Saint Joan

In parallel to Scene 4, Scene 5 lays out the reasons why Joan’s French allies choose to abandon her and why Joan, despite their warnings, still chooses to attempt to liberate Paris. This scene depicts Joan’s former supporters deciding to turn against her—Charles because his debts and fear make him reluctant to continue the war, the Archbishop because he perceives her as too proud and defiant of authority, and Dunois because he considers Joan’s miracles to be the result of luck rather than military tactics. However, Shaw suggests that despite these justifications, jealousy is actually the primary reason why the French court abandons Joan. She is, at first, confused by their betrayal, lamenting to Dunois, “I have brought them luck and victory: I have set them right when they were doing all sorts of stupid things: I have crowned Charles and made him a real king; and all the honors he is handing out have gone to them. Then why do they not love me?” (128). Dunois responds, “[D]o you expect stupid people to love you for shewing them up?” (128). However, Joan is unable to successfully persuade the French courtiers to support her again because she sees this objection as so unreasonable that she cannot find a suitable response to it. While her zeal and enthusiasm worked to convince the French nobility before, her unwillingness to compromise her beliefs prevents her from defending herself against the accusations of pride. When the king says, “She thinks she knows better than everyone else,” Joan replies, “But I do know better than any of you seem to,” (132) thus confirming the accusation.

Dunois’s betrayal, by contrast, is not motivated by his own ambitions, but rather by his lack of faith. His conversation with Joan in this scene illustrates the theme of Common Sense versus Supernatural Ability and presents the tension between the two concepts as explanation for the young Joan’s extraordinary accomplishments. Although he was briefly convinced by Joan’s apparent miracle at Orléans, he ultimately believes that the “little hour of miracles is over” (134) and that the war will be won by his usual methods. He warns her that one day “she will go ahead when she only has ten men to do the work of a hundred. And then she will find that God is on the side of the big battalions” (135). Dunois’s objection appears to be the most sympathetic, and he is the only character to whom Joan does not react with anger. His doubt plays into the thematic question of Joan’s miracles, and whether they truly come from God, from luck, or from Joan’s own rational mind. When Joan describes how she hears voices in the echoes after the ringing of the bells, Dunois admits, “I should think you were a bit cracked if I hadn’t noticed that you give me very sensible reasons for what you do, though I hear you telling others you are only obeying Madame Saint Catherine” (129), implying that her claim to hear the saints is only a cover for her natural talent for military tactics. Joan’s coy objection—“Well, I have to find reasons for you, because you do not believe in my voices”—does little to dispel these suspicions. Similarly, at the end of the scene, the Archbishop claims that Joan’s voices are only “echoes of your own willfulness,” in response to which Joan again appeals to reason: “If you will not believe in them: even if they are only the echoes of my own commonsense, are they not always right?” (137). While Shaw’s Preface argues that Joan’s voices were the manifestation of her common sense through her vivid imagination, Joan seems to regard the question as pointless so long as the voices provide correct and trustworthy advice. To her allies at the French court, however, the origins of her voices matter because men of high social status would be embarrassed to obey the commands of a peasant girl, even if her orders were wise. In this way, Joan finds herself in the same bind faced by female religious mystics throughout the middle ages: A woman’s wisdom could be trusted only if it came not from her but from God.