Except the entire purpose of running away to join the army was not for her own individual wants but to save her crippled father; she succeed saving her father, her commander, and her entire country due to her courage and ingenuity.

She succeed on her own terms even in doing her duty to her family. Her conflict between individual desire and filial obligation was resolved due her own choices and actions-- even in finding a husband.

Mulan goes out into the world, for love and duty, succeeds and comes back an adult. The story is a fairy tale, a rite of passage, not a narrow 'feminist' tale about how motherhood and marriage are somehow shortchanging the sisterhood.