Joan was a Hard Core Feminist

In Carolyn Gage’s play “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc”, she presents an image of Joan that we have not even come close to seeing in our studies of her this semester. In Gage’s play, Joan is self-assured, hostile, sarcastic, judgmental, and bitter. But the best part about Gage’s Joan is that she completely unapologetic about who she is. She created her voices because she wanted something more than she was being offered, and then proceeded to believe entirely in those voices that she had created, which to some extent is saying that she believed in herself. She decided to wear men’s clothing in order to get men to really see her and not just her sex. She rode off to save France because she wanted to be a hero, and to be known for something other than her husband and her children. She took her life into her own hands and did something to shape her future how she wanted to, rather than listen to want other people said she should do.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding Gage’s depiction of Joan. The real Joan probably didn’t hate men, or the church the way Gage’s Joan did. In fact, Joan’s life was based around a love of God and a respect for the clergy of the church. There are so many sources that tell us how she was an extremely devout person up to the day she died. Calling God a lie, and calling the clergy self-interested is not something that I can easily image Joan doing, like she did in Gage’s play. So maybe it is an insult to Joan’s memory to portray her in this manner. Much of what Gage’s Joan stands for is against what the real Joan stood for, so we cannot rely on this play to provide historical accuracy. 

However, what this play does really well is expose the reality of what Joan suffered through. We know from the sources that Joan constantly complained about being guarded by men and not women, but I never considered why Joan would have been so uncomfortable. I always assumed that she considered it to be improper, and since Joan was a very religious person, I thought this was the reason that she would have wanted female guards. This play made me realize that Joan probably felt unsafe and exposed every day. Gage remarks that “rape, of course, is not the issue. The fear of rape, as men have known for years, is just as effective as the real thing. The woman is scared to live alone, scared to go places by herself, sacred of the dark…she is perpetually distracted, self-conscious, subverted, terrorized” (CP 151). Just the fact that the men guarding her were there, with plenty of opportunity to take advantage of the situation, would have been enough to terrorize Joan. Gage’s commentary on Joan’s struggle to gain the respect of the men around her was also very accurate. Gage takes many of these issues to an extreme and depicts Joan in such an intense light, that she probably alienates many of her readers. However, she still manages provide insight and commentary on many issues that Joan faced and that other women today are still facing. 

Did you think that Gage's play used Joan's story to expose important social issues, or was it too extreme to be effective?