Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc, whose visions of God led her to save 14th century-France just in time for Charles, her prince, to give her up to the English. They promptly tried her and burned her at the stake for the wickedness of transgressing the hetero-normative gender ideals of the age. Little did the English know that they were creating a martyr for gender-transgression in centuries to come.


Joan of Arc, Franco-Flemish school, fifteenth century (Archives Nationales, Paris/Bridgeman Art Library, London)

The English lesbian Vita Sackville-West was electrified enough by the legend of the woman warrior Joan that she wrote a novel-like biography filled with Joan's thoughts and desires. Contemporary and later readers would criticize Sackville-West's implication that Joan might have been a lesbian; they also rejected Vita's notion that Joan was probably an unattractive woman. Her biography is still in print.

Vita Sackville-West, Joan of Arc (1936)





Milton Waldman, Joan of Arc (1935) Waldman's book, from around the same time as Vita Sackville-West's, remembers her in a more feminine mode (Joan as Shepherdess, Bibliotheque nationale).




More recent works like Joan of Arc: A Military Leader by Kelly Devries (2002; Jacket front: La Pucelle! by Frank Craig (1874-1918)) show that the concept of a young girl who is also a good soldier, a traditionally masculine role, is what keeps the figure of her so alive in our minds.