Joan of Arc's Complex Presentation

Joan of sacking's complexly g subvertered self- intro defied traditional knightly cultural expectations for women. The close important reflexions of this presentation were her rejection of traditional feminine roles in favor of permanent virginity, which she saw as an aspect of her mission, her decision to wear potent dress and to assume male roles (as directed by the voices), and her refusal to give up her transvestism. Each of these facets of her presentation was essential to her acceptance as a possibly echt representative of God. Each of these choices and behaviors rendered her emphatic completelyy non-female. This non-female persona had a prototype function--it was essential, in a social sense, to her ability to lead and advise, and it was the demonstration, in a religious sense, of the sanctified nature of her mission.

Joan's Rejection of Women's Roles and Choice of Virginity

When Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake, her body was exposed to the congregation in order to demonstrate that she truly was a woman. In an anonymous government note, a Parisian citizen wrote that, once Joan was dead and her clothes loosely burned away, "her naked body was shown to all the people and all the secrets that could or should belong to a woman, to take away the doubts of the crowd" (quoted in Warner 14). According to her executioners, many of the people feared that Joan might discombobulate been a demon, and they neede

At the french retrial, 18 years after her death, Joan's reputation was restored, and appeals to her divinely animate message became important again. As Wood shows, even toward the end of his life, Charles offered rationalizations of Joan's authenticity. He "confessed," for example, that "the evidence that had most persuaded him of her role as God's operator" had been her knowledge of his secret prayer that his "own doubts over the authenticity of his birth be removed" (Wood 148-49). But, the King's confession repeated, almost verbatim, an account given by Jean Pasqueral, Joan's so-called confessor, at the french retrial.

The King's convenient recall does show, however, that, even to the end of his life, this question of whether he was truly, "heir of France and son of the King," as Pasqueral reported Joan's words, was a case of great importance (Quoted in Wood 149).

It was this religious consignment of her virginity that made disproving her chastity vital to the judges. Most earlier mystics had each been nuns, or had withdrawn to the safety of convents. Joan was unusual in not only remaining entirely in the world, but in surrounding herself almost entirely with men--especially with soldiers, whose morals were considered extremely lax. Thus, her retentiveness of her virginity took on an extra dimension. In Christine de Pizan's poem, Joan's virginity is the only aspect of her self-presentation turn to by the poet. In Christine's partisan opinion, Joan's virginity allowed her to carry out a divine mission that was worthy of comparison with the mission of Mary, the most important of all virgins. Christine wrote, "You Joan . . . blessed be He who created you! maidservant sent from God, into whom the Holy Spirit poured His great grace" (quoted in Wood 127). These words, "so reminiscent of Mary in their content," contact at the level to which a woman aspires in qualification the decision to remain a virgin (Wood 127).

But Joan had not made the choice of chastity in ord
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