Joan and the 21st Century

From Carolyn Gage's portrayal of Joan, I was curious about when her play was written to get a better understanding of why Gage wrote it. It was written in 2005, a more acceptable time for both feminism and homosexual rights. Although the play exaggerated aspects of Joan's life, the play itself is a very inspiring piece to read.

Anti-Feminist group propaganda

Joan (or "Jeanne" as Gage referred her as) came off as an extreme feminist but with some really good points. The narration was targeted to the female audience in order to encourage them to keep fighting. In the prologue, Gage made it clear who her target audience was by stating "You are inserts in he lives of men. You are inserts in the history of you nation" and "My story is the story of all women, and my suffering is identical to ours. My trial is the trial of all women. My misguided crusade is all of our misguided crusades... The voices I hear are your voices" (Gage, 7). Both lines were very strong. Gage's extreme feminist Jeanne directing her narration to the audience in such a way implied that the same struggles that Joan had faced based on her sexuality is still an issue about six hundred years later.

A common theme in the play was the female dependence on a man and over-all inferiority. Jeanne analyzed the saints that spoke to her and had drawn a conclusion: "the only happy ending was the man's" and "a conquering male gets a whole different reception than a conquering female" (Gage, 11). From Jeanne's narration, she had come from a male-dominated and abusive home. Between her relationship with her father and her connection with her best friend who she took first communion with, it wouldn't be a far-off idea for a 21st century interpretation of Joan is that she was a lesbian.

Gage's Jeanne not only had the issue of being a woman in a man's world. She had also been in love with the same sex. Gage built on an interesting idea about Joan being a lesbian because of her sleeping with women instead of men. Jeanne had admitted that she loved the body of a young girl. Although she was talking about her own body, it seemed to foreshadow Gage's interpretation of Joan at the end of the play. Jeanne rejected her God but was still spiritual, stating "the closest I had ever come to an real sense of spirituality was alone with my voices, or in the company of other women" (Gage, 32). Whether or not Joan really was a lesbian, it would be hard to argue that she didn't face a lot of challenges and threats being a woman in a man's world.

Gage emphasized the aspects of Joan's life that would fit to modern-day causes such as women's rights and same-sex rights. Jeanne advised the female audience "We must clothe ourselves in self-respect, arm ourselves with our finely-tempered rage, and obey only those voices that we women alone can hear" (Gage, 32). Although women's rights are not an obvious issue in the media today, Gage's point was that it is still an issue and it won't end. You just have to fight it when it gets in your way. Homosexuality is a more obvious issue in the media. The main advice for that cause was to accept who you are and who you love: "there was a Jeanne Romee who made the terrible, terrible mistake of trying to find a substitute in the world of men for the love she had experienced in the arms of a woman" (Gage, 34). From the sources read in the class, I doubt Joan was really a lesbian or as much of a man-hater as Gage portrayed but for the causes she wanted to address, emphasizing Joan's life and using her as an example would have been clever.

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