Joan, the Maiden

We don't know what Joan looked like. Certainly she bore no resemblance to Ingrid Bergman in feature or in character. Bergman took the part to burnish her much tarnished image as the woman who had run off with Roberto Rossellini although still married to her Swedish doctor husband. Joan was slight in stature more reminiscent of Julie Harris in the Anouilh play about Joan, The Lark. None of her companions ever mentioned a pretty face. It is probably fair to conclude she was not pretty. Probably she was sturdy and sun bronzed. Undoubtedly she could ride a horse as horses were part of farm life in Lorraine. Joan's father was a well-to-do farmer and land owner. She was very religious. Her entire education was learned on the farm and in the church. She could not read or write, but this was not uncommon. Her days and seasons were regulated by the church day and calendar. She began to hear her voices when she was about thirteen. They were accompanied by an aura. She did not see her saints until she was captured and half starved. In the Middle Ages and earlier people heard voices and interpreted them according to their state in life. In the Bible Abraham, Moses and Deborah all heard the voice of God. Jacob wrestled with an angel. No one counted Joan as crazy because she heard voices. However she acted upon what she heard.

The ordinary costume for a girl her age was a loose red dress. By the time Joan arrived in the court of the Dauphin she had undergone a complete transformation from farm girl to leader of men. She cut her hair in to the bowl cut worn by soldiers and put off the red dress for a soldier's costume. The change was not purely cosmetic. We know that growing hair and cutting hair as a vow to the Almighty has a long biblical history. Even today there are modern sects who neither shave nor cut their hair and whose women cover their hair so no outsider may see it. Hair is powerful and sexual. To drain Samson of his strength Delilah cuts his hair. To protect his soldiers from the enemy's grasp Alexander the Great,commanded that all his soldiers have military haircuts and shaven chins. In the sixties growing hair long was the youth anti-war protest against a status quo it had not created.

Donning man's clothing was expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy; it is as an abomination. Joan insisted that her voices had commanded her to wear the uniform of a soldier. She was being obedient to God. It is this point that the Grand Inquisitor holds fast over and over again. Joan is not being obedient to to the Church. Joan thought God and the Church were the same thing. The learned clerics who condemned her knew better. Why was wearing men's clothing such a crime? Sumptuary laws have been with us forever. They are intended to keep the inferiors in their place. If a slave wore a toga with a stripe he might be taken for a senator.