Customer Reviews

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The "true" stories are unimportant to know and/or believe in reading this work -- what matters are the stories that these women set forth and proclaim -- which are true statements as to the treatment of women -- and that Gage does with a frightful power that will shake you to your core.

I highly recommend this book -- and if you ever have a chance to see one of the plays from it performed -- do so!

Carolyn Gage is a very talented playwright. She is undoubtly one of the most gifted writers of this generation. Gage invites us to stand against a male-dominant world in which women are not allowed to have their own voice. In this aspect, the author makes sure to build a great esthetic, literary and dramatic portray of women's cognitive world. Therefore, the lesbianism turns out to be the most sensible and inteligent expression of female needs. It's not a mere accident. It's a way of protecting voices of womanhood. Naive people can be shocked by the deconstruction of Joan. Does it matter wheter it is true or not? Is there a single truth? The facts are always controversial. And Gage's plays are an outrageous shout of this reality.Joan of Arc is a legend. Jeanne Romee is the person behind the myth. That is the subject Gage tries to apreehend. And she does it magnifically. When we read Gage's Joan we are before a woman. Not a saint.

I was fortunate enough to see "The Second Coming" produced with the author in the lead role. What a fabulous experience! This play is firmly situated in literary tradition as it imagines the circumstances of Joan's life, as a woman of her time. Gage's feminist politics are uncompromising in this piece, as in all her work, as she fearlessly names patriarchy as responsible for the ills women suffer. The other plays in this book are equally good and powerful in that several of them are brief and would not be difficult to stage. While this book is an excellent read, the real power of this work is as performance. Women need more roles, better roles, real roles, in theater, and this book has them. Gage's gift for seeing and giving voice to the feminist potential in every story is on display in this remarkable book.

i was introduced to the first piece "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc" by the writer herself. she came and performed it at our local university. she simply blew me away.. the words that she spoke, they were unbelieveable. here was someone performing a piece like this.. a piece that shows truth beyond the patriarchial system in which we live.. here is a woman who has the courage to do it publicly. this was the first time i'd heard my radical lesbian feminist voice in a public forum, in a public forum that included non radical lesbian feminists. this fictional work should be applauded, this fictional work is inspiring. this fictional work holds nothing back and shows how patriarchy has hurt those who have come before us and how it will hurt those of us here now and those who will come next. this work and the rest of carolyn's work gives me hope that patriarchy will die.

This seems to be another case in which an author and her readership first claim that the material is based on the original documents and therefore true to history, then when historians prove this to be false the claim is made that the documents don't matter anyway, using the usual rhetoric about "multiple truths" and so forth. The version presented in this play isn't even corroborated by the book upon which the play itself was (loosely) based, a biography by Vita Sackville-West which itself has been roundly denounced by scholars, including feminists, for its many inaccuracies; but at least Sackville-West was honest enough not to claim that Joan was a "lesbian", nor a rebel against the Church, nor a "teenager runaway" escaping an alcoholic and abusive father, etc, and in fact she often states precisely the opposite on many of these subjects. The author of this play merely took a few comments in the above book out of context, then wrote up a purely fictional account, and now apparently tries to defend it against academic criticism by dredging up discredited tactics of evasion - something which she would never approve of if it was her own life that was being rewritten.
The facts of the matter are not in dispute among reputable historians; here are some of the historical issues which are relevant to the play:
- Even Ms. Sackville-West, despite having been a lesbian herself, never alleged that Joan of Arc had any such tendencies: the playwright apparently jumped to that conclusion simply because Sackville-West's book mentions a number of the eyewitness descriptions of Joan being placed with little girls (such as the 9-year old Charlotte Boucher) or their mothers or other hostesses in the homes she stayed in at Orleans and other locations during her army's campaigns. As I believe Ms. Sackville-West herself notes, this was the standard procedure in that era whenever a shortage of beds forced such an arrangement (i.e., rather than placing men and women in the same bed). The little girls and women that she "slept with" themselves said that she was a virgin, meaning that they could not possibly have been having sex with her unless they are contradicting themselves in the same breath, a point which the author of this play deliberately ignores.
- Similarly, the claim that Joan "died for the right to wear male clothing" ignores the eyewitness accounts given on that subject even in Sackville-West's book, to say nothing of the full testimony in the original documents: several witnesses said that Joan herself told them that she had to continue wearing her soldier's clothing (of a type which was designed so that the pants and tunic could be tied securely together with "laces and points") because her guards had attempted to rape her on several occasions, and such clothing was her only defense against such attempts. She said that her alleged "relapse" was the result of the guards taking away the dress that had been provided her, leaving her nothing to wear but her old male clothing. Only her enemies claimed that she insisted on wearing male clothing as a personal preference rather than out of necessity: this was the claim they had to make, since the medieval Church allowed an exemption in cases in which a woman was wearing such clothing for protection (see medieval Church documents such as St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica", or St. Hildegard's "Scivias" for example). Joan was absolutely correct in saying that what she was doing was perfectly lawful under the rules of the Church.
- Even Ms. Sackville-West describes Joan as a pious Catholic, in contrast to the play's spin on this issue. What Carolyn Gage interprets as "contempt" for the clergy seems to be based on a rather deliberate misinterpretation of a handful of comments to the pro-English clergy who put her on trial, while completely ignoring her good relations with the clergy of her own faction: one of her closest companions was a friar named Jean Pasquerel of the Order of St. Augustine; another chaplain in her army was her cousin Nicholas Rommee (de Vouthon) of the Cistercian Order; there are many descriptions of her close association with the crowd of mendicant friars who served in her army, and she had the support of Jacques Gelu (Archbishop of Embrun), Jean Gerson, and many other high-ranking clerics, whose writings in praise of her still survive. The only clergy she may have had contempt for were people like Cauchon - a long-term advisor and supporter of the English and Burgundians whom she well knew to have been prosecuting her out of revenge. When the case was appealed after her death, the presiding Inquisitor denounced Cauchon as a heretic for what he did, echoing Joan's statements warning him not to proceed with his prosecution.
- Once again, even Vita Sackville-West never alleges that Joan harbored any anger against men, and there are many eyewitness descriptions of her fondness for men such as Duke Jean II d'Alencon, Duke Charles of Orleans, and Charles VII. Her squire and bodyguard, Jean d'Aulon, said that she "especially loved a certain honorable man whom she knew to be of chaste habits"; another eyewitness says that she liked the company of "aristocratic fighting-men". Sackville-West herself comments on Joan's apparent affinity for such "men of action". Nowhere in the documents is there the slightest hint of any feminist beliefs, nor any anger against her father: Gage's caricature of this man as an incestuous alcoholic is based on her own unfortunate family problems, and has nothing to do with Joan's circumstances as outlined even in Sackville-West's book.
None of the basic facts of Joan's life are disputed by any reputable historian, given the fact that she is one of the most thoroughly documented people in pre-modern history. The process of inventing a fictional spin on someone's life is usually called 'libel', and the practice of defending such by claiming that "truth doesn't exist" is simply a dodge of the issue.

While I may not agree with Ms. Gage's analysis of Joan's situation, I do applaud her courage to present a different view of Joan than we have seen in the past. When daring to stray from the norm in writing about such characters as Saint Joan or Anne Frank, an author can expect to have a few matches lit under foot in protest. If the world had listened to a few Bible thumpers, Anne Frank's diary would have been yanked from the shelves and banned forever because it did not feed the sweet little image people had of Anne. The attitude is similar with Joan of Arc who is expected to have had few faults if any at all. Joan was a human being and all humans are complicated, which means there is always room for a new point of view.
The reality is that we will never know what Joan would have been like had she lived and if indeed her father had abused her, Joan would not have told a soul as he was a well respected man, so there would have been no evidence of such behavior. This is a book to be read with an open mind, as all books should be.

While I certainly sympathize with the trauma that the author went through as a victim of incest, she does not have the right to remake another person (in this case, Joan of Arc) in her own image and then claim that she's staying true to the historical documents. Since I've translated a number of the documents dealing with Joan's life, I will make the following comments: The author based this play - very loosely - on a book by V. Sackville-West, which even feminist professor Bonnie Wheeler of the International Joan of Arc Society has denounced as "dead wrong"; the author then went even farther by deliberately distorting the statements in the above book (which is not as extreme as the play) in order to present a series of half-truths which contradict Joan of Arc's own recorded statements and the eyewitness accounts. To use some examples: the implication is made that Joan was a lesbian, based solely on the fact that Sackville-West mentions some of the testimony given by a group of women - Charlotte Boucher (who had been only 9 years old when she "slept with" Joan at Orleans), Hauviette de Sionne (only 12 or less at the time), and Marguerite La Touroulde - who were among the witnesses who came before the Inquisitorial appeals court during the Rehabilitation Trial after Joan's death; these witnesses described a common medieval practice whereby whenever Joan and the men in her group were billeted for the night in a house in which there weren't enough beds for everyone, they always placed Joan with the little girls of the house or the hostess rather than the men (her male bodyguard frequently slept in the same room, and so the hostess or a little girl was also placed in the room for propriety's sake, and sometimes in the same bed if necessity required it. Joan was similarly known to have "slept with" her sister at home, but that doesn't mean she was guilty of incest). More importantly, these very same witnesses say that Joan was chaste rather than sexually active, which rules out the notion that these witnesses were having sex with her. Similarly, the author dredges up the claim that Joan "died for the right to wear male clothing", which ignores the eyewitness accounts given on that subject even in Sackville-West's book: several witnesses said that Joan herself told them that she had to continue wearing her soldier's clothing (of a type which was designed so that the pants and tunic could be tied together) because her guards had attempted to rape her on several occasions, and she said that her alleged "relapse" was the result of the guards taking away the dress that had been provided her, leaving her nothing to wear but her old male clothing; the judges were then brought in to view the "relapse". Similarly, the author dredges up the old myth that Joan was guilty of her accusers' claims of "disobedience" to the Church, despite the fact that: 1) medieval ecclesiastic documents state that the Church only condemned cross-dressing if it was being done for some reason other than protection (a point which was deliberately ignored by Joan's accusers); 2) the eyewitness accounts - and even Sackville-West's book - show that she was the victim of an English-orchestrated court stacked with pro-English clergy, some of whom nevertheless had to be threatened in order to force a guilty verdict. This is one of the reasons why the appeals court overturned the verdict in 1456 and described Joan not only as an orthodox Catholic, but also a martyr for the Church. Nor did Joan ever make any radical statements or complaints on gender issues: while her role as titular commander of an army was unusual for women, it was hardly unknown: aristocratic women were occasionally given command of armies when filling in for an absent husband or infant son, and the same role was given to religious visionaries (which is why Joan was placed in such a role after the Royal courts theologians accepted her as a visionary). Far from crusading for a change in "gender roles", Joan was quoted as saying that "I would rather stay home with my poor mother and spin wool" instead of leading an army, explaining that she was performing such a mission only on God's orders. Her stated goal was to place Charles VII on his throne, not to overthrow the patriarchy. Far from being angry at men, she was said to have "greatly esteemed the company of aristocratic fighting-men", and had a special fondness for Charles VII and Duke Charles of Orleans, among others. One witness reported that "she especially loved a certain honorable man whom she knew to be of chaste habits". On other issues: the notion that Joan's father was an incestuous alcoholic is pure fantasy, based on Carolyn Gage's own unfortunate experiences rather than Joan's. Nor was Joan the angry, irreverent person portrayed in the play: the eyewitness accounts repeatedly describe her as "sweet-natured", and say that she wept even when English troops were killed by her soldiers. The charge that she was irreverent towards the Church is based on the transcript of the Condemnation Trial, which was later denounced as a falsified document by many of the men who had taken part in her trial: many of her comments were edited out of the record, and others were "creatively translated" into Latin to make her appear unorthodox. Again, even Sackville-West mentions this, if memory serves. The author of this play seems to have engaged in the same type of selective treatment of the facts as Joan's judges did, and the end result is a thoroughly disrespectful manipulation of Joan's life. If the author wishes to write a play about her own personal politics, lifestyle, and life experiences, then she should write an autobiographical story rather than fictionalizing the life of another person: no one has the right to do the latter.

I have to agree with several of the responses regarding Carolyn Gages contrived story of Joan of Arc. Ms. Gage has distorted the truth in much of her work. Ms. Gage has a history of taking real life tragedies and spinning a spectacular story to justify her reality.
The author is unable to separate herself from "the crimes committed in her presence as a child." The crimes of incest, the "unmentioned and unimaginable, the criminals untried and even venerated". Ms. Gage has "such a story to tell, a need for witnesses." The one witness she needed when she was a child was her mother, but her mother was not there, the one that would have healed her. So Ms. Gage from that day forward, had "an insatiable desire for witnesses." Now her "audiences are her witnesses, because that one witness was not there when she needed her, thousands and thousands of witnesses will not be too many." Ms. Gage believes that what happened to her as a child happens to so many little girls. Ms. Gage was abused therefore all little girls are at risk of similar abuse. Ms. Gage was not protected by the very people who should have protected her, like her mother; therefore all parents are suspect of not protecting their children. Ms. Gage "defines her own reality and places herself at the center of her own experience." Ms. Gage believes her reality, is the reality of others, real or contrived. Ms. Gage has "Rage and a lack of closure" to what has happened to her. That is the true story to be told.

Hurray for Carolyn Gage! If you want to know something about PASSION, read Carolyn Gage. She is the very model of a 21st century renaissance woman. Her play "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc" is as if the outcry of true craft asserting itself after centuries of languor since the Bard. Having grown up in Catholicism amidst the plaster statues and rituals of false petitions to the saints, I finally "GET" Joan. Never having read this playwright's works, I now finally see with reverence and force what so many people of spirit and literacy have been telling me for years. Carolyn Gage is the personification of the masques.
The plays stir me, provoke me; I revel in my own spirit, in Joan's spirit and in the spirit of others.
For Carolyn Gage, it's obvious the play's the thing. It's as though Aphra Behn has been reincarnated but with all the experience of those who've gone between. I'm so thrilled to have discovered the playwright Carolyn Gage. She gives new meaning to the cause of literacy in the 21st Century. I highly recommend that this book be available and read by everyone!

This is merely a fictional story masquerading as an historical account, and as such it ranks right up there with other artistic 'triumphs' such as "Das Madchen Johanna" (the 1935 Nazi propaganda film which was allegedly based on the life of Joan of Arc). For a version of her life which is faithful to the historical record, please read one of Regine Pernoud's books (many of which are available here at Amazon.com) instead.