Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon (2000) is described as the ‘provocative biography’ of France’s Joan of Arc who, female, illiterate, and seventeen years old, led an army to defeat the English in the fifteenth century.
Joan of Arc (1412-1431) - Jeanne d'Arc - had early victories, but was essentially a failed soldier, a young girl in men’s clothes, and a ‘lunatic’ with voices in her head, who was captured, sent to trial, condemned as a demonic heretic, and burned to death at the age of nineteen. It took 500 years for the Catholic church to apologize, pardon her, and make her a saint in 1920.
Why is she so revered?
Her success was brief – five to nine months ‘at best’ – the rest was a series of defeats, and her life was lost early. Yet all of her predicitons came true.
There have been thousands of books about the brief life of Joan of Arc, but this one asks questions and seeks answers. Why would a young rural girl listen to voices in her head that told her, she said, to leave home, become a soldier, risk her life, defend France, and enable Dauphin Charles to become King of France? She had no training, yet she asked her country to give her an army. Why would anyone give a young girl an entire army?
History is told through the trial records, literature, and personal accounts, although no-one knows what was said in conversation with Robert de Baudricount, when she, unaccompanied, asked for an army with such audacity and boldness because the voices in her head told her that only she would be able to defend France against the English. Her and her alone, with an army at her feet.
She got her army, although the commanders thought initially that she was only a mascot. She thought she was a warrior. Was she delusional? She led men in the Battle of Orleans in 1429 to a major victory, and fulfilled her prophesy.
She was no tactician, no strategist; she won with ‘extraordinary physical courage and stamina’ – ‘gift, chance, accident, coincidence’ perhaps. Her strategic skills came later when she ordered the placement of artillery. She was not shy, that’s for certain. She is described as boastful with ‘bravado’ but she was ‘good at finding men to help her.’
Her bravery was not only on the battle fields, but also in the courtrooms. ‘She entered the courtroom bravely, the youngest, the only female.’
The ‘provocativeness’ of this biography is in the discussions about her mental clarity, her predictions, and, above all, her ‘femaleness.’ Was she really female, after all? Shot with an arrow, how could she valiantly fight on?
This is an interesting account of this famous young heroine and all the men who enabled her victories and all the men who brought her down – and how they did it. It is also about the rise of the recognition of her as a maiden among men, a saint among sinners, a symbol of singular ambition to defend her beloved France.
 |
| Plaque on the Church of St Sauveur in Blois, Loire Valley, France stating that Jeanne d'Arc arrived in Blois on 25 April 1429 where she organised her army and was blessed in the church before leaving on 27 April to deliver Orleans against the English |
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
MARTINA NICOLLS
SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Comments
Post a Comment