Criticizing Murdock
Maureen Murdock's model of the heroine's journey is somewhat like Victoria Lynn Schmidt's model and the Hero's Journey, but is generally more restrictive and harder to apply. It would still be much easier to just have one definitive monomyth that was more broadly applicable and didn't discriminate based on gender. And that emphasis on gender and to a lesser extent on spirituality is the main problem with Murdock's model. It's difficult to apply when it forces stories to revolve around or heavily feature these concepts and as a monomyth it definitely shouldn't, though much like Victoria Lynn Schmidt's model it may not be entirely intended to be a monomyth. However, if it was broader and more about identity that just gender it would be more easily applicable, like in the case of Quicksand where it uses some ideas from Murdock's model but in the context of race. While it's not as useful as Victoria Lynn Schmidt's model, they two d