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By Root 5636 0

a situation. On the one hand there is the hard, heartless, masculine strength of the monster. On the other, in total contrast, is the soft, vulnerable femininity of the heroine who is being threatened. The monster stands for strength without the balance of feeling, which means death. The heroine stands for feeling and life, but is without the strength to defend herself. But what we then see, as the hero comes between them to save her, is that he is a balance between the two. He is not only strong, fearless, utterly masculine. In responding to her helpless vulnerability he is inwardly open to the femininity which the heroine represents. The hero stands for strength transfigured and made life-giving by his capacity for selfless feeling. In balancing the opposites of masculine and feminine, the hero is potentially whole.

So much accounts for why we instinctively sense our support for the hero in his challenge to the monster. But it does not account for why he wins the battle: and here the reason is not usually that he is stronger than the monster. In purely physical terms, the monster may well be the stronger of the two, which is why he seems to have all the odds on his side. In straightforward hand-to-hand combat, Goliath would have beaten David any day. Perseus was probably puny compared to the sea-monster. Dracula had a whole array of magic powers at his command. The real secret of the hero's ultimate superiority is that the monster has a blind spot. That is why, by the true hero, he can be outwitted: as Goliath was by David's use from a safe distance of his slingstones; as the sea-monster was by Perseus's use of the Gorgon's head to turn him to stone; Dracula by the hero's knowledge of the one thing which could kill him, a stake to the heart. Luke Skywalker can eliminate the Death Star because he knows of the one spot in all its immense structure where it is vulnerable. In all three Quatermass stories, most of the action centres on the hero gradually puzzling out the true nature of the mysterious monster he is up against, which eventually gives him the necessary clues as to how it can be overcome. What ultimately puts the hero in charge of the situation is that, by the climax of the story, he can in some crucial respect see more clearly than the monster, and knows precisely what he is doing.

Thus the combination of qualities which the hero requires to overcome the monster is exactly the same as that required by the hero or heroine of a Rags to Riches story. He has to show that is acting selflessly, in some cause outside himself. He has to show himself inwardly strong, determined, totally self-reliant. In the end, as the final key in the lock, he has to have superior understanding, a clear vision of what he has to do.

Of course there are also Overcoming the Monster stories where the heroine is not just a passive potential victim waiting to be rescued from the shadows by the hero, but where she herself plays a much more active part in saving him and assisting him to his victory.

When Theseus sets out for Crete to liberate his country from the deadly shadow cast by King Minos and his dreadful creature, the Minotaur, the tutelary deity hovering protectively over him is Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It might seem a detail strangely irrelevant to so `masculine' a contest. But when Theseus arrives, the first person to see him is Minos's daughter Ariadne, who falls in love with him. When he is led into the dark labyrinth to face the monster which lurks at its heart, it is Ariadne who secretly equips Theseus with the two `magic weapons' which are to prove vital to his success: the sword with which he can slay the Minotaur, and the thread which will enable him to find the way out of the `pathless maze. It is the Princess's courage and strength of will which have enabled the hero to use properly his own masculine strength to win the victory. Where Theseus would otherwise have been reduced to impotence, it is the `active' heroine who has given life to his strength and enabled him to see clearly his way out again into the light.