Chapter 4. Representation of a Historical Figure: Saint Joan as a Symbol of Feminist Anachronism

Transcription

1 Chapter 4 Representation of a Historical Figure: Saint Joan as a Symbol of Feminist Anachronism JOAN. O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long? (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 1009) George Bernard Shaw s Saint Joan (1923) is a play about the life and death of Joan of Arc, one of the most remarkable French heroines and Catholic saints in the history. This chronicle play consists of six scenes and an Epilogue setting in the Middle Ages at the time of the Hundred Years War between French sovereign and Kingdom of England waged from for the throne of France. The play focuses on the story of Joan the Maid ( ), a teenage and illiterate peasant girl inspired by what she claimed visions from God to dress in armor, lead a French army to defeat England, and patronize Charles the Dauphin to become King Charles VII of France. Shortly after her victories, Joan was captured and sold to the English army. They brought her to a political motivated trial held by an ecclesiastical court for an accusation of heresy before executed by burning at the stake. Twenty five years later, the Catholic Church reexamined the trial of Joan of Arc, declared that Joan was innocent, rehabilitated her as a martyr, and finally canonized Joan of Arc as a patron saint in the twentieth century. The legacy of Joan of Arc had been retold many times for four centuries, and she has become a famous figure of patriotic heroine with her compelling personality appeared in history and literary works. Briefly after World War I (1914-8) and the canonization of Joan of Arc by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, Shaw wrote Saint Joan and the play awarded its playwright with Nobel Prize for Literature in The historical background and social contexts of Joan of Arc correspond with the social circumstances of Modern world. To portray a different image of the iconic historical figure of Joan of Arc, Shaw introduces Joan of Arc from realistic and feminist standpoints as a revolutionary 33

2 34 heroin that embodies his theological beliefs of the Life Force and Creative Evolution in which the philosophy implies a progress of humanity. The first six scenes of Shaw s Saint Joan begin with the appearance of Joan the Maid to ask for a horse, armor and a small troop of soldiers from a local lord, Captain Robert de Baudricourt, to meet Charles the Dauphin. At the Dauphin s court, Joan is reported to the dauphin, noblemen, clergymen and armed forces as an angel dressed as a soldier sent by God to drive England out of France and crown her Dauphin a king (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 969). The victory over the England in the battlefield at Orleans enables Joan to patronize the succession of the Dauphin for the French throne. However, both English and French powerful men of authorities feel uneasy about Joan s claim of divine calling, from God and her bold personality. They consider Joan s opinions about the Church and the feudal system as heretic beliefs and a danger to the social orders. Joan is captured and ransomed to England that hand her over to the French church for a trial-at-law. The Church s inquisitor and assessors find Joan guilty with an accusation of heresy for her strong assertion to follow God s commands in which she places them foremost her obedience to the Church s. Joan accepts to be executed by burning at the stake at Rouen instead of condemning to life imprisonment. The Epilogue takes place twenty five years later with the assembly of specters that participated in Joan s trial, including the twentiethcentury gentleman who comes to announce Joan s canonization in 1920, at King Charles VII s bedchamber after her rehabilitation to discuss about the consequences of Joan s death. They all make an agreement about Joan s innocence and virtue, but her death is ultimately acceptable. Shaw dramatizes the historical icon of Joan of Arc as a rebellious heroine in his creative form of drama of discussion in the trial scene and the epilogue of Saint Joan. The dialogues between male characters representing authorities of the Catholic Church and Feudalism, and Joan the Maid reveals the truth about Joan s accusation of heresy charged for her being unconventional. Shaw s characterization of Joan emphasizes the heroine s motivation to lead French army and her belief in individual conscience to present her progressive feminist visionary seen as a danger to the medieval society. Shaw s portrayal of Joan the heroine is differently presented from the conventional dramatic form of tragedy and characterization of its protagonist. The

3 35 depictions of Joan in literature written in the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century such as Shakespeare Henry VI Part I, Voltaire s La Pucelle d Orleans, Schiller s Die Jungfrau von Orleans and Tchaikovsky s play, mostly romanticized Joan of Arc as an attractive maiden or a surrogate victim defeated by her own pride. The image of Joan of Arc in Shaw s Saint Joan is not a melodramatic heroine: that is, a physically beautiful lovelorn parasite on an equally beautiful hero, but a genius and a saint, about as completely the opposite of a melodramatic heroine as it is possible for a human being to be (George Bernard Shaw, 1924, p. 3). To present Joan of Arc from a realistic point of view, Shaw uses his innovative theatrical genre of comedy of discussion to dramatize the historical figure as a special individual, different from Mark Twain s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc that presents the story of Joan of Arc realistically in form of memoir novel narrated by a witness of Joan s tragedy. Many playwrights and authors presented the story about Joan of Arc in the dramatic form of tragedy according to Aristotle s Poetics, which suggests that tragedy is meant for the audience to experience the feelings of pity and terror from the fall of a tragic hero who cannot surpass his fate. For Modern theatre, Shaw attempts to portray the historical icon of Joan of Arc differently from the conventional tragedy by using his Drama of Discussion with element of comedy to represent Joan from a realistic standpoint. The playwright intends to expose the rebel of Joan as an individual, not a typical Aristotelian tragic hero, against the established social orders, Christianity and Feudalism that dominated the society in the medieval period. In an agreement with Shaw s realistic portrayal of Joan of Arc, Louise L. Martz points out in his article The Saint as Tragic Hero that the death of saints and martyrs have frequently been regarded as impossible subjects for true tragedy (Kaufmann, 1965, p. 143). The death of combative Joan of Arc does not present her defeat but the victory of the individual; the issue of a conflict in which the individual is ranged on the same side as the higher powers, and the sense of suffering consequently lost in that of moral triumph (Butcher, 1932, pp ). Shaw s Joan is not exactly an Aristotelian tragic hero who finally meets her downfall because of flaw, typically excessive pride, but a heroic individual with progressive visionary who refuses to accept the judgment from the Establishment and dies bravely for what she believes in her conscience and

4 36 freedom noticeably declared from her acceptance of execution: Yes: they told me you were fools [the word gives great offence], and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust to your charity. You promised me my life; but you lied [indignant exclamations]. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nr climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the tree, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 1000). In Saint Joan, Shaw affirms his views on Joan of Arc by presenting the figure from the historical facts about Joan in a form of chronicle play instead of using the form of tragedy. Matthew H. Wikander explains Shaw s version of Joan of Arc in his article Reinventing the Historical Play that he sets out to stage Joan, as both a real person and a world-historical figure, in touch with the Hegelian secret source of the future (Innes, 1998, p. 208).The playwright presents the motivations of Joan the Maid to be the leader of French army, and the accuracy of her trial based on the ecclesiastical laws at the time. The discussion between the characters in Epilogue implies how Joan s death, her unconventional personality and rebellious ideas expose a conflict between the will of an individual and the Establishments of the medieval period. Moreover, there is an analogy of the Hundred Years War as a background of the story of Joan of Arc with the crucial situations of the Great War in the early twentieth century. The conflict between two mighty powers, France and England in

5 37 the Hundred Years War and the Allies and the Central Powers in the World War I, caused damages to people s living and mentality that put them in desperation and hopelessness. The impacts of the Great War happened in the early twentieth century had changed Shaw s notions about political philosophy. In The Quintessence of Ibsenism, he divided human being in the society into three categories: philistines, idealists and the realist whom the progress depended on. The philistines acted on the assumption that all ideals established by the idealists were real, and accepted them as a standard code of conduct that they should conform to. On the contrary, The realist who possessed the recognition of the will and duty to denounce the illusion of the ideals for a social progress (G. B. Shaw, 1913, pp ). Shaw developed his theory of the Life Force and Creative Evolution, by which he stated that the Life Force exists in special individuals whose revolutionary ideas inspire people to develop a progress, or evolve humanity forward from the current ideals. In Saint Joan, Shaw makes an attempt to understand the circumstances at his time through the story of Joan of Arc and introduce Joan as a representative of his philosophy. The medieval society and Victorian society are similarly dominated by authoritative institutions, the Church and social systems: Feudalism and Capitalism. Some revolutionary people, mostly from the dominated class and gender, pioneered ground-breaking social and political movements of Realism and Feminism to counteract the conventional ideals at the turn of the century. Therefore, the historical icon of Joan of Arc becomes a perfect model of the special individual in reality that has to struggle with authorities of the Establishments. Shaw s using of a real-life person in history, not just a fictional character, suggests a possibility of individual overcoming the power of the authorities. Marina Warner states that telling the history of Joan of Arc attribute[s] the extraordinary and compelling quality of the story of which she is the heroine to the specialness of her personality. Her individuality created the reality of the story she dominates. But this is only one way of understanding a story and of writing history: to give an account of the deeds of the great. To reserve all understanding of the story to its protagonists and their characteristics is limiting. With Joan of Arc, we are faced with a phenomenon so exceptional that it is essential to examine the context on which her personality scored

6 38 its deep mark in order to understand her at all (Warner, 1981, p. 23). Unlike the typical hero in tragedy, Martz sees that Shaw portrays Joan of Arc as an exceptional tragic hero, who speaks now through the power of a superhuman insight, rather than Aristotle s model of tragic hero that purge the audience s feeling of pity and fear encouraged by the protagonist s tragic experience (Kaufmann, 1965, p. 148). The story of Joan of Arc is rewritten an example of a revolutionist who came before her time and unaware of her unconventionality opposed to the conventions. Besides the analogy of wartime background and social contexts, the figure of Joan of Arc evidently possessed characteristics and notions of Feminism against patriarchy for emancipation even though her unconventional habits were not recognized, or defined as feminist. The characterization of Joan the Maid in the first six scenes of Shaw s Saint Joan collaborates with the Feminist concept of New Woman. In the Preface of Saint Joan, Shaw explains the feminist concept of New Woman in Joan s personality that she is the pioneer of rational dressing for women, and like Queen Christina of Sweden two centuries later, to say nothing of Catalina de Erauso and innumerable obscure heroines who have disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers and sailors, she refused to accept the specific woman's lot, and dressed and fought and lived as men did (George Bernard Shaw, 1924, p. 1). The description about Joan s appearance in the first scene suggests that she is physically strong with a determination for rational outfit and a desire to pursue a career life. She encounters the battle as a soldier like men, denies irrational women costume, ignores social and political hierarchy, and believes in her own consciousness to do what was right even she has claimed it as the will of god (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 964). The divine callings help Joan the Maid to become a commander of French army and the victory empowers Joan an authority to crown Charles the Dauphin to be a king of French throne, overlooking the authorizations from feudal lords and the Church. Joan the Maid denies to be contained by gender and class ideology of the time being. They do not consider her rebellious acts and ideas as a social reform, but a threat to the power of authoritative noblemen and the Church. Cauchon, The Right Reverend the Bishop of Beauvais, remarks that Joan acts as if she herself were the Church, and the Earl of Warwick is eager to terminate her with an accusation of

7 39 witchcraft for a political necessity (Hamlyn, 1965, pp ). Cauchon and Warwick, who represent the Church and feudalism, claim that Joan is diabolically inspired and defy her rebel against the authorities as Protestantism for the protest of the individual soul against the interference of priest or peer between the private man and his God, and Nationalism for dividing the realm of Christ s kingdom into nations (Hamlyn, 1965, pp ). To cease Joan s rising power over people that worship her as an angel, Warwick and the Chaplain attack on Joan s unwomanly personality by calling her with words associated with witchcraft and prostitute; witch, sorceress and slut that refer to her unconventional womanliness. Joan, who does not acknowledge the nature of her gender and the limitations of her social status, confirms her belief and takes actions based on her commonsense : What other judgment can I judge by but my own?, not on judgments of the others (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 997). Instead of charging Joan with a real act of crime, they try to divert the indictment to Joan s being heretical, claimed to hear voices from saints, and received orders directly from God, aiming to redeem her from the sin of pride. Shaw believes that the accusation of heresy is not the reason behind Joan s execution, but she was punished essentially for what we call unwomanly and insufferable presumption (George Bernard Shaw, 1924, p. 1). Joan of Arc becomes a revolutionist and a special individual who unconsciously possessed notions of Feminism that represents Shaw s philosophy of the Life Force and Creative Evolution. Shaw regards Joan of Arc as a special individual, the queerest fish among the eccentric worthties of the Middle Ages, that threatened the existing social and political orders (George Bernard Shaw, 1924, p. 1). Joan s individualism is emphasized by her rebels against the powerful Establishments and the Church s accusation of heresy. As an individualist, she rejects to be succumbed and judged by the authoritative conventional institutes. Joan detaches herself from the others: JOAN. Yes: I am alone on earth: I have always been alone But I am wiser now; and nobody is any the worse for being wiser. Do not think you can frighten me by telling me that I m alone. France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? I see now that the loneliness of God is His

8 40 strength: what would He be if He listened to your jealous little counsels? Well, my loneliness shall be my strength too: it is better to be alone with God: His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare until I die. I will go out now to the common people, and let the love in their eyes comfort me for the hate in yours. You will be glad to see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to their hearts for ever and ever. And so, God be with me!. (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 989) Joan s remark affirms her belief in the autonomy of will that enables her to make a choice and do what is right for people and the society as Shaw calls it an appetite for evolution, and therefore a superpersonal need (George Bernard Shaw, 1924, p. 7). Joan the individual has to face a dilemma between living up to the conventions she disagreed for a lifetime in prison, and accepting a brutal death to immortalize what she believed in. Shaw uses his dramaturgy of drama of discussion to illustrate the dilemma of a special individual like Joan of Arc, and question on how such the individual can possibly surpass from the ignorant ones. The realistic six scenes of Shaw s Saint Joan allow the audience to observe the story of Joan of Arc objectively, and the absence of the execution scene prevent them from getting emotionally involved with Joan s tragic death. The Epilogue is presented as an unrealistic scene that dramatizes the afterlife of Joan with an assembly of the characters from the past, the living ones in the present, and even from the future that come to discuss about the consequences of Joan s trial. Not only to dramatize Joan s life but to discuss its subsequent re-evaluations in her rehabilitation and canonization (Innes, 1998, p. 209). The ghosts of the past are Joan and the judges of the trial gather at King Charles VI s bedchamber twenty five years after Joan s death on the day of her rehabilitation to share their tragic ends, with the coming of a twentieth-century man who announces Joan s canonization as a saint. This unrealistic discussion scene exposes the absurdity of the Church s judgment on Joan s case. The spirit of Dunois, Joan s comrade in the battlefield, suggests that it takes [h]alf an hour to burn you, dear Saint; and four centuries to find out the truth about you! (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 1008). All male

9 41 characters make an agreement that Joan is innocent and consider her rebellious acts as a virtue of a heroine: JOAN. Woe unto me when all men praise me! I bid you remember that I am a saint, and that saints can work miracles. And now tell me: shall I rise from the dead, and come back to you a living woman? A sudden darkness blots out the walls of the room as they all spring to their feet in consternation. Only the figures and the bed remain visible. JOAN. What! Must I burn again? Are none of you ready to receive me? (Hamlyn, 1965, p. 1008) The passage trivializes the male characters ironic admiration towards Joan that they can accept Joan as a saint, but not a rebellious woman. This might suggest that Joan s death is probably acceptable for the individual, who believes in one s own values, shall cause troubles to the patriarchal authorities more than making good benefits to the humanity at the time. Shaw realizes the repetition of history and the rising of new notions against the old ones through times. Joan s question at the end of the play implies Shaw s concern about the possibility of the individual to be recognized and accepted by common people as a savior or a revolutionist that will bring them to a better world. In Shaw s Saint Joan, the heroine is a feminist woman driven by the Life Force in a noble being for Creative Evolution, the ideas and theological belief that come before her time, whose conflict with the patriarchal society is dramatized by the playwright s realistic and unrealistic dramatic techniques to raise the audience s awareness of the revolutionary ideas.