Joan of Arc: Soldier, Saint, Symbol—of What?

Joan of Arc: Soldier, Saint, Symbol—of
What?
JAMES A. FREEMAN
W
HEN SHAKESPEARE’S TALBOT REFERS TO JOAN OF ARC AND HER
liege the Dauphin in 1 Henry VI, the fiery Englishman
discounts their identity: ‘‘Pucelle or puzzel, dolphin or
dogfish, Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels’’ (1.4.107 –
08). His insulting equation of Joan’s chosen epithet pucelle, ‘‘maiden,’’
with ‘‘puzzel,’’ the Elizabethan low term for a whore, sums up how
history has memorialized her. Uncountable images portray her in contradictory ways, from conquering soldier and holy icon to patron of
causes and objects that she never encountered or would not appreciate.
‘‘There is no figure in history,’’ comments one Victorian writer, ‘‘more
incendiary to the imagination than this Joan of Arc’’ (‘‘Miss Cleveland’s
Book’’). The following pages confront the puzzle of Joan’s diverse visual
descriptions and suggest that heterogeneity has flourished because she
mysteriously evades the usual requirements of biography, autobiography, saintly legend, and hero tale.
During Joan’s short life (1412 – 31), she experienced military, spiritual, and social triumphs that energized France to resist the English
invaders. From the age of 12 or so, when she first saw lights and heard
sounds that she later identified as belonging to three saints who urged
her to aid the besieged Dauphin, the events of her biography furnished
stirring moments to recall. Her personal strength enabled her to leave
her small village, convince the Dauphin to supply her with troops, end
the siege of Orléans, free other cities, survive wounds, and finally
witness the coronation of Charles VII at Rheims on 17 July 1429.
These high-drama feats ended on 23 May 1430 when Burgundians,
The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2008
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Journal compilation r 2008, Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
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nominally French but allied with the English, captured her and handed
her over to a rigged trial and a painful death at the stake in Rouen’s
public square. Long before she was canonized in 1920, an immense
gallery of pictures had sought to communicate aspects of her earthly
life, but often with strange iconography for curious purposes.
The Problem of Misrepresentation
Certainly, a majority of portraits displayed reverence. Her life was
universally thought to be worthy of imitation. When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow strolled past the university in Lausanne on July 22,
1836, he noticed ‘‘a list of prizes for various literary performances. The
highest offering was eighty francs for the best poem on the Youth of
Jeanne d’Arc’’ (Life 1. 230). Throughout the nineteenth century in
North America alone, school graduation speeches, sermons and declamations at literary societies from Boston through St. Louis to Portland, Oregon, inspired audiences with her story. Likewise, popular
orators took Joan as their topic and stirred crowds in large cities and ‘‘a
small western town’’ (‘‘Anna Dickinson Will Speak’’). In addition, actresses like Sarah Bernhardt and Maud Adams played Joan on stage for
years, imprinting visual memories on their fans (Figure 1). As a review
of Margaret Mather’s performance said in 1890, ‘‘Every school boy and
every school girl knows the story of Jeanne d’Arc by heart, and where,
indeed can better dramatic material be found?’’ (‘‘Production of ‘Joan of
Arc’ at the Fifth Avenue Theatre’’). Ernest Hemingway’s sarcastic short
sketch ‘‘Banal Story’’ indicated the persistence of her image in 1920s
America. Mocking the articles offered to mass audiences by a superficial
but popular magazine, the story’s speaker quotes from typical headlines: ‘‘Are you a girl of eighteen? Take the case of Joan of Arc . . . Take
the case of Betsy Ross’’ (‘‘Banal Story’’ 275). Adding to the communal
repository of possible depictions, tableaux at community gatherings
and pictures in newspapers, magazines and books of statues, paintings
and engravings guaranteed that her likenesses reached uncountable
viewers.
Like other national heroes, George Washington, say, Joan appeared
on artifacts that sought to borrow her glory or remind viewers of her
power or teach the observant how to behave. Thus we are not surprised
to see her likeness in books of noble women or on religious medals
Joan of Arc
FIGURE 1.
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Eugene Grasset. ‘‘Sarah Bernhardt as Jeanne D’Arc.’’ 1891.
carried by soldiers. The saint flourished on postage stamps and souvenir
cards that depicted miniature versions of art works or photographs of
live actors costumed like her. Through France’s culture wars in the
twentieth century’s first three decades, political conservatives thought
the very mention of her name would counteract the democratic praise
for Marianne (Hanna).
As a soldier, she inspired women around the world. During 1763,
the Philippine patriot Gabriela Silang took over her assassinated husband’s role as leader of the revolt against Spain and, although captured
and executed, earned the title ‘‘Philippine Joan of Arc.’’ A kindred
countrywoman, Josephine Rizal, also replaced her slain husband to lead
guerillas in Cavite during the 1898 rebellion but escaped Spanish
reprisal by reaching America. Another young woman lead her orthodox
Macedonian countryman in a 1903 ambush against the ruling Muslim
Turks and was called by the sensational French newspaper Le Petit
Journal, ‘‘Une Jeanne d’Arc macédonienne’’ (Figure 2). The world media routinely reported positive accounts of other activist sisters in
Hungary, Java, Germany, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Poland, Arabia, Scotland (a convict), Austria, Turkey, and Ireland (Maud Gonne). In the
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FIGURE 2. Artist unknown. ‘‘Une Jeanne d’Arc macédonienne.’’ Le Petit Journal. Supplement Illustré 662 (26 July 1903): front cover.
United States, women combatants in the Revolution (Molly Pitcher),
the War of 1812 and both sides of the Civil War, a teenage girl who
defended her frontier cabin from Indians, plucky Ohio females who
hunted Wyoming buffalo, feminist speakers, labor crusaders (Mother
Jones), anarchists (Emma Goldman), Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke
College, Jenny Lind the singer and a Galveston animal rights activist
who took the whip from an abusive coachman all were rechristened
Joan.
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Often, drawings or adjectives assigned these vigorous avatars specific
features that gave readers an ambiguous familiarity with their namesake. The anti-Spanish crusader Josephine Rizal was ‘‘beautiful’’ (‘‘Joan
D’Arc. Beautiful Widow Leads Philippine Islands Rebels’’), although
‘‘saddle-colored’’ (‘‘Dusky Joan of Arc’’). Her opponent, ‘‘a Castilian
Joan of Arc’’ cooperating with the Spanish, ‘‘is slight of build and has
long auburn hair and a fair skin’’ (‘‘A Spanish Woman Fighter’’). An
Ashantee leader shared only military prowess: ‘‘unlike the famous
French ‘Joan,’ whose features we know, this dusky amazon is said to
have only one eye, one ear, and one arm, and to wear her hair hanging
down’’ (‘‘A West African Joan of Arc’’). The certainty about the looks of
the historical Joan, a patent fiction, made whiteness a given. The social
reformer Mrs. Ballington Booth was compared with her in the usual
way: ‘‘the delicately tinted skin is of rare whiteness’’ (‘‘A Modern Joan
of Arc’’). A Brazilian freedom fighter similarly was described as having
‘‘large blue eyes and blond hair’’ (‘‘A South American Amazon’’). But
alternate skin color did not discourage non-European women from
being called by her name. A young Black evangelist in Cincinnati (‘‘She
Heard Voices’’), a Pacific island rebel, ‘‘her face smeared with soot’’ (‘‘A
Samoan Joan of Arc’’), and a Chinese campaigner (‘‘Chinese Society
Ladies’’) all were enlisted in her company and expanded the inclusiveness of the public’s imagination.
During wartime, illustrations draped her in allied flags or furnished
her with a sword, horse, and resolute pose. Haskell Coffin’s famous
poster of 1917 complemented the ‘‘Uncle Sam Wants You’’ slogan
when it argued, ‘‘Joan of Arc Saved France’’; thus modern patriotic
women should help America by purchasing ‘‘War Savings Stamps.’’ She
lent her name to a World War I Saulnier monoplane ‘‘which brought
down the German biplane ‘Albatros’ at Vaudemanger.’’ (A contemporary post card pictured the aircraft unheroically, tail up on a bare field.)
For almost a century and a half, ocean-going ships had carried her
name. Just before the Second World War, the French training cruiser
Jeanne d’Arc visited Martinique on April 29, 1939. While the Cold
War rumbled, Classics Illustrated reprinted her life in comic book form
with three different covers, each appealing to some patriotic aspect of
her career. Her image on a rearing warhorse accompanied the 3/4
portrait of Charles De Gaulle on a 1972 postage stamp issued by
Sharjah. To celebrate the 1975 International Women’s Year, Liberia
issued a mixed message postage stamp: on the right, the armored
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maiden kneels in front of her cavalry and holds both banner and sword;
balancing this martial image, the left portion pictures an abstract peace
dove emblem.
The French maid inspired an international brigade of heroes. Originating in 1990s Japan and now widely available, the popular manga
and anime Kamikaze Kaitoˆ Jeanne (‘‘Holy-Wind Thief Joan [of Arc]’’)
described the mission of a 16-year-old Tokyo high school girl named
Maron Kusakabe. As the twentieth century ends, good and evil spirits
fight for power. Maron, the reincarnation of Joan, steals art objects
because they conceal demons that hope to deprave their unwary owners.
This sprightly savior occasionally receives aid from an ambitious
though tiny angel (‘‘Fin’’), who hopes his good deeds will move him up
the celestial ranks (Figure 3). More recently, young Palestinian women
suicide bombers were compared with Joan (‘‘Season of Revenge’’ 33).
Even admittedly commercial offerings sited her among valiant
peers: a sheet of Afghanistan souvenir postage stamps showed her
flanked by Napoleon and Charles De Gaulle. American radio inspired
mental pictures in the minds of countless listeners. With excitement
and reverence, CBS dutifully recreated the last moments of Joan for its
series of on-the-spot news events, CBS Is There (‘‘The Execution of Joan
of Arc’’).
More significantly, opportunistic comedy shows referred to her accomplishments with respect. Amos ‘n’ Andy twice invoked her bellicose
spirit. In the first episode, the penniless Kingfish (Freeman Gosden)
must raise $100 so his wife Sapphire may attend her younger sister’s
wedding in Georgia. He swindles Andy (Charles Correll) by selling
him a motorless jalopy he claims is an imported French car, ‘‘a beaucoup coupé.’’ Andy discovers the fraud and threatens, ‘‘I’m gonna
punch you right in the nose.’’ Kingfish blusters, ‘‘I is a symbol of
France . . . . Hittin’ me is just like sluggin’ Joan of Arc. Before you
know it, fifty million Frenchmen will be all over you.’’ The bluff works
and Andy backs down from being ‘‘a war mongrel’’ (‘‘The French Car’’).
Four weeks later, Henry Van Porter (Charles Correll) consoles the distraught Kingfish, who has unwittingly sold his wife’s valuable piano,
by saying with absurd authority, ‘‘Remember the immortal words of
Joan of Arc: ‘Don’t give up the ship’’’ (‘‘The Antique Piano’’). A 1949
episode of the popular Our Miss Brooks furthered the warrior vision. An
adoring student (Richard Crenna) asks the feisty English teacher at
Madison High, ‘‘When you stood up in Civics class yesterday, with a
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Arina Tanemura. Kamikaze Kaitô Jeanne (‘‘Holy-Wind Thief Joan’’).
Tokyo: Ribon Mascot Comics, 1998: 116.
FIGURE 3.
kind of glowing, luminous light emanating from your skull and your
chalk poised in front of the blackboard, you know who you reminded
me of?’’ Connie Brooks (Eve Arden) quips, ‘‘Joan of Arc at the Battle of
the Erasers?’’ (‘‘Student Government Day’’).
Another comedy series, My Son Jeep, juxtaposed tragedy to comedy
when it recounted how Dr. Robert Allison (Donald Cook) had been
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coerced by his housekeeper Henrietta Bixby into painting his skin
dark and donning a loincloth to participate in an ‘‘Indian’’ ceremony
at her women’s club. He laments, ‘‘I’ve never gone to a social gathering
in my underwear before.’’ His nurse Barbara Miller (Lynn Allen) tries
to encourage him: ‘‘I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, too.’’ He
replies dejectedly, ‘‘I bet they said the same thing to Joan of Arc as she
was going to the stake’’ (‘‘Mrs. Henrietta Bixby’s Installation in the
Minnehaha Lodge’’). These verbal prompts lie behind a six-minute
segment of The Simpsons TV show in which daughter Lisa Simpson
relives Joan’s career. True, mother Marge Simpson insists that Lisa/Joan
live at the end, but the whole family agrees she was a model for young
women to emulate (‘‘Tales from the Public Domain’’). In verbal
combat, her reputation for honesty gave a special sneer to an accusation
against Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell)
on a 1999 episode of TV’s Law and Order: the hostile defense lawyer
spits out sarcastically, ‘‘You’re Saint Joan of Hogan Place!’’ [100
Centre Street. New York City’s main criminal courts building]
(‘‘Justice’’).
Unlike Washington, however, who is uniformly regal whether depicted in Gilbert Stuart paintings or on wallpaper, Joan often appeared
on objects and in ways that now seem grossly inappropriate. No other
saint has been so abducted and set to work on projects unknown in her
world. She inspired an early twentieth-century song by Jack Wells,
‘‘The Joan of Arc Fox Trot.’’ Can anyone recall an analogous Saint
Teresa mambo? Racehorses as well as one of Barnum and Bailey’s
elephants bore her name.
Perhaps her purity excuses using her name for a species of crocus
bulbs currently available from a nursery in Oakland, Maryland. But
with little reason, a magazine ad from 1927 reproduced Joan’s gilded
equestrian statue at Portland, Oregon, in order to encourage viewers to
purchase a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Sometimes the artist must supply a
label because the portrait diverged so radically from common assumptions about Joan’s visage: Fate magazine from 1952 featured a spacehelmeted, crimson-lipped, bold-eyed stunner who would be at home in
an Astounding Science Fiction adventure were it not for her name (Figure
4). Other saints, especially the ones who inspired her, comfort people
by their dependable iconography: Saint Michael, in armor, usually
brandishes his sword; Saint Catherine holds her spiked wheel, Saint
Margaret stands atop the serpent Satan. Only Joan has been extracted
Joan of Arc
FIGURE 4.
609
Artist unknown. ‘‘Joan of Arc.’’ Fate 5.6 (September 1952): front
cover.
from her surroundings in order to decorate cheese graters and chocolate
wrappers.
Eager advertisers routinely juxtaposed Joan to such inappropriate
products. Her implied connection to food seems especially strange
because history says that she ate sparingly, was starved in prison and
poisoned there, perhaps intentionally. Yet innumerable fine china platters from the late nineteenth century displayed her, sometimes tied to
the fatal stake. Less dramatic but equally illogical, an 1896 ad for
baking powder pictured her in a feathery bonnet and began, ‘‘The Maid
of Orleans, by heeding prophetic voices, delivered France. Inexperienced maids of today become efficient cooks and free their households
from indigestion by obeying the voices of experience’’ (‘‘Joan of Arc.’’
Morning Oregonian) (Figure 5). She still decorates elegant silver pickle
forks, gravy ladles and asparagus servers from various tableware manufacturers. The Illinois Canning Company of Hoopeston, Illinois,
marketed a line of vegetables under her name. A current brand of
gourmet Brie cheese displays her image (Figure 6). Her head supplied
the shape for an ornate teapot and for a crystal water decanter, both
recently offered for sale on eBay.
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FIGURE 5. Artist unknown. Ad picturing Joan for Dr. Price’s Cream Baking
Powder. Morning Oregonian, 5 January 1896, 15.
FIGURE 6. Artist unknown. Container for Brie Cheese. Joan of Arc brand r.
Cheeseco, Moonachie, NJ.
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Countless other objects strained the connection between person and
product. Linking Joan to cigars or matches or ashtrays borders on the
grotesque. But just when writers in the 1800s decried the new fashion
of women smoking (‘‘one cigare de dames would have changed [Joan’s]
gender.’’ ‘‘Ladies Smoking Cigars’’; ‘‘How would you feel if suddenly
confronted with a . . . photograph of Joan of Arc . . . with a stogy in the
corner of her mouth?’’ ‘‘Men’s Thoughts About Women’’), an elegant
lithograph of her decorated a box of stogies (Figure 7). In the 1940s a
matchbook advertised the canned goods with her name; an undated
silver case for ‘‘vestas,’’ or friction matches, that has her portrait engraved on it may be aesthetically attractive but it invokes uncomfortable memories of fire.
Other offerings have equally little connection to a historical individual. The current Joan of Arc brand of ‘‘exclusive cosmetics’’ manufactured in Linwood, NY, has been developed ‘‘for sensitive skin,’’ but
evades explaining why it recalls the hardy campaigner. The vocal but
illiterate girl appeared on pencil cases. One of the most incongruous
incarnations of the focused maiden was as a frisky artiste who led a
troop of ‘‘300 Beautiful Dancing Girls In Entrancing Revels’’ for a
Ringling Brothers circus extravaganza of 1913, a companion to stars in
other shows honoring Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba (Figure 8).1
FIGURE 7. Artist unknown. Cigar box label: Joan Kneeling and Presenting
Sword. Chromolithograph for cigar box, c. 1880.
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FIGURE 8. Artist unknown. Ringling Brothers Circus poster. Cincinnati, OH.
Strobridge Litho, 1913. Image courtesy of Circus World Museum, Baraboo,
WI. s Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey.
The holy Joan was never forgotten, yet that pious exemplar has been
forced to coexist on film with transgressive doubles. In Carl Dreyer’s
1928 silent masterpiece, Maria Falconetti’s Joan, persecuted by grim
theologians, remains faithful to her other-worldly mission, but has
little in common with the time traveler Joan of Bill and Ted’s Excellent
Adventure (1989), a hot babe who discovers her vocation at a modern
suburban mall as an aerobics instructor. Ingrid Bergman’s beleaguered
though poised defendant in the film version of Maxwell Anderson’s
Saint Joan (1948) contradicts the plaintive Joan in Sting’s 1993 video,
who wears armor or holds a crucifix (‘‘If I Ever Lose My Faith in
You’’). The patriot who fought only for king and god must share her
name with the leader of a band of Mongolian women outlaws who
kidnap seven western women in Ulrike Ottinger’s 1989 leisurely study
of cultural differences (Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia). Even an X-rated
video sought to exploit the chaste girl: The Original Wicked Woman
(1993) stars Chasey Lain as an alien who visits earth to awaken
the erotic energy of historical figures like Joan of Arc, here played
by P. J. Sparxx.
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Other commercial reincarnations also contradicted fact. The practical woman soldier who wore men’s attire while battling shares only a
name with the aristocrat, willowy model of 1890 wearing a high
fashion summer habit made of silk and grenadine (‘‘Summer Fashions’’)
(Figure 9). Later the same year, while she was in the news as a possible
candidate for sainthood, a second gown named in her honor, made from
‘‘fine white cashmere embroidered in silver fleur-de-lis,’’ was fit ‘‘for the
Trousseau of an Archduchess’’ (‘‘The Woman’s World’’). Two years later
FIGURE 9. Artist unknown. Joan of Arc dress illustrating ‘‘Summer Fashions.’’
The [Chicago] Daily Inter Ocean, 13 June 1890, page 21.
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Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly treated its readership to yet another
costume, this one ‘‘dashing . . . suggestive of victory . . . of white satin,
brocaded with gold-tinsel fleur-de-lys’’ (‘‘In Fashion’s Glass’’). These
Victorian ladies, though, differed less from their namesake than the
sexualized figure bursting with anatomical exuberance out of fetishistic
leather and metal armor in Simon Bisley’s 2001 poster for Heavy Metal
(Bisley). The pucelle who conspicuously avoided romantic entanglements reemerged in a 1948 comic book as the object of an adoring
young man’s suicidal leap from a rooftop to rescue her on her way to
the stake (Joan of Arc. Ideal). The asexual maid who died the painful
death of a condemned sinner has somehow been linked to a naked eye
catcher, writhing dreamily in fire on a 2002 Leonard Cohen t-shirt
(Cohen) (Figure 10).
Her revival in such disparate guises demonstrates how needy, how
opportunistic, and how inventive memorialization can be. Those who
exploited her life treated data as nondirective and pliable: the very
nation that abandoned her subsequently adopted her; the same religion
that condemned her later sanctified her. The compliant vocabularies of
partisan politics, theology, and personal experience encouraged observers to impose their truth on apparently indeterminate evidence. A
trivial modern joke may symbolize how her life mysteriously invited
opposing explanations: ‘‘What does Jeanne D’Arc mean in France?’’
‘‘There’s no light in the bathroom.’’
Joan’s distorted likenesses have always baffled observers. In 1696
John Evelyn conveyed his uncertainty about her essential character
when, listing figures whose likenesses appeared on medals, he paid her
the dubious honor of placing her among ‘‘the famous Viragos’’ and
‘‘Impostors, Heresiarchs and Heterodoxi’’ such as Simon Magus, Mahomet, John of Leyden, George Fox and Pope Joan (Evelyn, Ch. 7). She
raises an important specific question: why did her well-documented
vita permit such varied emphases? However, the query goes beyond one
person, grand though she is, to pose a universal problem about the odd
ways in which history commodifies celebrities. Four explanations help
to clarify why Joan has appeared in so many unexpected guises. The
first theory concerns biography; the second autobiography; a third the
pattern of saints’ lives; the last the attributes of heroes. None of these
genres controlled her and therefore alternate realities could substitute a
commercially attractive object in place of the time-bound young
woman of fact.
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FIGURE 10. Artist unknown, Spanish language prayer card: ‘‘Oración al Anima Sola,’’ prayer to a lone soul in Purgatory. 2 – 3/1600 3 – 15/16.’’ Printed
in Italy. Design used on Leonard Cohen’s Hanes t-shirt advertising his 2002
Song ‘‘Joan of Arc.’’
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The Dubious Control of Biography
Even in a post-Kantian and deconstructive age, we should wonder why
verifiable biographical stimuli somehow failed to discipline the artifacts that later claimed kinship with Joan. Found in antique stores and
on hundreds of eBay sites, innumerable silver cuff links and playing
cards keep alive a pseudo-person who, unlike her historical namesake,
values personal adornment and games. From her own day, long before
Jules Quicherat published her trial records in the 1840s, people responded to her name as to a Rorschach outline and filled in details,
some justified, others purely subjective. Christine de Pizan’s adulatory
poem Le Ditie´ de Jehanne d’Arc (finished 31 July 1429) began liberating
Joan from prescriptive identities by imaging her as a radically new
female hero. Not a suffering victim whose passivity elicits grudging
admiration from hostile onlookers, this bellatrix swept away foreigners
and would destroy pagans in a future crusade. Joan outranked male
fighters like Moses, Joshua, and Gideon. Verbally, de Pizan initiated a
half-millennium of unpredictable simulacra.
The lack of some data about Joan discouraged no one. We have little
idea about her physical appearance. But just as other artists relentlessly
pictured Jesus, whom the Gospels refused to describe, so the Joan
illuminators genetically altered her. In 1949 she became a sexually
suggestive plaything with ‘‘Lustrous, Honey-Colored Hair,’’ one whom the
wholesale buyers of toys at New York’s Hotel McAlpin could admire up
close: ‘‘You Have a Date With a Beautiful Doll in Room 1009.’’ Her body
probably did not conform to twentieth-century ideas of proportion. However, Howard Pyle painted her as Mark Twain described her, ‘‘not as a
strapping middle-aged fishwoman’’ with a peasant’s solidity, but rather
with ‘‘a lithe young slender figure’’ (Saint Joan of Arc, Harper’s Monthly
Magazine, Twain’s words 12, Pyle painting 9). Likewise, the author of
Classics Illustrated narrated her escape through a prison window: ‘‘After
forcing her slim body through the bars, she leaped to the ground’’ (Joan of
Arc, Classics Illustrated 40). That same year, 1950, a writer for Fate magazine, which specialized in stories of the occult, inflated the Maid’s dimensions: when Joan entered the court of Charles, ‘‘the men marveled at
her rounded figure’’ (‘‘The Ten Proofs of Joan of Arc’’ 20).
Whatever her body type, conventional memory gave it credit for good
looks. An episode of radio’s Molle Mystery Theater had James Talbot (Bill
Quinn), an escaped convict, recount his phantasmagoric vision of a masked
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FIGURE 11.
Finger puppet/refrigerator magnet: Joan of Arc. The Unemployed
Philosophers Guild. 2007. http://www.philosophersguild.com.
ball. He sees Captain Kidd, Cleopatra, Luther, Napoleon; then ‘‘there was
Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc, more beautiful than I’d remembered. Her mask
gone. Staring up at the sky’’ (‘‘Death Wears a Mask’’). From 2003 to 2005,
the TV series Joan of Arcadia pictured a modern avatar of the physically
indeterminate saint as a winsome 16-year-old, Joan Girardi (Amber
Tamblyn). Daughter of the police chief and a part-time aid at her high
school, this Joan radiates a nonthreatening attractiveness. God speaks to
her as a cute boy, a little girl or a lunch counter lady, forcing her to learn
chess, build a boat or try out for cheerleading, an activity for which her
looks qualify her. In one episode, she must get her driver’s license, ask the
class bad boy for a date and look up information about Joan of Arc (‘‘Saint
Joan’’). Like Plastic Man in comic books, the physiques of these Joans
stretched and shrunk to accommodate, not truth, but audience expectation.
She could equally appear as a monumental statue in a public square or as a
3-in.-tall combination finger puppet/refrigerator magnet (Figure 11).
The Dubious Control of Autobiography
These freedoms from biographical restraint become more curious when
we admit that the information about Joan’s life might better be called
autobiography. The facts surface from her own words, mainly to satisfy
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the hostile probing of the three Public Examinations. Twain reminds
us that of all life stories, ‘‘this is the only one whose validity is confirmed to
us by oath’’ (Twain, Saint Joan of Arc, 3. Twain’s emphasis). If we quickly
claim that many autobiographies fall into one of three patterns and that
Joan evades their predictability, we can offer yet another reason why
subsequent interpreters have felt free to exploit her.
The three major modes of self-display may be named Confessional,
Processional and Intellectual/Spiritual. In the mid-fourth century, Libanius the pagan orator, prepared the way for later Confessionals by
conveying information in the format, ‘‘Here are my heart, my body and
my head. See how they behaved. See what they are now.’’ People as
different as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giacomo Casanova and Frank Harris took advantage of this catchall format by including data about
family, education, travels, love adventures and odd experiences. Some
authors claimed to pattern their tell-all accounts—Libanius meditated
on Fortune, Rousseau on the debilitating effects of civilization—but
this form accommodated extraneous details. The Processional model,
exemplified by Benvenuto Cellini, Napoleon, Andrew Carnegie and
Theodore Roosevelt, skipped most self-evaluation in order to prove
‘‘I’m a part of all I’ve met. These are the celebrities with whom I’ve
marched and fought.’’ The third possible model for autobiography, that
of the Intellectual/Spiritual odyssey, includes the works of Saint Augustine, John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, John Ruskin, Edmund Gosse, and Henry Adams. They spotlighted only those incidents
that formed their higher consciousness and so limited their accounts to
events, teachers or ideas that influenced their final world view, eliminating, sometimes, information about their social interactions. Augustine, for example, concluded the first ten personal chapters of his
Confessions with a final didactic section proving he can now read Genesis with insight granted only to believers; Mill barely mentioned
Harriet Taylor, his psychological savior, while he recounts how his
philosophical beliefs grew.
Unfortunately, when three such rough but stable categories of autobiography seek to confine Joan’s words about herself, they collapse as
quickly as did the defenses at Orléans and thus allow imaginative
artists leeway when recreating her. Unlettered though she was, Joan,
the modest farm girl who admitted, ‘‘I do not know A from B’’ (Interrogation at Poitiers, March 1429), understood that her physical
salvation on campaigns or in front of hostile theologians depended
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upon her maintaining the persona of a pious, chaste maid, une pucelle.
Joan’s self-revelations brilliantly combined techniques from all autobiographical modes in order to protect herself. She emphasized, in the manner of Confessional, the interplay of action with immediate motivation
(first I believed the angels; then I convinced others to take me to the
Dauphin; next I rallied our troops; . . .); equally, she pointed unashamedly
to famous deeds and patrons, to cities liberated and royal patrons, as do
Processional writers; finally, she utilized the tactic of Intellectual/Spiritual
authors by rejecting the idea that she created herself and giving credit to
her supra-personal mentors, God and His messengers.
This unique amalgam of techniques may escape the prescriptions of
autobiography, but it adheres, however unconsciously, to the same
tripartite way that Old Testament prophets proclaimed their credentials. David Freedman identifies the Call, the Commission, and the
Message from Yahweh. Although not in control of the order of her
disclosures, Joan, too, at various times recounted the Call from divine
powers as Moses did. Burning bush or Jacques d’Arc’s light-spackled
grove, each site witnessed the invitation from divinity. Unlike Moses
and Jeremiah and Jonah, though like Amos, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, Joan
meekly listened to the voices. She sought the comfort, attention and
honor of their presence. Her lack of evasion or hesitancy places her in
the company of obedient Abraham and, later, Saul-becoming-Paul on
the road to Damascus.
The second act after the Call to a prophet, the Commission, both
defines Joan and again submerges her in this larger archetype of chosen
agent. She too will free a people, replicating the miracle of the physical
exodus from Egypt and the spiritual reformations of Jonah’s Nineveh
and Paul’s Palestine. A tool of holy salvation history, her assignment
demanded remarkable personal reorientation: from local farm girl to
wandering knight, from compliant daughter to commander of strangers, from worshipper to object of veneration.
The third component of the prophetic experience after the Call and
the Commission, the Message, similarly links Joan’s life to Old Testament worthies. Like them, she acted to bring about general, not
personal, growth; like them, she obeyed god, not human beings; like
them, Joan was the instrument to link past, present, and future.
Whether Joan learned such a prophetic pattern from her frequent visits
to the church at Domrémy or whether they are innate in chosen vessels
cannot be determined. But if we examine Joan’s admissions about
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herself through this lens of prophecy, we can let go of the need to
determine whether her words qualify as Confessional, Processional, or
Intellectual/Spiritual autobiography. The data she revealed meld in the
same way that all prophetic experience coalesces during a moment of
rapture, that extraordinary happening when the ecstatic’s own feelings
and mind fuse with an Other inside a privileged spatial and temporal
temenos, or holy zone.
Upsetting to rationalists, who value boundaries and schemata for
speech, Joan’s self-descriptions put her life beyond most familiar formulas and opened the way for the curious innovations artists later
employed to characterize her. The beyond-rational quality of her history both cooperates with and outruns inspirational Plutarchan or
sensational Suetonian biography. It redefines autobiography by insisting upon the ordinariness of the mundane except as vivified by the
presence of the divine. Such mixing of descriptive genres clarifies why
Joan has been so amenable to repackaging. She is unique. Even if
bovine tuberculosis or epilepsy caused her lights and voices,2 the singular way by which she explained herself challenges an auditor because
it escapes conventional literary patterns.
The Dubious Control of Saintliness
The accounts of previous saints might have narrowed our concept of
Joan’s expansive persona. Saints often appeared to be as individualistic
as secular figures described in biographies and autobiographies; still,
they usually fulfilled certain quantitative and qualitative expectations.
Most of the 864 saints active in western Christendom between 1000
and 1700 studied by Weinstein and Bell differed from her. During
seven centuries of adolescent saints, only 67 had ‘‘Visionary experience’’
and only 74 were ‘‘Active in affairs of state’’ (Saints & Society 127 – 28).
Joan was eminently ‘‘healthy-minded,’’ not ‘‘morbid-minded,’’ as
William James phrased it in The Varieties of Religious Experience (Lectures 4 – 7). de Pizan noted the purposeful self-activation that immediately distinguished her from other saints who earned veneration by
suffering. Blessed Henry Suso, in the twelfth century, spent 16 years
wearing leather under garments studded with sharp nails that lacerated
his flesh at every movement (The Life 56). Santa Fina of San Gimignano
lay on a board in her parents’ home for most of her 15 years, passively
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621
enduring rats that gnawed at her open sores. When she died in 1253,
all demons fled the city and all the church bells rang (The Legend of the
Holy Fina, Virgin of Santo Gimignano). Yet angels like Michael, the
warrior who traditionally defeated Satan during the War in Heaven,
commanded Joan to punish others, not herself. Complementing him,
Saint Catherine of Alexandria appeared, the activist who denounced
Maxentius for persecuting Christians, out argued 50 male pagan philosophers and broke the spiked wheel designed to kill her. Saint Margaret of
Antioch completes the trinity of energetic advisors. Like Joan, Margaret
spurned an unwanted suitor. When swallowed by Satan, Margaret pluckily irritated his throat so he regurgitated her. Thus we do not remember
Joan as we do her Burgundian fellow saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
(1647 – 90), who was also canonized in 1920, or Saint Edmund of East
Anglia, the ninth-century martyr-king, both of whom carved Jesus’ name
on their flesh; Joan used her sword to slash enemies of god.
Many saints led vigorous lives and the monasteries they established
or clothes they wore or bones that supported their earthly bodies often
survived their deaths. People who wish to visualize Joan in some
physical form lack both evocative places and objects. The public square
in Rouen where she died is just that, a space not notably imprinted
with her personality. To be fair, neither does Florence’s Piazza Signora
make the casual visitor recall Savonarola, who was burned there in
1498 after a half-decade of ascetic rule. Yet a devotee of the fierce
Dominican can see a few blocks away in San Marco the cell in which he
lived, his cape, his desk, his bed and his special banner. Material relicta
do not exist for Joan. Peter Brown reminds us in The Cult of the Saints
that a worshipper close to the praesentia, ‘‘the physical presence of the
holy,’’ ideally accesses the sacred individual’s potentio, or transforming
power, when viewing his or her relics: ‘‘the fullness of the invisible
person could be present at a mere fragment of his physical remains and
even at objects’’ (88). Joan’s executioner threw into the river what little
of her tormented body the fire did not consume. She left no relics and
thus tacitly invited later artists to provide her with, as they said in Late
Latin, tangibilia, or palpable accessories.
The Dubious Control of Heroism
Although lacking vestiges of her physical presence, popular memory
curiously turned down several personal acts, which, in other hero tales,
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identified the protagonist. She rode a horse, white, in many accounts,
but it never became her companion. If it indeed was skittish when she
first met it, her calming influence did not inspire a legend like that
associated with Alexander the Great, who supposedly tamed Bucephalos by turning the steed so its shadow would not frighten it. Saint
Francis, her near contemporary, preached to birds and beasts and tamed
the wolf of Gubbio. Other saints kept company with a dog, mule,
goose, cow, boar, stag, fish, spider, weasel—all hints of acceptable
animal helpers that Joan’s followers rejected. For her, a horse supplied
transportation, preferably to battle, not a comrade.
Likewise, in March 1429 she accurately told the court that a rusty
sword with five incised crosses lay hidden under the altar of Saint
Catherine’s church at Fierbois in Touraine. This prophecy resembles
Saint Helena’s discovery of the true cross, a miracle that Piero della
Francesca commemorated with his impressive frescoes at Arezzo
(1460s). However, Joan’s illustrators ignored her prediction. In the
same way, artists passed over the sword she broke while slapping a
camp follower at St. Denis (7 September 1430). These two weapons
never turned into signifiers such as other named blades identified with
Arthur, Lancelot, Bevis of Hampton, El Cid, Charlemagne, Roland,
Oliver, Ogier the Dane, the Saracen-turned-Christian Otinel, Rinaldo,
Siegfried—and so on. From 1 June 2001 until August 1, 2002, the
television series Witchblade vividly showed how New York City police
detective Sara Pezzini (Yancy Butler), searching for the killer of her
childhood friend, employed a magical gauntlet that once belonged to
Joan. It turns into an avenging sword as she extirpates evil. Manufacturers of military regalia routinely offer replicas of swords Joan
might have wielded. Despite these artistic and commercial attempts to
connect her with a mystic blade, hagiographers resolutely refused to
crowd military props onto the stage of her life.
Several scenes from Joan’s career resemble events from the legends of
heroes, but, like the relics, did not generate art. The newly converted
Constantine had a dream before his expedition against Maxentius that
came true on 28 October 312 when he slaughtered pagans at the
Milvian Bridge. That victory inspired Peter Paul Rubens in 1623 – 25
to design an enormous tapestry now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Joan apparently inspired no mythmaking artist to recall
the collapse of the bridge approaching the bastion of Les Tourelles
outside Orléans (7 May 1429). This surprising accident killed the
Joan of Arc
623
English captain William Glasdale, who had insulted her, and many of
his heavily armored knights. Other curious incidents that appear readymade for gallant illustration likewise never materialized in her pictures. The letter Joan wrote to the English demanding their submission was tied to an arrow and shot into the enemy camp on 22 March
1429; the letter from Julius Caesar to the besieged Quintus Cicero in
Gaul during 54 BCE was similarly attached to a spear and flung into
the Roman camp. Neither pious engravings of la Pucelle nor sensational cards given with bullion powder and cigarettes depicted this
episode.
A final happening asks for a larger-than-life image: Joan’s leap from
her Burgundian prison tower at Jean de Luxembourg’s castle of Beaurevoir in 1430. The fall of at least 30’ left her unconscious though
otherwise unharmed. Artisans have responded to many other descents
of both bad and good characters. Satan’s tumble from heaven’s ramparts, repeatedly pictured, and Simon Magus’ plunge from a tall Roman building, a popular scene carved on the cathedral at Autun in the
twelfth century by Ghislebertus and painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in
1463, showed the punishment for delusion. These punitive falls balanced the redeeming martyrdom of 10,000 Christians in Persia, pushed
over a cliff by the infidel King Sapor and etched by Albrecht Dürer
around 1496. Milton memorably recalled a similar slaughter in the
Alps of the semi-Protestant Waldensians, ‘‘Slain by the bloody
Piedmontese that rolled/Mother with infant down the rocks’’ (Sonnet
15, ‘‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont,’’ The Poems 412). Cellini,
who leapt from Castel Sant’Angelo in 1537, flattered himself with a
proud word picture—although he admits he broke his leg
(Autobiography, 202 – 05). And Casanova bragged about his escape on
25 August 1785 from the Doge’s prison in Venice, jumping down
at night from the steep roof (Casanova, History of My Escape). Thorgal:
The Archers, a modern award-winning graphic novel set in the middle
ages, begins with the leap of an athletic young woman from a tall tower
in the dark of night. She not only survives but, to enhance our
admiration, displays the amulet she has stolen from the undeserving
enemy tribe (3 – 4).
Neither Joan nor her most ardent fan magnified these fit-for-legend
incidents. No angels eased her descent from the tower like those
who reputedly saved the life of a priest tossed from the lofty Acoma
Pueblo in New Mexico during the Native American Revolt of
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1680. Artists refused to insert Joan into a popular legend of Mary, who
had supported hanging criminals so they could confess their sins.
Both the Maid and her portrayers bypassed the swashbuckling or
the miraculous, another denial of convention that permitted atypical
pictures.
The Dubious Control of Images
People gave Joan palpability by emphasizing traditional and novel
motifs. She annoyed the theologians of Paris partly because she wore
men’s clothes. Such cross-dressing seems reasonable if one must act like
a soldier, but those judges often referred to it as a sign of evil intention.
Holinshed in 1587 neatly juxtaposed the sartorial and devotional demands of these traditionalists when he said they demanded, ‘‘that from
thenceforth she should cast off her unnatural wearing of man’s habiliments and keep her to garments of her own kind [gender], [and]
abjure her pernicious practices of sorcery and witchcraft’’ (Shakespeare’s
Holinshed 157 – 58). As late as the twentieth century, women who
dressed like men invited derision. Ordinarily, pictures of the martial
maid depicted her in silvery armor, often on a white horse, usually
carrying a banner or wielding a sword. This costume began in fifteenth-century manuscripts and spawned innumerable copies. Monumental equestrian statues before the main portal of Rheims Cathedral
and in countless French towns shrunk onto small souvenir cards such as
those issued around 1905 by the Suchard company, Neuchatel, Switzerland, as a premium for buyers of chocolate or cocoa. In 1936 Godfrey Phillips included her picture in the ‘‘English Famous Youngsters’’
series; in 1937 so did Liebig, a French manufacturer of powdered
broths; also in 1937 Player’s cigarettes featured her on horseback for its
series of ‘‘Famous Beauties’’ (Figure 12).
Especially during World War I, the icon of a mounted, uniformed
woman appealed to civilians on this side of Periscope Pond. One poster
by Lucille Patterson in 1917 urged other women who carried books, a
rake and canned goods to help the National League of Womans Service.
The central figure that inspired such duty is a uniformed woman carrying an enormous American flag and confidently mounted on a brown
horse. The next year, Herbert Andrew Paus painted three women, two
in farm boots, blue smocks with matching pants, hoe, and bucket.
Joan of Arc
625
FIGURE 12.
A. K. MacDonald. Joan of Arc. ‘‘Famous Beauties’’ series, Player’s
Cigarettes, 1937.
They stand in front of a third flag-displaying female, this time astride a
plow horse (Rawls 62, 63).
The visual equation between a heroine on horseback and some moral
cause probably tempered social unease at militarism. Currier & Ives
engraved two prohibitionists in 1874, smashing with their battle
axes barrels of liquor ‘‘In The Name Of God And Humanity,’’ and
exuding a solemn beauty. Thomas Nast replicated the subject on
the cover of Harper’s Weekly for 7 March 1874. Having dismounted,
the victorious female fighter steps on a dragon-like bottle of
‘‘Poisonous Whisky And Rum’’ and quotes Shakespeare’s
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Joan (‘‘Woman . . . , do what thou canst to save our honour. Drive them
from the country, and be immortalized’’) (Figure 13). Another armorclad American rider appeared in Cosmopolitan of 1899, hair streaming
and sword at the ready, while she approaches ‘‘Castle Prejudice’’ with
no hint of artistic disapproval.
The tolerance of these allegorical women contradicted the censure of
Bloomerism in daily life of the 1890s. Some observers merely reported
Thomas Nast ‘‘The Good and Bad Spirits at War’’ Harper’s Weekly
18.897 (7 March 1874): front cover.
FIGURE 13.
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bloomer-clad bike riders, one impersonating Joan (‘‘Dancing Reels on
Bicycle Wheels’’). Other writers defended the novel costume: ‘‘They
were unquestionably worn by Zenobia, Boadicea, Joan of Arc, and
Maria Theresa’’ (‘‘A Leaf from the End-of-the-Century Dictionary.’’
Compare the similar argument in ‘‘A Plea for Bloomers’’). The humorist Bill Nye took advantage of the topic: ‘‘It also required great
heroism and presence of mind for Joan of Arc to put on a pair of
checkered pantaloons and fight the enemies of her country’’ (Nye).
Three cartoons, all from 1895, remind us how grudging was the
permission for women to appear in masculine attire. The cover of Puck
pictured a confident ‘‘Modern’’ young woman in plaid knickers being
admonished by her mother: ‘‘Goodness me, Kitty! Don’t stand there
with your hands in your pockets, that way;—you don’t know how ungentlemanly it looks.’’ Similarly, a Life drawing by William H. Walker
had a peeved husband address his wife as she stands boldly in a dividedleg skirt, tying her cravat before a mirror: ‘‘My dear Susan. I wish you
would keep your trowsers on your own side of the closet.’’ Perhaps
referring to Susan B. Anthony, the joke is milder than another one in
Puck by Frederick Burr Opper, Hearst’s favorite political artist and creator of the pioneering comic strip Happy Hooligan. ‘‘We Are Getting
There Fast’’ depicted a ‘‘Stern Parent’’ asking his effeminate son, ‘‘Willy,
isn’t that Miss Bloomer going soon?—it’s nearly eleven o’clock.’’
Obviously controlled by the buxom, confident, sport-coat-and-pantswearing amazon at the door, Willy weakly explains, ‘‘Yes, Mama: she’s
just saying good night!’’ Part of the humor is visual—the figures are
clearly exaggerated—and part social—the concerned parent is Willy’s
mother, who also dresses in male frock coat and knee britches.
According to these widely distributed sketches, apparel could vary
in proportion to the distance from domestic life. With mathematical
exactness, the closer a woman who dressed as a man resembled Joan by
campaigning for abstract causes, the more latitude she could claim; the
closer a woman participated in ordinary household and familial activities, the more such a novel costume was suspect.
Conclusion
We end as we began, marveling equally at Joan’s extraordinary appeal
and its malleability. Observers can escape her raw force by gazing at
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James A. Freeman
ludicrous portrayals on ceramic coin banks. The spectrum of similitudes often encourages an observer to despair of ever finding a fit
memorial for her. How does a gilded statuette of Joan remain true to
any sense of propriety when it sports an alarm clock on its base? True,
it is difficult to agree upon her significance. Historically, her traits
alternately attract and repel. Although a nationalist, she openly supported a corrupt fifteenth-century church and an ineffectual French
monarchy. Also, she advocated beheading independent thinkers like
Jan Hus, she dreamed of again slaughtering all infidels in the Holy
Land and she preferred war to diplomacy. Because one woman’s timespecific morality contradicted that of people in other eras, many later
observers amended it.
Psychologically, a powerful woman, no matter how pure her life,
often prompts some chauvinists to diminish her: every Pentheselia
should be captured by Theseus. In addition, notable figures, regardless
of gender, remind some people of their own inadequacy so they employ
a technique like Freud’s dream censor to metamorphose the awesome
into a joke. The sarcastic cartoon by Charles G. Bush in Harper’s Weekly
during 1869 had a wall portrait of Joan in her armor looking down on
unattractive Sorosis women as they campaign for a female ‘‘Governess.’’
These defense mechanisms against a strong woman or a notable leader,
evidence of either fear or a relentless instinct to cut down all tall
flowers, could lie behind some of Joan’s unseemly pictures.
Less ponderously, I point to the universal urge to reverse roles.
Regardless of the facts about Joan’s altruism and high-mindedness, she
cannot be immune to the saturnalian impulse of audiences to interchange high with low. References that diminish her can augment another hero. Superman’s cousin Linda Danvers encountered Lincoln,
Joan and Sir Isaac Newton in an alternate universe. Supergirl helps
each, saving the crowd at Gettysburg from a bleacher that collapses,
melting the swords and blowing away the horses of Joan’s battlefield
enemies and protecting Newton from a misfired rocket (‘‘Please Stop
My Funeral!’’). Supergirl demonstrates her own power by rescuing
otherwise competent celebrities and, necessarily, reducing their charisma. When such wheel of Fortuna falls from high estate assist
commercial projects, then two urges, rebellion and hucksterism, cooperate. Many artifacts would strike Joan as idolatry.
‘‘Move on. Don’t look at me,’’ she might say. ‘‘Support God’s cause.’’
However, her quest to implement divine ideals has been so mixed with
Joan of Arc
629
transient goals that we can marvel, as did her own countrymen, at how often
the sacred and the profane mingle without clearly identifying themselves.
NOTES
1. More than two decades before, 970 actors in Paris appeared in ‘‘‘Jeanne d’Arc,’ a spectacular
equestrian opera’’ (‘‘Joan of Arc.’’ The Milwaukee Sentinel. Also, ‘‘Joan of Arc.’’ Boston Daily
Advertiser). Linking Joan to women as diverse as ‘‘Helen of Troy . . . Iphigenia . . . Cleopatra . . .
Jeptha’s daughter . . . Fair Rosamond’’ was a common practice (‘‘The Roses of June’’).
2. The theory that Joan experienced sound and light because she suffered from physical ailments
first appeared (so far as I can discover) in 1958. The Butterfields suggested bovine tuberculosis,
a hypothesis reported in Time (17 November 1958): 48; Henker cleared her of any major
psychiatric disorders, at least those listed in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III; Foote-Smith
and Bayne suggested that Joan had epilepsy.
3. Their nonreverential attitude continued an atypical suspicion of Joan from the previous century. One writer in 1870 suggested she was a myth like Romulus, Remus, and King Arthur
(‘‘The Lies of History’’); another accusation in the same year wondered whether she merely
hallucinated (‘‘Freaks of the Imagination’’); later, she was accused of being ‘‘a very shabby
humbug’’ and a ‘‘crank’’ with ‘‘a disordered intellect’’ (‘‘Another Idol Shattered’’); her possible
insanity was discussed in several essays (Noyes, Weir).
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Pizan, Christine de. ‘‘The Tale of Joan of Arc.’’ The Selected Writings. Ed.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, trans Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
and Kevin Brownlee. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. 252 – 62.
‘‘A Plea for Bloomers.’’ The [Denver] Evening Post, 9 Aug. 1895: 2.
Newspaper column.
‘‘Please Stop My Funeral!’’ Adventure Comics DC. 383. Aug. 1969.
Comic book.
‘‘Production of ‘Joan of Arc’ at the Fifth Avenue Theatre.’’ The [New
Orleans] Daily Picayune, 16 Dec. 1890: 9. Newspaper column.
Quicherat, Jules (ed). Procès de la Condamnation et de Réhabilitation de
Jeanne d’Arc, dite la Pucelle (5 volumes). Paris: Société de l’Histoire
de France, 1841, 1844, 1845, 1847, 1849.
Ratnesar, Romesh.‘‘Season of Revenge.’’ Time, 8 Apr. 2002: 24 – 37.
Rawls, Walton. Wake Up, America! World War I and the American Poster.
New York: Abbeville, 1988.
Joan of Arc
633
Ringling Brothers poster: ‘‘Magnificent 1200 Character Spectacle – Joan of
Arc.’’ Cincinnati, OH: Strobridge Litho, 1913. Reproduced in Jack
Rennert, 100 Years of Circus Posters. London: Michael Dempsey, 1975.
‘‘The Roses of June.’’ St. Paul Daily News, 31 May 1890: 2. Newspaper
column.
‘‘Saint Joan.’’ Joan of Arcadia. Dir.: Martha Mitchell. Episode 9, 21
Nov. 2003. Television program.
Saint Joan. Dir: Victor Fleming. 1948. Film.
‘‘A Samoan Joan of Arc.’’ The Biloxi Daily Herald 1.294, 21 July 1894:
6. Newspaper column.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works. Ed. G. B. Harrison.
1.4.107-08. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952.
Shakespeare’s Holinshed. Ed. Richard Hosley. New York: Capricorn, 1968.
‘‘She Heard Voices.’’ Idaho Statesman, 12 Feb. 1898: 4. Newspaper column.
‘‘A South American Amazon.’’ The Macon Telegraph, 10 Nov. 1893: 7.
Newspaper column. Reprinted as ‘‘A Brazilian Joan of Arc.’’ The
Kansas City [Missouri] Star 41.181, 16 Apr. 1894: 5.
‘‘A Spanish Woman Fighter.’’ The Biloxi Daily Herald 2.226, 10 May
1900: 3. Newspaper column.
‘‘Student Government Day.’’ Our Miss Brooks. 16 Jan. 1949. CBS. Radio
program.
‘‘Summer Fashions.’’ The [Chicago] Daily Inter Ocean, 13 June 1890: 21.
Joan of Arc dress.
Tales from the Public Domain: ‘‘Homer as Odysseus; Lisa as Joan of
Arc; Bart as Hamlet.’’ The Simpsons. Episode 283. 17 Mar. 2002.
Television program.
Suso, Henry. The Life. Trans. T. F. Knox. London: Burns, Lambert, and
Oates, 1865.
Twain, Mark. ‘‘Saint Joan of Arc.’’ Harper’s Monthly Magazine 105, Dec.
1904: 3 – 12.
‘‘Une Jeanne d’Arc macédonienne.’’ Le Petit Journal: Supplement Illustre´,
26 July 1903: unknown artist, front cover illustration.
Walker, William H. ‘‘Nowadays.’’ Life 26.677, 19 Dec. 1895: front
cover cartoon.
Weinstein, Donald, and Rudolph M. Bell. Saints & Society. Chicago and
London: Chicago UP, 1982.
Weir, James.‘‘Prophecy and Insanity.’’ The Boston Investigator 15 Sept.
1894: 24, column B. Newspaper column.
Wells, Jack. ‘‘Joan of Arc Foxtrot.’’ Vintage Music Roll Q. R. S. 33203.
Probably early twentieth century.
‘‘A West African Joan of Arc.’’ The [Chicago] Sunday Inter Ocean 24.315,
2 Feb. 1896: 34. Newspaper column.
634
James A. Freeman
Witchblade. 1 June 2001 – 1 Aug. 2002. Television series.
‘‘The Woman’s World.’’ The Milwaukee Journal, 4 Aug. 1890: 6.
Newspaper column.
‘‘You Have a Date With a Beautiful Doll in Room 1009.’’ Norma Manufacturing Company. Playthings Magazine, Feb. 1949. Advertisement.
James Freeman is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts/
Amherst. He has written or edited books on John Milton as well as essays on
subjects ranging from the biblical Samson, Hesiod, medieval Latin poetry,
Shakespeare and Tennyson, the history of nutrition in exercise science,
cemeteries in Florence, Rome, Singapore, and Switzerland. He was a Visiting
Scholar at the American Academy, Rome. He currently edits The Association
for Gravestone Studies Quarterly.