History or Propaganda?

                Cage’s The Second Coming of Joan of Arc is similar to a manifesto.  A manifesto against the then established order of things.  The play is decidedly anti-Catholic and anti-man.  The Church was exclusively male at the time the anti-Catholic and anti-man tones can be rolled together.  According to Cage’s Joan all men and the Church take part in mental warfare against women.  The play is extremely radical and butchers what Joan really stood for.

                Did Joan feel animosity towards the French crown for not helping her out when she was captured?  More than likely.  What hero wouldn’t be upset that the people they helped saved turned against them in the end?  But Joan did not publicly turn against France during her life.  It is highly unlikely that she would have ever turned against France, its leaders perhaps, but never France. 

                It is possible that Joan was against men as Cage suggests.  Most if not all of the enemies of Joan were men.  Although, through French soldiers, all male or mostly men with a few disguised females, Joan was capable of retaking France.  Cage’s play is so radical that no male is spared and women who marry are seen as traitors, “One by one, my girlfriends surrendered themselves.  I watched them go off with boys and turn themselves into foreigners. . .”  (CP 146).

                Cage’s play is an atrocity from the eyes of a historian.  When viewed as a manifesto, it could be seen to have certain points that are accurate while others are radical and extreme.  Perhaps Karl Marx should have written the Communist Manifesto from a first person point of view to make it more interesting.  The similarity between Cage’s play and Marx’s manifesto are staggering, neither are purely historic, and both are propaganda for their respective causes.

 

 

Works Cited:

Gage, Carolyn. "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc." In Coursepacket compiled by Dr. Wolbrink. Fall 2014.