Today's Joan

Historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow wrote a compelling piece in which she attempted to understand how modern women view Joan and how connected modern women feel to her. The beginning of her article "She Gets Inside Your Head: Joan of Arc and Contemporary Women's Spirituality" first seeks to trace how Joan has meant two conflicting ideals to two separate women's movements over two centuries. The first occurred in the nineteenth century as liberal women identified with Joan to gain suffrage, citing Joan's independence and willing to question the status quo. The second, however, occurred in the twentieth century and saw Joan in a much different light. The women's movement of the twentieth century sought to encourage women to go back into the private sphere, claiming that their rightful place was in the home. Joan was used, therefore, as a picture of piety and chastity, who although she defied her parents and left home, was moral and gentle and a "true woman." These conflicting ideals of Joan inspired Barstow to research how the modern woman feels about Joan, and if she still has a place in the modern woman's life. Her results were astonishing.

I was not anticipating the connections most women would admit to feeling to Joan. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Joan is still at the forefront of women's lives even today. She is first revered in the modern sense for being independent and self-defined (Barstow 285). Modern women also herald her strength in not conforming to the constricting sexually defined roles of the time-- an issue still prevalent in society today. Lastly, Joan and spirituality, Barstow's aim of research, reveals modern women still turn to Joan as a spiritual warrior and example, although her saintly status has little to do with her modern spiritual appreciation. Perhaps the most compelling woman Barstow interviewed claimed unlike Jesus, Joan was a spiritual inspiration whom women can aspire to be like (Barstow 290). Much of Barstow's research was comforting to me. I was glad to see that unlike myself, many modern women do not require a collegiate course dedicated to Joan to gain an understanding an appreciation for her. While much of Joan's public memory becomes blurred in Hollywood and other attempts to redefine her life and history, the strength of her deeds overshadows all else. In this way, Joan is truly immortal.

Many women, as shown above, felt connected to Joan in the suffrage movement, as suffragettes would dress like Joan at rallies and public meetings.

Joan emerged as an ideal domestic woman in the twentieth century, in the height of WWI as posters surfaced encouraging women not to get involved in warfare, but instead to buy war bonds. A role that could be fulfilled while remaining in the private sphere, at home.