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?

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.

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.

"We're all going to end up at the stake"- A Warning From A Retrospective Joan

In her play about Joan of Arc, although referred to as Jeanne Romée in it, Carolyn Cage writes an interesting take on Joan, one steeped in a modern interpretation and within the author’s own personal themes. For instance, Cage expresses, “We must clothe ourselves in self-respect, arm ourselves with finely-tempered rage, and obey only those voices that we women alone can hear” (CP 156). This statement epitomizes the objectives of Cage’s play, a fiercely feminist account definitely prone to degrees of “finely-tempered rage” as Cage describes it. Thus, Cage’s play certainly utilizes Joan’s story to tell another one, if it perhaps strays from a Joan familiar to us from primary sources. Arguably, though, Cage would likely classify most of those sources, as many were male, to be Joan from the lens of the “man behind the curtain,” and thus, not accurate either (CP 156). Cage gives a Joan in the midst of retrospect, a Joan recognizing the theme of women’s self-defeat, a defeat that was just “a little more flamboyant” or memorable in her case than most women’s (CP 145).

Thus, Cage obviously employed Joan to deliver a targeted narrative. However, her interpretation of Joan is, at times, helpful in seeing Joan and other cultural interpretations of her in a new light. For example, Cage states, “Hey, come on, we all invent our voices” (CP 144). This is a refreshing attitude towards Joan’s voices-rather than crazy, Cage presents the voices as the norm for us all, rather than simply permit Joan’s voices to exist in her narrative, Cage embraces them. Secondly, in response to Joan’s martyr status, Cage in Joan’s voice states, “it’s time we stopped believing it’s some kind of honor to be tortured by men” (CP 144). This reminded me immediately of much of the theme of The Passion of Joan of Arc¸ which stands as a picture of Joan’s suffering, and thus, honorable and worthy martyred status. Cage would not agree with Dryer's Joan. Altogether, the play shows a Joan, in a rarity of interpretation, as intentionally playing outside of the rules, not foundationally due to a strong sense of divine mission (here more of a convenient reason to bend the rules) but more so to a sense of self-preservation that still goes quite awry. This Joan is a different Joan, one committed to a fruitless escape, but entirely of her own prerogative, ironically much like her literal escape. In this way, Cage credits Joan, but not for the triumphant deeds usually sung about, of which Cage barely acknowledges in one small paragraph.  A Joan of her beginning and of her end is more suited to the author’s warnings to women of today.

Question: Is Joan represented positively in the play? What do you think of the motivations that Cage applies to Joan and her story?

 

Voices of Light

While watching The Passion of Joan of Arc I fell pretty deeply in love with the soundtrack. After doing some research into the composition, I was surprised to discover that there is actually a lot of background and nuance in the score. The soundtrack is called Voices of Light and was composed by Richard Einhorn, who has received critical acclaim from all over the world. Voices of Light is meant to be played during a screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc, but Einhorn stated that he also wanted it to be “a stand­alone work that would speak to various aspects of Joan's life and legend” (Einhorn). He decided to write it after stumbling upon a copy of the movie when researching short avante garde films for a completely different project. After being blown away by the movie, he decided to create a piece that would pay tribute to Joan’s life and achievements.

Einhorn did a lot of research in order to capture the authenticity of Joan’s life. He traveled to sites of Joan’s life in order to get inspiration. He even recorded the sound of the church bells from Domremy and incorporated them into the piece. On his website, he stated that he chose to include singing in the score because Joan heard voices. All of the vocal sections, which are sung in old languages like Latin, Old French and Italian, are taken from the writings of medieval female mystics. Einhorn chose these writings to express what Joan stood for in her mission, as well as to address themes of medieval spirituality in general. The example that Einhorn includes on his website is the score for the torture scene. He wanted to explore the idea of physical pain being a religious practice that led to spiritual growth or piety. These lyrics were taken from the writings of a female penitent, Blessed Angela and a heretic named Prous Boneta. The chorus of this piece repeats the words “glorious wounds” in order to make this point.

One of the most interesting inclusions in Voices of Light is some of Joan’s actual letters. Three of the tracks took their lyrics from some of Joan’s military letters that we’ve read in class. For example, the track called “Victory at Orleans” incorporates the text of two Joan’s letters. The first part of the song, taken from Joan’s letter to the city of Tounai, describes her accomplishments in the battle of Orleans. The second part of the track describes the victories that she plans to achieve in the future, and is taken from her letter to the city of Troyes. Einhorn chose not to have a single vocalist sing these parts, but instead had both a soprano and an alto sing them simultaneously in order to show how much mystery still surrounds Joan. 

The consideration, research and thought that would have gone into creating this piece is astonishing and it definitely shows in the music.

Here is the link to Einhorn's website: http://www.richardeinhorn.com/vol/vollinernotes.html

"Freak Like Me"

    When reading the article "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc" by Carolyn Gage, several thoughts came to mind. The first, is the article screams FEMINISM! I do not think there is a way to read this article and not come away with the idea that Gage's Joan of Arc was a hard-care feminist. The second thought that I had while reading this article relates to the section where Gage paints Joan as being a "freak." Gage's Joan states, "I'm a freak. There's a lot of pain in being a freak, but there's a lot of respect. People have to deal with you on your own terms-they can't project their fantasies onto you. There's dignity in being a freak. I was a freak. I still am" (CP 146-147). Immediately the question popped into my head whether Joan was ever seen as freak in Medieval society? Is the concept of being a "freak" even applicable to the Middle Ages?
    Another connection I had was thinking about the song "Freak Like Me" by the band Halestorm. Halestorm is my all-time favorite band and this song is defiantly a mantra urging people to "let their freak flags fly." Here is the link to see the music video of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXoA7B5yJo. The song describes how being a freak is something to be proud of and to let it show. This idea relates back to Gage's version of Joan and how this Joan embraces her "freak side" and is proud of it. Did any of you have any reactions to reading the statement about Joan being a freak? Do you think Joan ever saw herself as a "freak?"
    I found this article to be quite entertaining and I have to admit that I appreciated the high-level of feminism throughout it. Even though I found the article interesting, I also found it to be far from the truth in certain aspects. For one, this version of Joan is vulgar and a little over-dramatic. Some of the references in the article paint Joan as being this stubborn, teenage-rebel who despised authority. From reading countless primary sources of Joan I think we can all agree that Joan may have been stubborn at times but she was never vulgar or brash. She herself reprimanded her soldiers for being vulgar so why would she have been vulgar?
   After all is said and done, this article is entertaining and gives "Joan's voice" a little spice and flare. But this alters the perception readers have of Joan that disagrees with the primary sources just about a hundred percent of the time. Gage's article distorts the truth of Joan of Arc but does allow for the question to be raised, did Joan or anyone else ever consider her a freak? Could we consider Joan to be a  "Jesus Freak?"
Thoughts?

 


Works Cited
Gage, Carolyn. "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc." In Coursepacket compiled by Dr. Wolbrink. Fall 2014.
"Freak Like Me." Written by Halestorm. YouTube.Accessed November 19, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXoA7B5yJo.
Images from Google.

Season of the Witch: Review

Season of the Witch (2011)

Cast: Nicholas Cage, Ron Perlman

Director: Dominic Sena, Brett Ratner

Season of the Witch, made in 2011 and directed by Dominic Sena and Brett Ratner, was about two knights set on a mission to take an accused witch to a monastery in order to end the plague. It starred Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as the knights delegated to the task, accompanied with an altar boy, knight, guide and a monk. Prior to the task, Cage’s character, Behman, had an altercation with his captain while fighting in the Crusades. He and Perlman’s character, Felson, had came to the conclusion that God had too many enemies and were questioning faith. During a battle, Behman killed an innocent woman without realizing who they were fighting against. He and Felson desert the army they fought in after confronting the captain about the questionable morals of the war. He is haunted throughout the his mission of the woman he killed. Although a costly task, Behman and Felson succeed in their task and is able to make up for his mistake.

The chief priest suffering from the plague.

The movie determines that the Black Death is caused solely by witches and their evil magic. On the journey to the monastery, the knight in charge, Eckhart, and the guide, Hagamar, discussed the plague. Hagamar stated that every town he has been that caught the plague, a strange woman has passed through the night before uttering incantations. Eckhart corrected him by saying no girl passed through his village. Although the extent of witchcraft that is in the movie is not factual, this conversation did incorporate the issue of the cause of the plague. People at the time didn’t know what caused the plague and tried to make sense of it as much as they could.

While the plot of the film is centered around the existence of witches, a recurring theme was morality. Behman seemed to be the judge of what was morally right, starting with his accidentally slaying of a peasant woman. After he was given the ultimatum by the church to take the witch to the monastery or to be tried as a deserter, Behman judged the church as unfairly accusing the girl of witchcraft. Because of this judgement, he promised the girl a fair trial once they arrived to their destination. Throughout the journey, the troop run into problems and lives are lost. When men started to die, Behman retracted his promise and pulled out his sword against the girl. The monk, Debelzaq, had to remind Behman that they had a job to do and she would get her justice when they got to the monastery.

The slain woman from Behman's vision

Only women were perceived to be witches in the film when the opening was of three women killed for witchcraft. Along with morality being an important theme to the movie, the power women possess and their role was a common topic. Behman’s motivation to give their prisoner a fair trial came from the constant vision of the woman he had killed. As he realized that the prisoner was a witch or something worse, his vision demonstrated it. The woman, instead of falling with a pained look with her hands on her wound, had licked the blood from her hands. Subtly in the film, the topic came up in a more humourous way. Behman told Felson that he has seen a woman make a man lose a year’s worth of earnings in one night. Felson defensively stated that they were in France and she was worth it. A woman was either powerful sexually or she was powerful due to witchcraft. Aside from that, they were innocent and needed to be protected men in general, not as victims of war.

The accused witch leaving her jail cell.

The girl leaving the monastery.