Saint Joan

Saint Joan opens with a preface by the author, George Bernard Shaw, explaining his interpretation of Joan of Arc and the themes he sought to explore in the play. The Preface begins by sketching out the personality and temperament Shaw ascribes to Joan. Shaw portrays her as a forward-thinking genius who lacked the political cunning to avoid persecution by those whose power she disrupted. Comparing her to Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who was forced to drink poison hemlock after being accused of corrupting the youth, and Napoleon, whose successful military conquests rendered him such a formidable threat to England that he was exiled to a remote island, Shaw suggests that extraordinary people are often both idolized and hated for their competence. Both Joan and Socrates were unable to defend themselves successfully during their trials, which Shaw suggests was because they “combined terrifying ability with a frankness, personal modesty, and benevolence which made the furious dislike to which they fell victim absolutely unreasonable, and therefore inapprehensible by themselves” (9-10). Essentially, Joan was so reasonable and virtuous that she found herself unable to understand the petty and irrational complaints against her.

The Preface then addresses the question of the voices Joan of Arc claimed to hear. Shaw dismisses the idea that Joan was experiencing mental illness, pointing out that the voices consistently advised Joan to take rational and successful military actions. However, Shaw—who thought of himself as a rationalist and opposed organized religion—does not accept Joan’s visions as evidence of actual divinity. Instead, he argues that Joan possessed a particularly powerful visual imagination, claiming, “there are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visible figure” (17). He compares her to other famous thinkers who heard voices, such as the German theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546), Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), and English romantic poet William Blake (1757-1827). By emphasizing the power of human imagination and cognition, Shaw maintains his commitment to rationalism without discrediting his heroine’s experience.

Shaw concludes his portrait of Joan’s character by associating her with the pragmatism of the middle class and the early feminist movement of the 19th century. He compares Joan’s proclivity for masculine clothing to the Victorian rational dress movement, and associates her with figures such as writer Amantine de Francueil, who wrote under the masculine pseudonym George Sand and often wore masculine clothing. By portraying Joan as a realist, whose simple “peasantlike matter-of-factness” (29) allowed her to bluntly evaluate the worth of her allies, Shaw seeks to expose the ways in which his contemporaries in the 1920s might be more superstitious and nonsensical than the medieval Joan. In particular, Shaw criticizes the contemporary trust in medical science, suggesting that doctors are more misleading than priests because they have a financial incentive to sell their patients cures.

After tracing the other literary adaptations of Joan of Arc by authors such as William Shakespeare and Mark Twain, Shaw argues that recent portrayals of Joan fail because their Protestant authors do not understand the medieval Catholic Church. In Shaw’s era, it has become a commonplace to portray medieval Catholic authorities as nefarious and corrupt villains, but Shaw prefers to view Joan’s accusers as normal people who believe they are doing the right thing, even if their sense of what is right often conveniently aligns with their own political interests. The tragedy, therefore, comes from society’s intolerance for difference. Joan’s execution was not the work of criminals or murderers, but occurred in a justice system working as intended to persecute those who disrupt the balance of power. Shaw concludes the Preface with a rebuttal to criticisms of the play.