T.E. W. (terez93) reviewed Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (Penguin Classics) on + 273 more book reviews
Ne pensez pas que vous pouvez me faire peur en me disant que je suis seul. La France est seule. Dieu est seul. Et la solitude de Dieu est sa force.
-Jeanne d'Arc
Shaw set a high bar for this work, which went on to become one of his most iconic, even earning him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. That accolade is perhaps not surprising: the play's protagonist is arguably one of the most fascinating characters in world history, but just as fascinating, and perplexing, is her enduring legacy. Jeanne d'Arc of Domremy has remained a controversial figure for centuries, not least on account of the fact that she was excommunicated and burned as a heretic, then canonized five hundred years later, which made for a rather thorny problem for the Catholic church.
The Maid of Orleans was born of commoner, but not impoverished, parents Jacques d'Arc and isabelle Romee. Jeanne enjoyed a seemingly normal childhood, until the age of ten when she claimed to have experienced visions of the archangel Michael and saints Margaret and Catherine of Alexandria, all of whom called upon her to embark upon a long and perilous journey to the court-in-exhile of the dauphin, Charles VII, to entreat him to take up the crown as King of France and to repel the English from French lands. The dauphin believed in her visions, perhaps conveniently so, and sent her to lift the Siege of Orleans, which, astonishingly, occurred only nine days later. This rather unexpected victory was followed by a series of others in quick succession, then Charles VII's consecration at the cathedral at Reims, paving the way for a surge of French morale and, as Shaw highlights, anachronistically, an early form of something we would term "nationalism."
All did not remain well, however: on May 23, 1430, Jeanne was captured at Compeigne, under somewhat dubious circumstances, by Burgundian nobles allied with the English overlords, who subsequently handed her over. Jeanne was then put on trial at what amount to nothing more than a kangaroo court orchestrated by her enemies to ensure her conviction and demise. Even other church officials objected to the nature of the proceedings - heresy was a capital offense only for a repeated incidence - including a Dominican friar and even Jean Lemaitre, the Vice Inquisitor of northern France himself, who acknowledged that the sham trial was politically motivated. He relented and cooperated with the farce after his life was threatened by the English, however, as did several other notable players, which ensured her untimely death.
Among the charges were heresy and "cross dressing," but this, too, created a problem, when Jeanne agreed to wear feminine clothing; she was reluctant to shed the men's garments in the secular prison where she was being unlawfully held, as the latter was much more difficult to remove, and hence deterred rape. She reported as much, that while wearing a dress, an English lord had entered her cell and tried to take her by force, after which she resumed wearing male attire. Despite the circumstances, which would certainly result in her torturous death, trial participants and witnesses alike spoke with admiration and marvel at her almost inconceivable grace, conviction, and near-supernatural ability to defend herself against false charges by "learned" men of the church (Jeanne was illiterate, and could only even sign her name with the assistance of others). One of her most famous statements at the trial was her answer to the loaded question of whether she believed that she was in God's grace: a yes or no could see her condemned. Instead, she shrewdly replied: "If I am not, may God put me there; if I am, may he so keep me." Reportedly, the court notary later testified that when she replied thus, "those who were interrogating her were stupefied."
Regardless of what she said or did, however, lamentably, her fate was sealed from the outset. She was judged by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English bishop installed for the purpose of seeing her convicted, and, indeed, judged her guilty. Although she initially disavowed her voices and visions, she recanted her abjuration a short time later, and was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. As proof of the political motivation behind her murder, after she was killed, the English raked back the embers to expose her charred body as proof that she had perished, lest any later claim that she had somehow escaped. Her body was then burned twice more to reduce it to ashes, in order to destroy any possibility of collecting her remains as relics, and all was dumped into the Seine River. Reports claiming that her heart would not burn have persisted, however. Even the executioner was reported to have stated that he was fearful of being condemned by God at his judgment for "burning a holy woman."
After her death, Jeanne's mother Isabelle took up her daughter's cause, sparing no effort or expense to clear her name. Despite the fact that many of the records relating to her had been lost, including the account of her examination at Poitier, where she was questioned by the French to determine the veracity of her claims, in 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Calixtus III debunked the charges against her and proclaimed her innocent after an elaborate "nullification trial," which, unlike the sham trial which convicted her, actually followed church court protocol. The court finally determined that she was innocent, even cementing her status as a martyr, while simultaneously implicating the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for his role in the sham trial in pursuit of personal gain and political vendetta.
Her cultural legacy is as fascinating as her story, and this play is no exception: George Bernard Shaw, a contentious figure in his own right, here depicts her as an unlikely heroine who held her own against insurmountable odds, but who was also infected the sins of pride and arrogance, which ultimately ensured her downfall. Imogen Stubbs noted in the voluminous introduction that "Shaw presents a girl who has an anarchic sense of humour, who is sometimes hard, violent, hysterical, proud, serene, vulnerable, always courageous." Jeanne became a symbol of the Catholic league in the 16th century, and a national symbol of France in 1803 under Napoleon. She was beatified in 1909, and canonized in 1920. She's now one of the nine secondary patron saints of France, alongside Saints Denis, Martin of Tours, Louis, Michael, Remi, Petronilla, Radegund and Therese of Lisieux. Illustrious company, indeed!
Jeanne is often heralded as the ultimate rags-to-riches story of a self-made woman who through her own prowess, conviction and strength of character rose to prominence when it was unheard of for a young, uneducated, common woman to do so. Stephen Richey stated of her legacy: "the people who came after her in the five centuries since her death tried to make everything of her: demonic fanatic, spiritual mystic, naive and tragically ill-used tool of the powerful, creator and icon of modern popular nationalism, adored heroine, saint. She insisted, even when threatened with torture and faced with death by fire, that she was guided by voices from God. Voices or no, her achievements leave anyone who knows her story shaking his head in amazed wonder."
With this piece, Shaw seeks to explore human nature itself, specifically that even saints are sinners. He wrote in the Preface: "There are no villains in the piece... It is, i repeat, what normally innocent people do that concerns us." This ominous statement is prescient in light of the tragedy writ large in the coming decades following the play's release, when "normally innocent" people consummated the greatest mass slaughter in human history, creating an entire new cast of martyrs.
In Shaw's imagination, Jeanne is far from the prototypical hero: she is here depicted in a highly ambivalent manner - on the one hand, she is portrayed as a pious and deeply religious figure, who believes absolutely in her visions, which she adamantly proclaims are sent by God. On the other, Shaw is quite critical of her in her later exploits, and highlights her flaws, when he portrays her as being led more by arrogance and pride than piety, to the degree that even her most ardent supporters inform her, at Charles's coronation, no less, that they will abandon her to an inevitable fate if she doesn't curb her enthusiasm for war. Even the archbishop tells her, "Pride will have a fall, Joan... I have no blessing for you while you are proud and disobedient... I see that I am speaking in vain to a hardened heart. You reject our protection, and are determined to turn us all against you. In future, then, fend for yourself, and if you fail, God have mercy on your soul." Charles mirrors: "It always comes back to the same thing. She is right and everyone else is wrong." Thus, her most zealous compatriots, who exploit her for their own purposes, discard and discount her when their means are accomplished. Charles even quips, as he was reported to have done in life, "if only she would keep quiet or go home!"
In the end, of course, Jeanne was abandoned, but she certainly did not keep quiet, as demonstrated by a play performed five hundred years after her death. It is one expression of a complex figure who certainly left her mark on history.
---------NOTABLE PASSAGES---------
Now it is always hard for superior wits to understand the fury roused by their exposures of the stupidities of comparative dullards. -GB Shaw
Joan was burnt without a hand lifted on her own side to save her. The comrades she had led to victory and the enemies she had disgraced and defeated, the French king she had crowned and the English king whose crown she had kicked into the Loire, were equally glad to be rid of her.
The maid needs no lawyers to take her part; she will be tried by her most faithful friends, all ardently desirous to save her soul from perdition.
-Jeanne d'Arc
Shaw set a high bar for this work, which went on to become one of his most iconic, even earning him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. That accolade is perhaps not surprising: the play's protagonist is arguably one of the most fascinating characters in world history, but just as fascinating, and perplexing, is her enduring legacy. Jeanne d'Arc of Domremy has remained a controversial figure for centuries, not least on account of the fact that she was excommunicated and burned as a heretic, then canonized five hundred years later, which made for a rather thorny problem for the Catholic church.
The Maid of Orleans was born of commoner, but not impoverished, parents Jacques d'Arc and isabelle Romee. Jeanne enjoyed a seemingly normal childhood, until the age of ten when she claimed to have experienced visions of the archangel Michael and saints Margaret and Catherine of Alexandria, all of whom called upon her to embark upon a long and perilous journey to the court-in-exhile of the dauphin, Charles VII, to entreat him to take up the crown as King of France and to repel the English from French lands. The dauphin believed in her visions, perhaps conveniently so, and sent her to lift the Siege of Orleans, which, astonishingly, occurred only nine days later. This rather unexpected victory was followed by a series of others in quick succession, then Charles VII's consecration at the cathedral at Reims, paving the way for a surge of French morale and, as Shaw highlights, anachronistically, an early form of something we would term "nationalism."
All did not remain well, however: on May 23, 1430, Jeanne was captured at Compeigne, under somewhat dubious circumstances, by Burgundian nobles allied with the English overlords, who subsequently handed her over. Jeanne was then put on trial at what amount to nothing more than a kangaroo court orchestrated by her enemies to ensure her conviction and demise. Even other church officials objected to the nature of the proceedings - heresy was a capital offense only for a repeated incidence - including a Dominican friar and even Jean Lemaitre, the Vice Inquisitor of northern France himself, who acknowledged that the sham trial was politically motivated. He relented and cooperated with the farce after his life was threatened by the English, however, as did several other notable players, which ensured her untimely death.
Among the charges were heresy and "cross dressing," but this, too, created a problem, when Jeanne agreed to wear feminine clothing; she was reluctant to shed the men's garments in the secular prison where she was being unlawfully held, as the latter was much more difficult to remove, and hence deterred rape. She reported as much, that while wearing a dress, an English lord had entered her cell and tried to take her by force, after which she resumed wearing male attire. Despite the circumstances, which would certainly result in her torturous death, trial participants and witnesses alike spoke with admiration and marvel at her almost inconceivable grace, conviction, and near-supernatural ability to defend herself against false charges by "learned" men of the church (Jeanne was illiterate, and could only even sign her name with the assistance of others). One of her most famous statements at the trial was her answer to the loaded question of whether she believed that she was in God's grace: a yes or no could see her condemned. Instead, she shrewdly replied: "If I am not, may God put me there; if I am, may he so keep me." Reportedly, the court notary later testified that when she replied thus, "those who were interrogating her were stupefied."
Regardless of what she said or did, however, lamentably, her fate was sealed from the outset. She was judged by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English bishop installed for the purpose of seeing her convicted, and, indeed, judged her guilty. Although she initially disavowed her voices and visions, she recanted her abjuration a short time later, and was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. As proof of the political motivation behind her murder, after she was killed, the English raked back the embers to expose her charred body as proof that she had perished, lest any later claim that she had somehow escaped. Her body was then burned twice more to reduce it to ashes, in order to destroy any possibility of collecting her remains as relics, and all was dumped into the Seine River. Reports claiming that her heart would not burn have persisted, however. Even the executioner was reported to have stated that he was fearful of being condemned by God at his judgment for "burning a holy woman."
After her death, Jeanne's mother Isabelle took up her daughter's cause, sparing no effort or expense to clear her name. Despite the fact that many of the records relating to her had been lost, including the account of her examination at Poitier, where she was questioned by the French to determine the veracity of her claims, in 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Calixtus III debunked the charges against her and proclaimed her innocent after an elaborate "nullification trial," which, unlike the sham trial which convicted her, actually followed church court protocol. The court finally determined that she was innocent, even cementing her status as a martyr, while simultaneously implicating the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for his role in the sham trial in pursuit of personal gain and political vendetta.
Her cultural legacy is as fascinating as her story, and this play is no exception: George Bernard Shaw, a contentious figure in his own right, here depicts her as an unlikely heroine who held her own against insurmountable odds, but who was also infected the sins of pride and arrogance, which ultimately ensured her downfall. Imogen Stubbs noted in the voluminous introduction that "Shaw presents a girl who has an anarchic sense of humour, who is sometimes hard, violent, hysterical, proud, serene, vulnerable, always courageous." Jeanne became a symbol of the Catholic league in the 16th century, and a national symbol of France in 1803 under Napoleon. She was beatified in 1909, and canonized in 1920. She's now one of the nine secondary patron saints of France, alongside Saints Denis, Martin of Tours, Louis, Michael, Remi, Petronilla, Radegund and Therese of Lisieux. Illustrious company, indeed!
Jeanne is often heralded as the ultimate rags-to-riches story of a self-made woman who through her own prowess, conviction and strength of character rose to prominence when it was unheard of for a young, uneducated, common woman to do so. Stephen Richey stated of her legacy: "the people who came after her in the five centuries since her death tried to make everything of her: demonic fanatic, spiritual mystic, naive and tragically ill-used tool of the powerful, creator and icon of modern popular nationalism, adored heroine, saint. She insisted, even when threatened with torture and faced with death by fire, that she was guided by voices from God. Voices or no, her achievements leave anyone who knows her story shaking his head in amazed wonder."
With this piece, Shaw seeks to explore human nature itself, specifically that even saints are sinners. He wrote in the Preface: "There are no villains in the piece... It is, i repeat, what normally innocent people do that concerns us." This ominous statement is prescient in light of the tragedy writ large in the coming decades following the play's release, when "normally innocent" people consummated the greatest mass slaughter in human history, creating an entire new cast of martyrs.
In Shaw's imagination, Jeanne is far from the prototypical hero: she is here depicted in a highly ambivalent manner - on the one hand, she is portrayed as a pious and deeply religious figure, who believes absolutely in her visions, which she adamantly proclaims are sent by God. On the other, Shaw is quite critical of her in her later exploits, and highlights her flaws, when he portrays her as being led more by arrogance and pride than piety, to the degree that even her most ardent supporters inform her, at Charles's coronation, no less, that they will abandon her to an inevitable fate if she doesn't curb her enthusiasm for war. Even the archbishop tells her, "Pride will have a fall, Joan... I have no blessing for you while you are proud and disobedient... I see that I am speaking in vain to a hardened heart. You reject our protection, and are determined to turn us all against you. In future, then, fend for yourself, and if you fail, God have mercy on your soul." Charles mirrors: "It always comes back to the same thing. She is right and everyone else is wrong." Thus, her most zealous compatriots, who exploit her for their own purposes, discard and discount her when their means are accomplished. Charles even quips, as he was reported to have done in life, "if only she would keep quiet or go home!"
In the end, of course, Jeanne was abandoned, but she certainly did not keep quiet, as demonstrated by a play performed five hundred years after her death. It is one expression of a complex figure who certainly left her mark on history.
---------NOTABLE PASSAGES---------
Now it is always hard for superior wits to understand the fury roused by their exposures of the stupidities of comparative dullards. -GB Shaw
Joan was burnt without a hand lifted on her own side to save her. The comrades she had led to victory and the enemies she had disgraced and defeated, the French king she had crowned and the English king whose crown she had kicked into the Loire, were equally glad to be rid of her.
The maid needs no lawyers to take her part; she will be tried by her most faithful friends, all ardently desirous to save her soul from perdition.
