscribed by that relationship. Lucy does not want to be like Graham, but neither does she want to fill the role required of a wife to Graham. This is evident in her rejection of Ginevra Fanshawe, Graham's primary love interest during Lucy's stay with her godmother, and in her reservations against Paulina de Bassompierre, Graham's eventual wife.  Lucy refuses to pursue the marriage plot with Graham because to do so would require her to permanently accept a role as eroticized victim and to cultivate an image of herself that squared with material femininity.  
Lucy's first interaction with a marriage plot occurs after the series of events that had established her at Mlle. Beck's. The precursor to her semi-romantic involvement with Dr. John (Graham) is Lucy's collapse and subsequent reacquaintance with her godmother and Graham.  Her initial illness codes her relationship with Graham in a patient-doctor construction (interestingly, a similar event codifies the initiation of Graham's romance with Paulina de Bassompierre). His diagnoses and prescriptions of the first few weeks after their reacquaintance give way to concerned excursions and supportive intimate letters. Therefore, throughout their semi-romantic involvement, Lucy plays the eroticized victim. Graham does what he can to heal his failing friend and rescue her from the specter of the nun. Lucy is dissatisfied with this role as eroticized victim.
Lucy's fear of the nun casts the protagonist in a limited role, that of the eroticized victim. If Lucy could easily overcome the specter of the nun, she would undoubtedly have done so as soon as that nagging apparition appeared. Yet, the metaphor of the nun is too significance for Lucy to dismiss the specter swiftly or with ease. The nun is at once a distillation of the 19th century heroine and the antithesis of that figure.  Lucy's struggles with the nun symbolize her struggles with the shadows of the 19th century heroine; Lucy is plagued by the concern that she will become like the nun. That the nun is at once the 19th century heroine in the extreme and the opposite of that figure shows Lucy's ambiguous relationship to the 19th century heroine. The nun is a distillation of the 19th century heroine in that she accomplishes the ultimate marriage plot in marrying Christ. All of her social and financial status change in relation to and are determined by her marriage. The nun is also an extreme example of the eroticized victim in that her self-sacrifice to God casts her in a role of life-long suffering; however, the nun is the antithesis of the eroticized victim because her suffering is de-eroticized. Also, because of her marriage to Christ, the nun represents the opposite of a successful marriage plot; she is the dreaded spinster. Her anonymity makes societal recognition of the nun as a powerful individual impossible. She is every nun, she is any nun; in no way is she someone special or different. The nun's material self, as represented by the habit, is the opposite of material femininity; it is cultivated plainness. Finally, the nun is the antithesis of the 19th century heroine and even of the moral nobility that Lucy must covet in striving to become an epic lead because she is Catholic; both the 19th century heroine and Lucy as an epic lead must be Protestant. For this reason it is essential that Lucy not capitulate to her fear of the nun by, on the one hand, accepting the marriage plot to Graham, or on the other hand, seeking solace in Catholicism.  
Lucy's eventual retirement from the marriage plot with Graham is caused by her rejections of herself as the eroticized victim and her rejections of the  material femininity of Ginevra and Paulina. Both Ginevra and Paulina cultivate a material femininity that is somewhat foreign to Lucy Snowe. Yet Lucy is friends with, and respects, Paulina; she feels differently about Ginevra.   
Lucy is disgusted with Ginevra's unabashed ambition for success through a marriage. This ambition does not square with her concept of how a person should act morally. Coincidentally, Ginevra's behavior, which Lucy finds appalling, also does not square with the behavior expected of an epic lead. While Paulina displays a material femininity that is equivalent to Ginevra's, she at least cannot be faulted morally. While Paulina's complete lack of ambition is unlike an epic lead, she at least has no moral faults. In rejecting Ginevra, Lucy rejects both material femininity and a lack of morality in relation to the marriage plot. She is reserved as regards Paulina because she rejects the ingénue's material femininity and her lack of ambition independent of the marriage plot. That is, Paulina strives to marry well and within her class and social standing, but has few ambitions of her own apart from the marriage plot. Lucy's reservations about Paulina (and Ginevra) are reminiscent of Maggie's rejection of her cousin Lucy. However, unlike Maggie, who does drift away in a boat with Stephen, Lucy Snowe barely allows herself to indulge in a fantasy of marriage to Graham. 
Lucy Snowe also rejects the 19th century heroine while entertaining visions of success in learning; she hopes to become intellectually accomplished through her relationship with M. Paul. Lucy's relationship with M. Paul resembles Maggie Tulliver's relationship with Phillip Wackem in that M. Paul is the only character in the novel to believe in Lucy enough as a competent leader, an intelligent teacher, and as a student to lead her studies. Yet unlike Phillip, M. Paul goes so far as to criticize Lucy's dress and to become her husband and benefactor. Lucy accepts the marriage plot of the 19th century heroine in agreeing to marry M. Paul. This engagement furthers Lucy both financially and socially. That M. Paul criticizes Lucy's dress where it is, in his opinion, too ostentatious, is emblematic of his rejection of material femininity. She accepts his criticisms with humor because she too feels that material femininity is not for her (neither is the cultivation of material femininity a concern befitting an epic lead). In her relationship with M. Paul, she need not compromise her ambitions to become an epic lead. He is a part of her continued self-driven achievement. She cannot be accused of using M. Paul in the way that Ginevra attempts to use Graham. The academic work that she devotes herself to under the tutelage of M. Paul is a testament to her moral uprightness in her relationship with him. She earns her eventual situation as headmistress of a school. The narrative is careful to dismiss the possibility that her motivations in her romance with M. Paul could be anything but honorable. This is the reason that their romance is so difficult; because of his social and financial position in relation to Lucy, the narrative must show that both of them are stubborn and uncompromising. The narrative takes pains to show that M. Paul is not interested in Lucy as a sexual object through the scene in which he chastises her for wearing a ribbon that he feels is too ostentatious. Similarly, Lucy is proud, reserved, and almost prudish in her negotiations with M. Paul. She stubbornly insists on the role of intelligent woman and worker in relation to him, rather than that of decorative or flirtatious female. This is also the main reason that M. Paul orchestrates the establishment of her school without informing Lucy.  Because of this configuration, the gift of the school does not appear to be a bribe but is rather a reward for achievement. Yet the fact that her eventual situation as headmistress is the result of a romance and is orchestrated by a man for her takes some power away from her. 
She is not active in the generation of the school, in practical terms. However, this is perhaps insignificant because the school was her idea and dream, formed before her acquaintance with him. M. Paul simply sets up the rudimentary materials that are necessary for her to get started on her plans. She does not find a location or found her school on her own, or even with the help of an independent benefactor or investor. In accepting the gift of the school she is again accepting the marriage plot as a means to becoming heroic. Symbolically, in becoming headmistress she is beginning her career as a peer to Mlle. Beck, but on a smaller scale. Yet Lucy's lack of involvement in even the planning of the school location is foreign to what we know of Mlle. Beck; Beck's vigilant cleverness alone probably earned her the position of headmistress. One envisions Beck's involvement as unfailing, from the acquisition of the school buildings to administrative decisions like hiring teachers. M. Paul ensures that Lucy will not be involved in the planning of the school, keeping his distance from her while he designs the location. While the gift is romantic, it is mainly symbolic of his faith in her as a competent leader and intelligent teacher. She rises socially through her romance with M. Paul: the engagement brings her closer to Mlle. Beck's status, as he and the formidable female had been close. 
Yet at the end of the novel, Lucy is not yet a successful headmistress. The recognition that she ultimately gains is from one person alone other than herself (M. Paul); yet the close of the novel implies that she will earn a formidable status in society at large: that is, in the town of Villette. Her achievements have not been recognized by society or by her family and friends (Graham and her godmother). Indeed, it is as if she has not yet achieved heroic status because she has not yet established her name and position as headmistress. So her final position is as a potential contender with Mlle. Beck, but she only achieves this status through a marriage plot.
That M. Paul dies in the end is presented with regret and sadness, yet one does not feel the end to be tragic. Lucy's simultaneous acquisitions of the social benefits of her engagement along with her refusal to compromise her ambitions and her religion to that scenario raise her above Mlle. Beck. So far as the reader knows that formidable female has never loved and lost. Lucy need no longer fear the threat of becoming like a spinster. She has found love. For all intents and purposes, she has accomplished the essential achievement for a 19th century heroine, the successful pursuit of a marriage plot; even though she is not married, and even though her fiancé is dead, she carries the social and financial benefits as well as the status of a wife and of a widow. 
The narrative tone that presents the story of M. Paul's death is light-hearted. This treatment of his death implies that it is better not to need a man. His death is far from a tragedy. While his faith in her has bolstered her in financial resources and status, it is implied that M. Paul would hold her back. So her fiancé conveniently travels and, as he cannot believably remain away forever, dies. It is ironic that while Lucy must rely on that major device of the 19th heroine, the marriage plot, to achieve economic and social status, she is never forced to commit herself to it completely. The narrative is fully aware that marriage can only hold Lucy back from achievement and therefore she never commits herself by sealing the contract of 'I do,' and does not find herself in the compromised position of being a wife to a man. This leaves her free to pursue her ambitions and to build a school.
While Lucy has had to rely on a marriage plot to secure achievements like those attributed to Mlle. Beck, she has never had to compromise her morality. Every difficult scenario that Beck is involved in (and that she must evaluate) causes the formidable female to rely on underhanded and dishonest methods. Therefore, Mlle. Beck can never, according to the moral codes that Lucy adheres to, become an epic lead. At the close of the novel, as Lucy has not compromised her noble morality in order to accomplish her goals, she is well on her way to becoming an epic lead.

Chapter III	
The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, attempts to become an epic lead by breaking out of the bonds of society, as represented by her husband, John, to achieve a crafty expression of difference. She rejects the gender role foisted upon her, by imagining herself out of it; she projects a rebellious version of herself into the wallpaper, eventually breaking out of it to overcome the limitations placed upon her and to overpower her husband.
John is established as a legitimate authority in numerous ways. As a scientist, he occupies the role of an oppressor and owns the power to undermine the narrator's actions, emotions, and rights of self-determination. Their marriage is formed as a power dynamic, wherein John is the authority and she is the subject of that authority. He utilizes his leverage to limit her, denying her any outlet for her frustrations as well as any means to express herself. The narrator refuses to be wholly subsumed and consumed by society, however, and stubbornly seeks the one means of escape that she can find. She creatively seeks an epic experience through her imagination. Her baby steps in this process frighten her; she is frightened by the shadow of her own will. Yet she overcomes these initial fears to crawl wholly into the wallpaper and to break out of it as an entity that is not contained within the realm of scientific possibility let alone by the limitations of society. Her victory is marginal, however, and comes at a great personal cost.
As previously stated, John occupies the role of an oppressor. Throughout the novel, the narrator's husband's comments, opinions, and actions influence her emotions, actions, and sense of self. Most of his comments undermine her legitimacy as a self-determined and independent person. He invalidates her emotions while himself appearing legitimate. The narrator is cast in a passive feminized role: she feels that she must not assert herself or be productive in front of John and his sister. She is wholly limited by the assertions of the patriarchy; her relationship with her husband John suppresses every means by which she can attempt to reach personal power let alone epic status. Through invalidating the narrator, John denies her of any semblance of the domestic, personal, and civic power, which any person should be able to access. This complete denial of power forces the narrator into a corner of existence from which she is particularly anxious to escape into an epic experience. 
John is established as a legitimate authority in numerous ways. John's actions and opinions, as representative of restrictive society, are cast as credible and authoritative. The text forms various references to John, which paint him as a formidable, respected, established opinion. This stands in contrast to the way that she is portrayed, and it establishes him as dominant in relation to her. As a scientist he owns the power to undermine the legitimacy of the narrator. 
John is cast as practical and pragmatic in direct contrast to the narrator's constant frame of mind. While she imagines symbols and images to exist in what is called reality, John is a mathematical and scientific authority. He converses in and utilizes socially acceptable magic. 
John is practical in the extreme.  He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is also a medical doctor; while the narrator lays claim to illness, he is established as the sort of authority who can declare the validity or invalidity of her claim. He asserts that her illness is more of an emotional than a physical state. He implies that she is simply temporarily distracted from what he has determined will be her destiny. He authoritatively knows that she will inevitably come around once again to embody the figure of a sensible wife.  He needs her to fill this role as his accoutrement, in order to fulfill his dreams of married life and professional success. 
Therefore the narrator's illness is threatening to John, and he does everything he can to undermine her convictions in regards to her illness. John doesn't believe that she is sick. The implication that her illness is emotional is underlined by her brother's agreement with her husband on the subject. The two male medical authorities in conjunction wholly invalidate her claim and, therefore, her emotional state. John, as a scientific authority, utilizes his leverage to make her his patient; she becomes the subject of his authority in this argument over illness, just as he is an authority in every other aspect of their relationship.   
John asserts that hers is a temporary hysterical condition. His use of the term hysterical is more than loaded. The Freudian term has often been criticized as undermining the legitimacy of women in highly emotional states.
Gilman found that her story not only represented her own restriction but the repression that women faced in all fields, including work, education, and marriage.  Deborah Thomas asserts that Gilman felt it necessary to point out the medical profession’s God-like attitude toward mentally ill female patients. Gilman illustrates this attitude in her narrator’s husband’s manners. 

John does various other things, which also undermine her legitimacy.  The way in which John reacts to her, the directions that he gives her, and the opinions that he states all actively undermine her status.
He does not allow her to manage her intake of medications - it seems as if she is not even aware of what sorts of medications he is giving her, or of the effect that they have on her. John also threatens to send her to an asylum, again exhibiting his control over her body. His control over her passive body is again exhibited where he gathers, carries, and lays her down.
John utilizes his authority to deny the narrator of any outlet for her frustrations as well as any means to express herself. Unable to care for anyone or do anything except rest, the narrator is passive. She has no one to appeal to for help and she is left to her own support. The narrator is under the control of external influences, is in a subservient position, and is anything but an epic lead. John and Jane deny her of any outlet for her imagination; they demand that she not work, that is that she not write. Her writing represents a possible epic quest yet she is wholly denied this outlet and opportunity to seek epic status. John tells her not to write, in what seems a completely arbitrary abuse of his authority, but is a deliberate attempt to control her means of resistance. She also doesn't want John's sister to find her in the process of writing, as if such employment would be an embarrassment to everyone.
Gilman wrote about the significance of writing as self-employment in an article, "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?", 
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again -- work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite -- ultimately recovering some measure of power.

Gillman's comments about why she wrote the Yellow Wallpaper are visible in the narrator's desire to work. Like the noted specialist to whom Gillman refers, John and Jane expect that the narrator not work, raising a prohibition against work.  Having been denied writing as a means to self-expression, resistance, and heroism, the narrator turns to her one remaining ability, reading.  
The narrator reads, and reads into, the wallpaper. She extricates herself from her subservient position through reading and imagining herself into the wallpaper in her room. She begins to resist societal limitations by actively seeking heroism in the wallpaper.
According to Elaine R. Hedges in her critical essay, "Out at Last"? "The Yellow Wallpaper" after Two Decades of Feminist Criticism,  
... the narrator in the story is crucially engaged both in writing — she tries to record her experience in her journal — and in reading — she tries to decipher the patterns in the paper. However, whose text she was reading — whether her own or her husband's — and how she read it, soon became as problematical as the degree of her success or failure. ...  In 1985 Paula Treichler approached the story as a struggle over woman's right to author her own sentences, in opposition to her doctor-husband's medical "sentencing" of her, and found that the narrator did so, at least temporarily, through an "impertinent" language that defied male control, and through her relation to the wallpaper, which Treichler saw as a metaphor for women's discourse, "thick with life, expression, and suffering."

The narrator refuses to be wholly subsumed and consumed by society, stubbornly seeking the one means of escape that is available to her. She creatively seeks an epic experience through the act of reading, which symbolically represents the power of imagination. She attempts to achieve independence and epic status through imagining herself into the wallpaper. She does so almost subconsciously, seemingly unaware that she is grasping at an epic escape.  
At first, the wallpaper annoys her, and to avoid looking at it, she looks out of the two windows in her room. This is an act of looking away just as it is an expression of her desire to move freely. She sees similar hints of shadows of madness in the paths and arbors. She sees the environment outside of the window and she imagines people moving in the paths. The shadows that move freely do so in her place. Unsurprisingly, this form of resistance runs contrary to John's desire for her to be a passive subject. What he views as an indulgence in various imaginative exploits represents her only weapon in fighting back against the patriarchy.  As a reader of the most unlikely document, the yellow wallpaper, the narrator imagines herself towards heroism. 
In looking at the wallpaper initially, she sees a repulsively colored, chaotic pattern, "One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin." John laughs at her and tells her that she is letting the wallpaper undermining even her first attempts to read herself into the unlikely text. The wallpaper infuriates her; she is angry at "the impertinence of it." She states that she grows fonder of the room in spite of the wallpaper, and perhaps because of the wallpaper.  Slowly she becomes obsessed with bold and daring pattern and is fascinated to read it over and over, parsing out its various components with her eyes. She imagines herself into the wallpaper, seeing the image of a woman creeping through the pattern. It is the image of a stooping crone, a frightening, ghoulish version of herself.
These first steps in the process of seeking an epic experience through imagination frighten her. She is frightened by the shadow of her own will. She begins to fear the woman in the wallpaper, who is a projection of a version of herself, and she turns again to John's strength hoping that he will move her physically and take her away from herself.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.  I don't like it a bit.  I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here!

This is a self-inflicted denial of an epic quest. She is afraid to evolve into something different, something outside of the confines placed upon her. The image of the madwoman - the crone - this shadow of a ghoulish version of herself, in all of its terrifying power, makes her want to return to the comfort of passivity: she yearns for John to control her body, to save her from her imagination.
Yet she overcomes these initial fears to crawl wholly into the wallpaper and to break out of it as an entity that is not contained within the realm of scientific possibility let alone by the limitations of society. She continues her heroic journey in this most unlikely place. She becomes an active participant in her own destiny by tearing at the wallpaper: she approaches epic status by fighting back and taking an aggressive stance. This act of ripping at the wallpaper brings her within a hair's breadth of epic status.
Once she gets the paper off, she breaks out of the wallpaper as a terrifying crone, turning the tables on her husband. This act makes him resemble a weak female: he faints, and he is now the nameless one, because she doesn't recognize him - "that man" - nor why he faints. 
She escapes John's and Jane's demands and expectations. She has become the madwoman in the attic, a terrifying ghoulish entity, which cannot be contained within societal demands nor within the gender expectations that had been foisted upon her. She evolves into a different gender state; she is a crone. In reaction to her evolution, John becomes both nameless and feminine. This concluding moment represents a significant victory over the patriarchy. 
Her victory is marginal however, and comes at a great personal cost. The form that she assumes in breaking out of the wallpaper - stooping over - is not epic; rather she becomes a grotesque and terrifying crone. She is no longer trapped. The door to the room is open and she can leave, however, she can only leave as a mad woman, a character in a fairy tale. She is no longer a person. She has evolved into a creature of the imagination and therefore has no practical power in the sense of civil rights in her world. 
The narrator approaches epic status through rejecting the moral codes and limitations heaved upon her by society and through rejecting any form of societal approval. She achieves negative recognition and it is powerful; John is terrified at what she has become. Through evolving into something terrifying to John and Jane, she wins a minor victory over patriarchal authority.  She approaches epic status, finally, because she is no longer contained by the demands of the patriarchy, as represented by John and Jane. 
The Yellow Wallpaper is an example of a story in which the main character cannot become an epic lead. She fights against the many invalidating influences of the patriarchy, but it is too strong for her. Having taken away all of her weapons for self-expression, self-determination and the expression of her will, the patriarchy keeps her in a subordinate position despite her rebellion. She achieves a victory against the patriarchy, but at a high price. She is creeping freely; she has gone mad. While it is some success to have stepped outside of the bounds of society, she can no longer become an epic lead as we have defined it. It is no longer possible for her to achieve a significant social status that is recognized by the community. Moreover, the form that she evolves into is one that can in some way still be contained by the patriarchy; indeed, it is a symbol of the darker side of the repercussions of patriarchal culture. She has overcome the accusation that hers is merely a temporary hysterical state, but she has become , the anti-hero of outdated (even for 1892) sexist children's stories, rather than an empowered woman or an epic lead.

Chapter IV 
In Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Orlando is obsessed with the desire to become epic in the most traditional sense. As a young lord, Orlando appears to be epic in the ways that many men are, but he is not extraordinary as a man. He seeks epic status through attempting to write an epic story in which he is the main subject. Orlando is unsuccessful at obtaining any extraordinary status as a man, and once she becomes a woman, she discovers that she can no longer secure even the minor adventures that had been her privilege as a young lord. She discovers that her gender limits her amongst the gypsies and is appalled to discover the extent to which her gender delegitimizes her upon returning to her native England. Yet Orlando is not to be outdone. She fights against these limitations as a British female by reaching back to the power she had previously by donning the clothes of a man. When that fails, she attempts to secure the sort of power that was so easily available to women of the 19th   century, that is the power of a wife. Yet she discovers in turn that each of these forms of power are illusory, and returns to her dreams of literary fame. Orlando is disempowered as a female until the arrival of the 20th century when she finally becomes an epic lead by publishing her work.
 Orlando is portrayed from the beginning of the novel in an epic status. The very first scene in which Orlando appears in the novel shows the lad as an adventurer violently slaughtering a dead moor's head. As a boy he is celebrated and considered a prize. He is favored by Queen Elizabeth I and gets involved in several court romances. Eventually he is granted the privilege of going as Ambassador to Constantinople. Yet throughout these extraordinary feats and experiences, the only things that are truly exceptional about Orlando himself are his legs. He is celebrated by default as all men are celebrated. Yet he yearns for an epic status above and beyond those awarded to him. He looks to literature and specifically to writing as a means to achieve that epic status. 
... Orlando slowly drew in his head, sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air of one doing what he does every day of his life at this hour, took out a writing book labelled "Æthelbert: A Tragedy in Five Acts," and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink. 
Soon he had covered ten pages and more with poetry. He was fluent, evidently, but he was abstract. ... but all was turned with a fluency and sweetness which, considering his age — he was not yet seventeen — and that the sixteenth century had still some years of its course to run, were remarkable enough. At last however, he came to a halt. He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked  (and here he showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre.

Orlando is obsessed with literature because it represents epic stories. He is constantly attempting to create an epic story of his own, one that relates to himself and in some way records his own existence. Orlando hopes that in creating a literary self-portrait he can establish an immortal epic status. Yet the young Orlando doesn't know where to begin in creating his work. His attempts at writing as a young man are far from extraordinary. The narration lampoons them as the lazy pseudo-philosophical musings of a rather naive and privileged child. Orlando looks to the great poets and writers of his age for inspiration and leadership. He is thrilled to gain the opportunity to meet one man who lays claim to status as an established literary figure of the age. 
Orlando's first interactions with the swarthy and uncouth writer Nick Greene are satirical for the reader, but both shocking and deeply painful for Orlando. The charlatan visits the aristocrat at his ancestral home. Greene drops names and tells anecdotes about great literary figures of their time. Orlando is like a child coming upon ripe peaches in hearing the stories that Nick Greene has to tell. On first encountering Greene, Orlando is disappointed in the man's appearance. The lord had had to pull strings in order to gain the privilege of an audience with what he had expected to be a great poet. Greene is extremely opinionated. Orlando sees Greene as a key opportunity to grasp at and perhaps to achieve epic status. 
Greene's self-serving and self-glorifying aesthetic is ridiculed in his Dickensian repetition of "Le Gloire" (le Glawr), an eccentric, Anglicized pronunciation that emphasizes his parochial sense of literary worth. "Glawr" is a precise, if vulgarized expression for Green's reactionary, smug aesthetic, His notion of the artist as a hero inspired by a "divine ambition" appeals to the young Orlando who, like Quixote, has been schooled, if not maddened, by the legacy of chivalry and the literature of epic and romance. Orlando's tendency to idealize men of letters as models of moral as well as literary excellence leads him to venerate both Greene and his art.  

Yet Greene is only able to provide the lord with numerous useless and vulgar barroom tales, which serve to undermine the literary figures of the age. He lampoons and dismisses Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne one after the other. Only Ben Jonson is impervious from Greene's dictatorial criticisms, because Greene never speaks ill of his friends. Greene swears up and down that the great age of literature is past and that none of the writers of their age have any potential. To live the life of a real artist he would require a pension paid quarterly with which he would spend every morning reading Cicero, trying to copy his style. That, Greene asserts, is what he would call "fine writing." Orlando presents Greene with a copy of his manuscript, The Oak Tree, appealing to the quack for some solid advice or more importantly for praise and approval. Greene leaves Orlando's home with a copy of the document and a pension paid quarterly. Orlando soon learns that Greene has written a satirical piece about him and his masterpiece. The lord is cut to the quick, yet continues to pay Greene's pension quarterly. Orlando's encounter with the poet represents his first attempt to achieve epic status; it is also his first failure. Orlando's stubborn insistence upon paying the pension quarterly regardless shows not only the desire to be noble and gracious but also Orlando's continued hope and faith in the poet. It is as if Orlando recognizes some minor potential in Greene, and hopes that through financial support he can indirectly participate in the man's success. 
Orlando changes genders to discover that she can no longer easily secure even the minor epic adventures that had been her privilege as a young lord. She left for Constantinople proudly and in a self-determined manner; yet when she leaves as a woman, she does so passively led by a man on a beast of burden. 
Orlando's first experiences as a female are outside the boundaries of English society. Orlando has not changed much; she is still rather androgynous. And still attempts to grasp at an epic status through writing. Yet in her interactions with a culture foreign to her, that is the culture of the gypsies, she discovers that English cultural standards, which delineate her notions of gender, heroism, and her basic philosophies about the workings of the world as she observes it are not the only standard by which peoples of the world function.  
Orlando has an argument with Rustum el Sadi, the man who had led her out of Constantinople on a donkey: he says nature is cruel, she says that it is  beautiful. He declares that nature's rock crushed his right foot and also maimed the fingers of his left hand which were withered by the frost. Rustum el Sadi is threatened by the deepest suspicion that Orlando's god is nature. Orlando, befuddled by conflicting cultural standards, turns to her old solace, long meditations on pseudo-philosophical questions, and to her writing. The manner in which Orlando attempts to come to an understanding of these cultural conflicts only serves to reinforce her convictions and to further display textually her inability to escape the confines of the culture in which she was raised.  
"Oh! If only I could write!" she cried (for she had the odd conceit of those who write that words written are shared). She had no ink; and but little paper. But she made ink from berries and wine; and finding a few margins and blank spaces in the manuscript of "The Oak Tree," managed, by writing a kind of shorthand to describe the scenery in a long, blank verse poem, and to carry on a dialogue with herself about this Beauty and Truth concisely enough. This kept her extremely happy for hours on end. But the gipsies became suspicious. First, they noticed that she was less adept than before at milking and cheese-making; next, she often hesitated before replying; and once a gipsy boy who had been asleep, woke in a terror felling her eyes upon him. Some times this constraint would be felt by the whole tribe, numbering some dozens of grown men and women.

Orlando is an anomaly amongst the gypsies. This is the first time that Orlando writes as a woman. She is again attempting to establish an epic status, but succeeds only in making her company enraged and uneasy. Her attempt at writing is preceded by an argument with a male figure that serves to epitomize the culture of the gypsies. (His symbolic status is made clear by the fact that he is the only gypsy with a name, and by the fact that he had led Orlando out of Constantinople.)  Just before the argument, Rustum el Sadi encounters Orlando crying, which is perhaps a traditionally female trait. This deliberate contrast of the established gender of Rustum el Sadi and the amorphous yet slightly feminized gender of Orlando, shows that in the confines of this society, Orlando cannot achieve epic status. One major requirement of the achievement of epic status is recognition of the status by society; yet Orlando is incapable of fitting in even slightly to the gender roles of the society. Orlando cannot go above and beyond the requirements of a gypsy to become an epic gypsy because she is not capable of meeting minimum requirements of that culture. Her wistful meditations on grand themes (Nature, Truth, Friendship, Love, and Poetry) are contrasted to the gypsies' pragmatic way of life. They do and make while she dreams and writes. Orlando enters a camp where an old woman is making a basket, and a boy is skinning a sheep, and she "fling[s] herself down by the fire and gaze[s] into the flames." It's difficult to assert with hard evidence that the verbs used to describe Orlando's actions are feminized, but they appear to be so. The very inexactness of Orlando's gender underscores the extent to which she is an anomaly within the culture of the gypsies. In contrast to Orlando's androgyny, the actions and work that the two gypsies are doing are gendered. The old woman is weaving a basket, which is a traditionally female employment. While the woman creates an object that is at once womblike and a receptacle, the boy is tending to a fresh kill, a slaughtered carcass. The androgyny of Orlando's actions is underscored by the narrative repetition of the phrase "fling herself down by the fire;" this same language was used earlier in the text to describe Orlando as a young boy. He "flung himself — there was a passion in his movements that deserves the word — on the earth at the foot of the oak tree." The use of the same verb implies the same youth and androgyny. Orlando has shifted genders, but generally has not changed in action. She muses over the same grand themes as she had done previously. Orlando's androgyny sets the gypsies ill at ease. Besides her lack of work ethic, they feel "Here is someone who doubts." 
Orlando's writing at this point, or more specifically her meditations which lead to her writing, are still referred to and described in a lighthearted tone. This implies that her writing has not improved with her change of gender; neither has the passing of time improved her writing. Moreover, her writing in this context seems particularly useless. Were Orlando to attempt to achieve epic status in the world of the gypsies, she would need to toss aside useless things like writing, and indeed to determine to adopt a similar gender authority to the one possessed by Rustum el Sadi. This, Orlando's second attempt at achieving heroism, is as unsuccessful as her first.
Orlando, sensing that she is unwelcome and feeling home sick, leaves the gypsies and returns to England. Her nautical voyage is her first experience of being a woman within the confines of British gender roles. It introduces and exemplifies the limitations she encounters as a British woman attempting to achieve epic status.  
The narration casts Orlando's interactions with the captain of the ship, Captain Nicholas Benedict Bartolus, in a light-hearted tone. Woolf is deliberately attempting to satirize British expectations for femininity through Orlando's lackadaisical and bemused reactions to him. 
‘A little of the fat, Ma’m?’ he asked. ‘Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your fingernail.’ At those words a delicious tremor ran through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha, hundreds of years ago. Then she had pursued, now she fled. Which is the greater ecstasy? The man’s or the woman’s? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the most delicious (thanking the Captain but refusing), to refuse, and see him frown. Well, she would, if he wished it, have the very thinnest, smallest shiver in the world. This was the most delicious of all, to yield and see him smile. ‘For nothing,’ she thought, regaining her couch on deck, and continuing the argument, ‘is more heavenly than to resist and to yield; to yield and to resist. Surely it throws the spirit into such a rapture as nothing else can. So that I’m not sure’, she continued, ‘that I won’t throw myself overboard, for the mere pleasure of being rescued by a blue–jacket after all.’

While she welcomes the effects of femininity with mild joy, she also expresses a new, uneasy, weakened sense of self. The descriptive adjectives and verbs now applied to her all imply smallness and sensitivity.  She's concerned with the reactions of the captain, with his pleasure or displeasure. He had offered her the "tiniest little slice:"  Woolf means here to imply wherein females are expected to consume tiny portions of food, indeed, they are expect to consume only when offered that is only at the disposal of the consumptive i.e., masculine authority. Then a tremor runs through her frame. This implies the vulnerability and sensitivity not only to external influences but specifically to the words spoken by a masculine authority, the captain. A comparison is made between the ecstasy she experiences in this interaction with the captain and the pleasure she had felt in her interactions with Sasha early in the novel. The narration asserts that her role now is to flee: she is placed in the position of a prey. Once she has seen the captain's displeasure, she is willing to accept the "thinnest, smallest shiver" of food. She is only willing to consume a small portion in order to accommodate the captain's will. Her eventual conclusion in this passage is to muse over abandoning herself entirely into the role of the victim.  
	These first experiences as a female within the confines of English culture epitomize the antithesis of achievement of an epic status. Her first experiences as a female deny her size, strength, and, for the most part, active participation. She becomes an entity in reaction to another, namely a masculine, entity. No longer is she a force unto herself, but rather all of her actions are calculated reactions. So that Orlando has many cultural restrictions to overcome if she is to become empowered and achieve epic status as an English woman.
	Indeed, once she reaches her native England, she discovers that she has lost all the lands and titles that had previously been in her name. She faces lawsuits. Authorities have declared that (1) she is dead, so her land belongs to her children,  (2) that she is a woman, which is about the same thing, and therefore she cannot own land, and (3) that she is an English duke. Orlando discovers that she is disempowered legally and financially. The law has declared that due to her age and gender she does not exist and she has no civil rights. 
Understandably Orlando finds herself at a loss and attempts to reach back to the masculine power, which she had previously possessed in order to regain some semblance of an epic status. Shortly after becoming a woman, Orlando finds that she is still attracted to women. She attempts to recreate her previous gender as a means to reach back to her relationships with Sasha and the Archduchess. Orlando dons the garb of a man; yet the spirit of the age is not prepared for Orlando's rather progressive gender bending. 
She sat herself down in profound meditation beneath a willow tree. There she sat till the stars were into the house, where she sought her bedroom and locked the door. Now she sought her bedroom and locked the door. Now she opened a cupboard in which hung still many of the clothes she had worn as a young man of fashion, and from among them she chose a black velvet suit richly trimmed with Venetian lace. It was a little out of fashion, indeed, but it fitted her to perfection and dressed in it she looked the very figure of a noble Lord. She took a turn or two before the mirror to make sure that her petticoats had not lost her the freedom of her legs, and then let herself secretly out of doors. 

Comically her male clothing is out of date and out of fashion since she had not worn it since a previous age; the clothes were somewhat out of date, but not ridiculously so. The scene is placed roughly in the early 1700s while Orlando's male clothing dates back to the King Charles era; the clothes are at least a century out of date.  Yet this does not bother Orlando's female companion.
To feel her hanging lightly yet like a suppliant on her arm, roused in Orlando all the feelings which become a man. She looked, she felt, she talked like one. Yet, having been so lately a woman herself, she suspected that the girl's timidity and her hesitating answers and the very fumbling with the key in the latch and the fold of her cloak and the droop of her wrist were all put on to gratify her masculinity. 

The phrase that references the girl gratifying Orlando's masculinity shows that Orlando has power as a masculine figure. She has gained power to influence the feminine. 
Orlando understands the effects of the opposite gender. She is playing male, but she is aware that the role of female is being played opposite her. The woman puts on the role, wears it. She is no longer afraid of and mystified by femininity. She understands it now. So that this scene wherein she plays the male figure to a woman, in a minor romantic exchange, stands out in stark contrast to her previous interchange with Sasha whom Orlando, then a man, had always viewed as a mystery and befuddling and whose actions Orlando often misinterpreted. 
Orlando's cluelessness as a male about female motivations is demonstrated in at least two scenes (the scene at the ship where Orlando beats up a sailor, and the scene at the end of his romance when Sasha leaves him waiting long past midnight alone with two horses in the rain).
The feminine figure who acts in relation to Orlando's masculinity does so deliberately to appease his masculinity.  So it is shown that Orlando dressed as a man has a certain form of power, which he lacks in the garb of a woman. Orlando's donning of masculine clothing in order to attract this power is similar to the way that Maggie cuts her hair in the beginning of The Mill on the Floss. Maggie's cutting of her hair is an active rejection of the low status femininity that is Maggie's cousin Lucy's milieu. It is Maggie's attempt to become more like her older brother Tom, who possesses a status within the power structure of their family. Maggie's decision is met by extreme disapproval by all of her family; she is shunned. The very act, which she hoped would place her in a higher status, only undermined her status in the family for non-cooperation.   
Like Maggie, Orlando puts on a gender role in order to gratify her needs. Yet Orlando is in possession of more freedom of will than Maggie even catches a glimmer of given her social environment and era. Whereas Maggie steals the unsanctioned opportunity to change a part of her physical self to attract masculine power to herself, Orlando has the wealth and the power of a semi-immortality to support her strength of will. While it is an extremely trying experience for Maggie to cut her hair, Orlando slips into her old costumes with ease and wears them in a public arena without so much as a moment of shame. Where Orlando finally reveals herself to the girl as a female she does so again without shame. The girl's reaction has little effect upon Orlando's sense of self; Orlando leaves the scene with only a mild sense of disappointment.  This is the first of a series of actions wherein Orlando attempts to fight back against the limitations that she has encountered as an English female. In this passage she stretches her legs and enjoys, if only briefly, the freedom of movement that masculine appearance allows her. Yet this attempt to recreate the simple powers of her youth as a man does not have the desired effect. The momentary power that she gains is illusory; Orlando's critiques of her feminine companion's mannerisms shows her awareness that her role-playing is immaterial. This is the reason that Orlando smashes the illusion that she has created. And it is the reason that having smashed the illusion the reception that her actions receive (namely the girl laughing at her) rolls off her back. Orlando is grasping at an epic status by means of manipulating her gender. But this minor adventure lacks the weight of an epic adventure.  
When the 19th century craze over marriage infects the air around Orlando, the aristocrat contemplates yielding to the spirit of the age in a desperate and ill conceived attempt to secure an epic status by means of the same devices that others of her age were exploiting. 
Such is the indomitable nature of the spirit of the age, however, that it batters down anyone who tries to make stand against it far more effectually than those who bend its own way.

She remembers Elizabeth I's gift to her as a youth of a emerald ring and is inspired to seek companionship. Indeed she sinks into a melancholy from which she emerges only upon meeting Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire. The satirical romance is the meeting of two oppositely gendered yet androgynous minds.  This mutual understanding marriage, and she wonders whether such a marriage can be called marriage at all. 
She was married, true; but if one’s husband was always sailing round Cape Horn, was it marriage? If one liked him, was it marriage? If one liked other people, was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts.

Orlando wonders if one can call it marriage when the wife is still possessed of a will of her own to write and the husband is still possessed of a will to adventure. According to Hermione Lee, Orlando "cannot adapt her bisexual personality, since it forces men and women into unnaturally rigid marital roles."  
Orlando's doubts are right on target: this more-or-less non-gendered marriage did not fit into the strict demands of the age. According to gender expectations of that age, Orlando's marriage to Shelmerdine would not have been considered a respectable, or legitimate marriage at all. Woolf utilizes this androgynous marriage to satirize British gender division of the age while delegitimizing the marriage plot. While Orlando finds her marriage enjoyable, it is merely another trinket in life to her. Where everyone about her was grasping at and achieving minor successes through marriage, Orlando was betrayed by and could not progress through the marriage plot. The androgynous marriage is a false adventure; Orlando attempts to achieve epic status by molding herself to unfortunate and restrictive cultural standards.  While she fails at this, her very failure sets her in the position of having a certain degree of epic legitimacy, in that her inability to fit into the tired marriage plot shows that she resembles the epic heroes of Greek legend rather than the minor heroines of 19th century literature. 
As a female, Orlando is disempowered until the onset of the 20th century. Throughout the novel Orlando has never abandoned her manuscript, The Oak Tree. Orlando still dreams of achieving epic status through her masterpiece, which she has been writing, rewriting, and editing for three hundred years. The reappearance of Nick Greene at the end of the novel paves the way for Orlando to achieve this epic status. Whereas before the man had been a slob of a poet, in the twentieth century he has become downright bourgeois. His opinions and attitudes more or less have not changed since their first encounter. Just as Orlando's writing has barely improved. Yet the spirit of the age has changed. The 20th century with its publishing craze has the capacity to turn a charlatan into a critic and an agent. It also converts Orlando's mediocre scratchings into publishable, marketable work.
Orlando's second meeting with Nick Greene is much more hope-filled that the first.
Here Orlando almost shouted "Glawr!" Indeed she could have sworn that she had heard him say the very same things three hundred years ago. The names were different, of course, but the spirit was the same. Nick Green had not changed, for all his knighthood. ... while he ran on in much the same way that Greene had run on three hundred years ago, she had time to ask herself, how was it then that he had changed? He had grown plump; but he was a man verging on seventy. He had grown sleek: literature had been a prosperous pursuit evidently, but somehow the old restless, uneasy vivacity had gone. His stories, brilliant as they were, were no longer quite so free and easy. 

Greene has come to represent the literature of the 20th century. His physical appearance and personality reflect the literature of the age. Just as literature in the 20th century was less visceral and lush than that of the 16th century, so is Nick Greene a little less vivacious and a little more rigid, restricted, and bourgeois in this age.  
	Orlando's investment of a pension paid quarterly, which had previously shown a continued hope and belief in literature as a means of achieving epic status, finally comes back to reward her. Through Greene, Orlando publishes finally achieving the epic and immortal status of an author and as the subject of a work of literature. In the 20th century Orlando finally overcomes the confines of English gender expectations for females to succeed in the business and literary world. Her opinion and voice gain a respect that she could not buy as a young lord. Orlando has become an epic lead, despite the limitations that she encountered as a female, permanently establishing herself as an epic immortal through literary success.

Chapter V 
In The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther becomes an epic lead by means of a series of events that are the experience of the denial of an epic quest. Becoming an epic lead implies the symbolic overcoming of obstacles and the achievement of a significant social status that is recognized by the community. Esther's achievement is symbolized by the eventual lifting of the bell jar. 
"She casts herself as the wronged epic heroine of her own personal drama, slaughtering her enemies right and left (husband, mother, father, aunt, neighbor, friend, basically anyone in her path)." 

The novel is also a bildungsroman, a "novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.".
According to Jerome Buckley in his study of this form, its principal elements are "a growing up and gradual self-discovery," "alienation," "the conflict of generations," "ordeal by love," and "the search for a vocation and a working philosophy." (quoted from Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), viii, 18)

Like Maggie and Lucy Snowe, Esther's journey involves interactions with men, but unlike Maggie, Esther reaches epic status despite the men in her world, rather than through them.
In this novel, she is a woman in a world of women. The novel starts with her in the world of beauty magazines. She has a few, mainly romantic, interactions with men. 
While much of the characterization of separate male figures is scant and scattered, Plath locates them within a culture that itself endows them with power. Cal, her beach date, or Constantin, the U.N. interpreter, are vivid embodiments of male sexuality; they represent the patriarchy in all its erotic, financial, and domestic power.

After the few romantic exchanges amongst friends, Buddy Willard appears and she interacts with the marriage plot in a way that does not conform to it. 
The patriarchy and its pervasive misuse of power are best represented in the characters of (a) Marco, the abusive woman-hater whose interaction with Esther is scarifying, and (b) the seemingly much more respectable Dr. Gordon, the self-important psychiatrist whose abuse of Esther occurs in the malfunctioning of the electroconvulsive shock he administers to her as an outpatient.

She moves, for a major portion of the novel, in worlds of women. She is living at her mother's house when she commits suicide. She achieves some semblance of an epic status in coming back from suicide; it is a rebirth. She almost dies; she meets the worms and comes back. This is an extraordinary achievement, especially for a depressed woman. 
The family's obliviousness to her behavior and appearance screams out through Esther's objectively told narration.

Suicide for Esther is pushing the reset button. She's placed in an asylum, which is another world of women. 
Esther's relationships with these women are her means of defining herself and of defying the conservative older generation. One expects generational warfare, particularly in fiction with a college-age protagonist; thus, what is often the generational struggle in The Bell Jar seems antifemale. Esther's hostile responses to the women who have been her mentors, friends, relatives, and employers are less critical than they might appear, once they are viewed in the perspective of generational difference. 

Her place in the asylum is as a passive person; she's being treated. She observes what's going on around her. She has very little active choice in what happens to her. She doesn't get to decide whether or not she is to undergo shock therapy.
One of the most telling scenes in the second half of the Bell Jar is Esther's reaction to her first electroconvulsive shock treatment: "I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done" (161)

 Both the electroconvulsive shock treatments and the insulin are thrust upon her at the asylum. She doesn't have control of what is done to her body. While she is a passive participant and she consents to treatment, the forms that her treatment takes are out of her control; she does not actively request these treatments. Neither is she comfortable with the treatments. She grows fat on the insulin and her physical state symbolizes her growing passivity. She passes time waiting to get to the next stage of recovery.  She is waiting for someone else to determine her destiny.
In her first sexual experience, when she loses her virginity, she begins to hemorrhage. Hemorrhaging implies a birth gone wrong or an abortion. This is appropriate in terms of how losing one's virginity was viewed in that time. The narrative treatment of Esther's experience was progressive in a regressive sense. It casts Esther as a figure not unlike Tess of the D'Urbervilles or the suffering Virgin Mary. She is abortive; she miscarries. The entrance of a phallus into her body is symbolic of the role of the patriarchy into her life is extremely disruptive - she is not just penetrated but skewered. When she flees she seeks comfort from another woman. The introduction of the erotic into the narrative does not change the general direction of Esther's story: death lingers just behind the erotic. 
Dr. Nolan's entrance into the novel is a welcome relief; she is like Mlle Beck in Villette a formidable female. She is the only female authority to whom Esther grants any credibility. She is an inspiration and a guide.  Nolan's attitude towards the electroconvulsive therapy that Esther had previously received, is not only a comfort to the protagonist, but aids her resentment against the doctor who had prescribed them. Nolan is portrayed as tough, knowing, mildly compassionate and competent. Esther finds Nolan's guidance helpful, but moreover it seems as if Nolan's sheer existence has been inspiration to Esther.
Dr. Nolan, Esther's psychiatrist, is the warm, tolerant, and just mentor whose efforts to help Esther understand herself are eventually rewarded.

In Nolan, Esther has discovered a woman whom she can respect and whom she trust and can look to for leadership. Nolan guides her to her final confrontation to death that is her final electroconvulsive treatment. With Nolan's guidance, Esther resigns herself to this treatment wholly. She is right to trust Nolan. She is not mistreated as she had been previously: the shock treatment doesn't hurt her. 
Esther confronts death. 
As Esther says near the triumph of leaving the asylum, there should be "a ritual for being born twice" (275)

She eventually emerges from the stifling confinement of the gender expectations of her culture, symbolized by the lifting of the bell jar. Yet she is fully aware that even having achieved epic status, she will continue to face the sort of chauvinism from which she had rebelled with her initial suicide. Now she has the weapons that she needs to overcome these obstacles. This is shown in the penultimate scene/sequence wherein she demands that the man to whom she had lost her virginity, Irwin, the mathematics professor, pay her emergency room bill. This event is configured as a distinct victory over the patriarchy. At the end of the novel, she is going to face the powers that be at the asylum for a final review. Yet the novel ends with the implication that she will become a person independent of the asylum system.
Esther ultimately achieves an epic status through surviving. She escapes the world of lipstick ads and beauty magazines to run the gauntlet of assertion of cultural will over her own. She fights against the medical control that is asserted over her to emerge still in possession and perhaps more in possession than she had previously been over her actions and destiny. 

Chapter VI 
In ZAMI, A new spelling of my name, A biomythography by Audre Lorde, the epic lead overcomes obstacles to transform herself into a more empowered person. Audre engages in a journey towards self-definition. She reaches for status in the form of self-empowerment, even where her strong sense of self runs against the demands and expectations of society. 
The beginning of Audre's story sets up her childhood and explains her home life and environment. Her first attempts at, and experiences of, self-definition are the jumping off point for her epic quest.
Audre's parents are immigrants from the West Indies. The narration sets up a dichotomy wherein Audre's sense of self is at once empowered and limited by the patriarchy as directly represented by reference to her father's influence, symbolized by his voice. She insinuates that due to the influence of this patriarchal figure she sought and discovered power in the strength of women.  It is the women in her life who define her.
To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister?

My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But  his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home.

She states that "images of women ... stand like dykes." Her use of the word is a double entendre. Strong women stand like dikes, as protectors from destructive flood, between her and the chaos. The use is biblical. Women stand between her and the wrath of God in the sense of the flood in the five books of Moses. The reference is also mythological; dikes stand between her and the chaos - where Chaos implies Uranus, the Greek god of the sky and heaven whose potency in joining with Gaea causes the springing forth of life, yet who, as a singular entity, represents coldness, distance, chaos (his son), the endless infinity of the mystery of the undefined: i.e., of the universe. The term dyke is used in common discourse as a derogatory term for gay women and specifically to insinuate a certain amount of masculinity. The implication is that the gay woman's gender does not fall into what is socially acceptable for women; a woman who is masculine is a pariah and a threat to the patriarchy. The narrator redefines the contemporary use of the term in a succinct and deliberate way.  The narration turns the term into a non-derogatory, indeed a complementary means of self-definition for strong and independent women who need not limit themselves to the gender expectations of the patriarchy. So that even the very start of the novel is a declarative statement about Audre's identity, foreshadowing her eventual achievement of self-definition (that is of epic status).
The narration sets up Audre's relationship to her parents: she grew up "fat, Black, nearly blind, and ambidextrous in a West Indian household." Her mother was 
a very powerful woman. This was so in a time when that word-combination of woman and powerful was almost unexpressable in the white American common tongue, except or unless it was accompanied by some aberrant explaining adjective like blind, or hunchback, or crazy, or Black.

Audre's first grasp at a formidable status as epic lead involves a symbolic redefinition of self as represented by her name. Audre enjoyed writing her name as a child as AUDRELORDE. She was only four years old when she learned to write it that way, but she remembered having to put on the Y at the end of her first name, to please her mother because, "That was the way it had to be because that was the way it was. No deviation was allowed from her interpretation of correct."  When she gets to grade school, she cannot help but stubbornly run against the demands of her teacher by spelling her name Audre instead of Audrey. Her stubborn insistence on this spelling of her name expresses her aversion to, rejection of, and rebellion against the strictness of the public schooling system and the dictatorship of the classroom as represented by Miss Teacher. This is the first major event in Audre's journey towards self-definition. She has rejected the authority of her mother and the public schooling system in favor of her own preference for definition of self. This rejection is similar to Maggie's cutting of her hair, not only in terms of the rebelliousness it shows, but also in terms of the reaction that her actions receive from society. For Audre, society is the opinions of her mother and teacher, whereas Maggie receives disapproval from her family. Audre is not as limited as Maggie; her mother has the power to take her out of that school and move her to a different one, whereas Maggie is not even allowed the privilege of an education.  
Hunter High School was where she met the white kids. She had grown up in an isolated world. "It was hard for me to recognize differences as anything other than a threat." She and her friends were the lunatic fringe, and cherished their strangeness.  They learned how to mock the straight set. She and her group of outsiders called themselves The Branded.
One of the five Black girls at Hunter High School was named Gennie. She lived with her mother in a one bedroom with a kitchenette at 119th Street between Eighth and Morningside Avenues. Gennie had the bedroom and the mother slept on the couch in the living room. New York was their backyard; they dressed up in any costumes they could imagine and found appropriate corners of NYC to display them. Gennie and Audre had good times lounging about Gennie's living room; seeking what leisure they could find as young women. Here the narration first introduces an insinuated erotic interaction between Audre and another woman. 
One night, Gennie showed up at Audre's house looking disheveled. Gennie's father had scratched up the side of her face. Gennie did not want to go back home and Audre pleaded with her not to do so, but Audre's mother insisted that Gennie leave because it was late at night during midterms. Audre's mom expressed concern for Gennie after the girl had left, but misplaced this concern into a criticism of Audre's hygiene. The next day Audre's family got a call saying that Gennie was found unconscious on the steps of the 110th Street Community Center having taken arsenic (rat poison). The process of Gennie's death is difficult for Audre. The story about Gennie shows the powerlessness of young women in similar situations to Audre's own. The sequence also highlights the advantages that Audre had as a young woman, advantages that gave her the power to achieve. While Gennie had nowhere to turn, Audre was powerless to make a change because of her parent's control over her. The two had bonded over the very thing that caused this eventual tragedy. Together they rebelled against home and parental control and domestic abuse. The erotic aspect of the relationship between these women acts as their one means of escape. This moment in Audre's journey represents her first steps towards erotic self-determination and escape from the demands of those in power, to create and form a social code and system independent of, and in rebellion against, that authority. Yet authority prevails. Audre loses this battle in losing Gennie, but has gained a self-assurance that is shown in the final scene. Her cousin Louisa asked Audre if she knew why Gennie killed herself. Audre repeated her mother's words to Louisa, "that man called himself father was using that girl for I don't know what." This self-assurance is implied in her power while leaving Louisa sobbing: she does not stumble over the "floor-anchored metal rod" as usual, and causes a metallic clang in contrast to Louisa's sobbing.
At her coming of age she finds herself living in a gay-girl community, struggling with her identity as a gay woman, while unable to evade (ignore) her identity as a Black woman.
Audre's abortion and her experiences of factory life at Stamford are a major part of her progression toward becoming a strong woman and her own woman. He ability to navigate these treacherous experiences forges in her a stronger sense of self-definition and independence from her childhood in her parents' home.
Audre passes through a final trial in which her identity is trapped in her relationship with Muriel, a white gay woman to whom she betroths herself forever.
Afrekete (a.k.a. Kitty) was comfortable with her blackness in a way that brought Audre closer to her own sense of self as a black woman. 
And I remember Afrekete, who came out of a dream to me always being hard and real as the fire hairs along the under-edge of my navel. ... 
"I got this under the bridge" was a saying from time immemorial, giving an adequate explanation that whatever it was had come from as far back and as close to home - that is to say, was as authentic - as was possible.

Living in a niche, ghetto-like gay-girl world, she is still isolated by her Blackness.
But the fact of our Blackness was an issue that Felicia and I talked about only between ourselves. Even Muriel seemed to believe that as lesbians, we were all outsiders and all equal in our outsiderhood, "We're all niggers," she used to say, and I hated to hear her say it. It was wishful thinking based on little fact; the ways in which it was true languished in the shadow of those many ways in which it would always be false.

Major evidence that her bond with Muriel was an illusion came when Muriel wrote a New Year's list:
                         The Year 1955
         Audi                                         Me
Got a new job
Started therapy                             
Sent out some poems                   NOTHING!
Is going back to school

I stared at the notebook page in silence, feeling like cold water had been thrown at me. I reached over and took her hand. It lay cool and still between my fingers, without movement. I did not know what to say to Muriel. The idea that anyone could measure herself against me and find that self wanting was truly shocking. The fact that it was my beloved Muriel who was doing it was nothing less than terrifying. 

Audre's beloved Muriel weighs herself against Audre and finds herself wanting; this terrifies Audre. Forever lasted a year and a half with Muriel. Audre had 'unfinished business' with Jill: she had always wanted a sexual relationship with her. She comes home and finds Muriel making love to Jill. A double betrayal, she was enraged, suicidal, and homicidal. The sudden end of the affair causes Audre to suffer deep emotional pain. The apartment with Muriel was a kind of a cage: she needed to escape from the tender trap that she was in with Muriel. Eventually Audre accepts the rejection and comes to a new spelling of her own name.
Again the angelic orchestration swelled, filling my head with the sharpness and precision of the words; the music was like a surge of strength. It felt rich with hope and a promise of life - more importantly, more importantly, a new way through or beyond pain.

I'll die this death 
on Cavalry
ain't 
      gonna 
                die
                     no 
                         more!
The physical realities of the dingy bus slid away from me. I suddenly stood upon a hill in the center of an unknown country, hearing the sky fill with a new spelling of my name.

She completes her journey to become an epic lead and gain a sense of identity through an affair with another gay Black woman, Afrekete. 
To the journeywoman pieces of myself.
Becoming
Afrekete.

She journeys to a new sense of self, consummating her acceptance of herself as a gay Black woman through her relationship with Afrekete. 
Audre's first respelling of her name was a statement of independence, of the importance of her decisions for self-definition. Along with her first discoveries of her identity came a sense of isolation from society not just as an individual but as a Black woman, and later as a gay Black woman.
The Carriacou name Zami brings her to another state, one which reflects an embracement of her identity as gay and Black. This new spelling of her name, shouted to the world in her "biomythography" with a sense of conquest, completes her epic quest. 
Zami,.A Carriacou name for women who work together as friend and lovers.

Zami has the most triumphant conclusion of these six novels. Lorde takes pains to establish Audre as an epic lead. The author is determined to present a story in which the main character overcomes hardships and beats all odds to evolve into a more empowered woman. Yet her triumphant conclusion is awkward at best. The novel itself is for the most part very visceral and very real. Its pages do not lie to the reader but rather reproduce in as distinct and honest a way as possible the events and difficulties of real life. Because of how acutely accurate the novel is, her triumphant ending seems contrived.  The author of Zami has determined to have a victorious conclusion in which the main character achieves the status as an epic lead. So that for the first time in this novel in the conclusion the negative can't be spoken because of the author's fervent wish to mold the novel into the type of story that she feels will serve as a good example to her audience. Perhaps this is the reason that Lorde calls her story a biomythography. It seems as if the author does not feel that she has the political space in which to give any concessions at the end of the novel. While throughout the novel she is perfectly willing to write her failures along side her successes, in the end she is wholly unwilling in any way to admit defeat. Perhaps Lorde cannot be criticized for her choice in this. The reasons why she would choose to create such an empowered conclusion are obvious. Yet suffice it to say that this conclusion does not square with the realism of the novel as a whole. Nonetheless, Zami is, at the close of the novel, very distinctly, and indisputably, an epic lead. 

Conclusion
In the introduction to this paper, I proposed that the process of becoming an epic lead involves the symbolic overcoming of obstacles and the achievement of a significant social status that is recognized by the community in a way that does not interfere with the character's own sense of morality. The protagonist of every novel discussed achieves a victory yet not all main characters become epic leads. Those who do achieve heroic status do so in vastly different ways and often awkwardly.  
Maggie reaches for heroism through her relationships with Tom, Stephen, and Phillip in succession. Yet she finds herself in a lesser power position in relation to each of them. Through rejecting the marriage plot with Stephen, she secures a minor epic status as a martyr. But this self-sacrifice is unsatisfactory. She finds that she has rather than very little power, absolutely no power in the town once the scandal has occurred.  She has become a dependent and a pariah. Maggie finds her final opportunity to act like an epic lead in the flood at the end of the novel. Only through the divine intervention of the narration, as penned by George Eliot, does this character who would otherwise have been stuck in place and time achieve epic status. 
Lucy Snowe reaches for heroism through her relationship with Mlle. Beck, her successes as a teacher, and her tutelage under M. Paul. She eventually achieves epic status through a combination of success in employment, aspirations to become more like the formidable figure of Mlle. Beck, and a successful foray of the marriage plot. At the conclusion of the novel Lucy Snowe, rather than fully realizing her powers as an epic lead, is simply well on her way to becoming one. 
The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper does not become an epic lead because the moral confines of her society are too limiting for her to break out of them entirely. She is restricted from any outlet for action or imagination save one - the yellow wallpaper. She imagines a non-conforming image of herself into and finally out of the wallpaper. She evolves into a ghoulish crone, which is an expression of a form of gender within the limitations of the society. Rather than achieving a victory over the patriarchy through moral uprightness, she does the opposite, securing a metaphorical freedom from confinement and vanquishing her foes as symbolized by her husband's fainting in the final scene. Yet in the end she has become a crone, a creature of nightmares, rather than an empowered epic lead. 
Orlando seeks epic status through attempting to write an epic story in which he is the main subject, yet is unsuccessful at obtaining any extraordinary status as a man. Orlando fights against the limitations that she encounters as a British female by reaching back to the power she had previously by donning the clothes of a man. When that fails, she attempts to secure the sort of power that was so easily available to women of the 19th   century, that is the power of a wife. Yet she discovers in turn that each of these forms of power are illusory, and returns to her dreams of literary fame. Orlando is disempowered as a female until the arrival of the 20th century when she finally becomes an epic lead through publishing her work. 
In The Bell Jar, Esther becomes an epic lead by means of a series of events that are the experience of the denial of an epic quest. She confronts death in many forms: her shock therapy, her suicide attempt, her loss of virginity, and again her shock therapy. She eventually emerges from the stifling confinement of the gender expectations of her culture, symbolized by the lifting of the bell jar. Yet she is fully aware that even having achieved epic status, she will continue to face the sort of chauvinism from which she had rebelled with her initial suicide. Now she has the weapons that she needs to overcome these obstacles. This is shown in the penultimate scene/sequence wherein she demands that the man to whom she had lost her virginity, Irwin, the mathematics professor, pay her emergency room bill. This event is configured as a distinct victory over the patriarchy. At the end of the novel, she is going to face the powers that be at the asylum for a final review. Yet the novel ends with the implication that she will become a person independent of the asylum system though it does not show her doing so. At the end, she has become an epic lead.
In Zami, Audre reaches for heroism in the form of self-empowerment, overcoming hardships and heartbreak to redefine herself. Her eventual achievement of a status as an epic lead is symbolized in her final redefinition of self, a renaming. Unlike Esther of The Bell Jar, Zami does not in any way give a concession to or admit to the power of the white patriarchy.  Lorde constructs her conclusion in this way deliberately, while Plath, as a white woman of a certain era, felt secure enough in her position in society to paint her semi-autobiographical main character as an insecure, epic lead, indeed as a person who is not yet wholly empowered. Lorde's conclusion is the most triumphant of any of the novels. Her main character becomes an epic lead, both within the confines of and despite the hardships and restrictions of the society and economic situation into which she was born. This much cannot be said of Maggie, Lucy Snowe, the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, Orlando, or Esther.
As previously stated, not all main characters become epic leads. Gilman's narrator is the one character who is entirely unable to fulfill her dreams of heroism. While she achieves a small victory over the patriarchy, she is unable to succeed as an epic lead within the confines of her society. Lucy Snowe of Villette also ends her story somewhere short of heroic stature. Esther of The Bell Jar has overcome many obstacles to experience the epic quest and to reach an epiphany at the close of the novel. Yet she looks towards her future in the real world, i.e., the world outside of the asylum system, with some uneasiness, wondering how many college women like women of Belsize under glass jars. Maggie Tulliver becomes an epic lead by means of a narrative device that could almost be called cheating. It is not possible to assert that Maggie would have been able to achieve her final epic status within the confines of her world as established at the start of the novel. This is why Eliot feels the need to intervene on Maggie's behalf pointing out to all her readership that this character is perfectly capable of the heroism so frequently and wholly denied her.  This reinforces Eliot's point that a woman of Maggie's time and place is denied epic adventures, while making Maggie's final act seem superhuman. Orlando also achieves epic status almost by cheating. She lives for two and a half centuries as a woman struggling until she reaches an age in which she can once again be as empowered as she was as a young lord. She finally achieves an epic status that she could not secure as a young man of privilege; her opinion and voice gain her respect that she could not buy as a young lord. In the 20th century, culture finally enables Orlando to overcome the confines of gender expectations to succeed in business and literature through publishing her work. Esther's eventual achievement of epic status is symbolized by the lifting of the bell jar. While she has emerged from the stifling confinement of gender expectations of her culture, she is aware that she will continue to be subject to the sort of chauvinism against which she has constantly rebelled. Lorde's main character, unlike the main characters of any of the other novels, becomes an epic lead both within the confines of and despite the hardships and restrictions of the society and economic situation into which she was born. While Lorde's triumphant ending seems somewhat contrived because of its determination to be victorious, it is perhaps along side Plath's conclusion represents the most realistic achievement of epic status of a main character. So Eliot, Brontë, Woolf, Plath, and Lorde have all proven that women of fiction can indeed overcome the patriarchy.

Works Cited
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Additional Bibliography
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Harris, Andrea L. Other Sexes, Rewriting Differences from Woolf to Winterson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
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Lane, Gary. Sylvia Plath: New views on the poetry, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
Morgan, Peter E. "A Subject to Redress: Ideology and the Cross-Dressed heroine in Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter" as cited on the West Georgia web site syllabus.
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Newman, Charles. The Art of Sylvia Plath: A Symposium, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.
Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 6: Late Nineteenth Century - Charlotte Perkins Gilman." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap6/gilman.html
Rosenthal, Michael. Virginia Woolf, New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000. 
http://www.bartleby.com/61/60/C0046000.html - Calypso