She’d already been struggling to find a way to represent Joan. She hates the Shaw play. His Joan, like most of his major characters, is largely a mouthpiece for his own smug opinions. And Brecht’s version is even worse. Is it a coincidence that the two most egregious mansplainers in modern theatrical history both decided to appropriate Joan’s story? Or does the unruly bitch make such men nervous? The problem with any realistic portrayal of Joan is that she was a lunatic in an age when lunatics were seen as vessels of God. To a modern audience, any accurate depiction of Joan makes her too strangely medieval to empathize with, so maybe the solution is to make the whole play strangely medieval. When you think about it, what could be more “realistic” than telling Joan’s story in the form that stories were told in her own lifetime, stories that maybe shaped the way she thought?
You can probably tell that Saskia has been practicing her pitch to producers. Anyway, as soon as you abandon fourth-wall realism, all sorts of possibilities open up. The title of her play is Joan, Maid, which she hopes someone will notice is homophonic with Joan, Made—i.e., Joan, constructed. Because her play isn’t just about the girl from Domrémy, it’s about images of Joan, the legend of Joan, the need for someone like Joan, the false Joans that cropped up in her wake, the other prophet-lunatics that the time demanded, who dutifully appeared, failed, and died. For example, poor Guillaume, the shepherd boy whom the Archbishop of Reims pulled out of his miter two months after he and all the other French churchmen insouciantly let the English burn Joan.
Archbishop of Reims:
It pains me, truly, to say the Maid
Became inordinately proud,
Loved too much her garments rich
And put herself before the Church.
But by God’s grace I have found
Another shepherd we can send
Against the foe, he’s good or better
Than Joan, he’s suffered the stigmata!
I’ve never heard anyone claim
That jumped-up hoyden enjoyed the same.
Maybe the boy was more pliable than Joan. Maybe he was more palatable because he had a dick. But the English snapped him up in his first battle, sewed him in a sack and drowned him in the Seine.
Was he even a shepherd? Because Joan wasn’t a shepherdess, even though every single account has made her one, both now and back then. She actually had to deny this in court: “No, sir, to the best of my recollection I never tended no fucking sheep.” This sort of thing fascinates Saskia. What is it with shepherds and shepherdesses? Is it because of the Christmas story? In order for the angel of the Lord to come upon you, must you be abiding in the field keeping watch over your flock by night? Yes, probably that, and also because everything in the Bible is sheepy and goaty: shepherd of souls, the Lamb of God, scapegoats, the ram in the thicket, etc. And since people tend to have mystical revelations in accordance with social expectations, other Christian visionaries have been shepherds. Like Mélanie, the girl at La Salette. Can we talk about her for a moment? Saskia recently added some verses on this, and they’re a mess, half inert lumber and half notes. Mélanie Calvat was born to a poor family in the French Alps in 1831, the fourth of ten children. From the age of nine to fourteen, she was sent by her family to work for other farmers in the region, returning home only during the winter. The farmer she was working for at the time of her vision, when she was fourteen, reported that she was lazy, disobedient, and sullen, didn’t answer when spoken to, and that instead of sleeping in his house at night, she hid in the fields.
Hello? Alarm bells, anyone? In 2016 have we at last reached the point where people whose heads are not up their own asses can look at these bare facts and conclude that Mélanie Calvat was likely being sexually abused? A feminazi can hope.
Let’s imagine the thousands of other young shepherdesses, through the centuries, living in remote areas with non-relatives. How much below one hundred would be the percentage of raped girls? Who among Christians, historically, has tended to have visions of the divine? Powerless, under-supervised adolescent girls. Who comes to them, promising absolution and love? Virgins. And the poor, rustic, uneducated girls, the lowest of the low, become seers, elevated by the local clergy, revered by the mob. So the last shall be first.
At least Joan, as a girl, was apparently left “intact.” She had to prove this twice, to two separate committees of women, presumably armed with specula. (There’s a scene in Saskia’s play with a nuns’ chorus, clacking specula like castanets.) But Joan, of course, did have to contend with patriarchy. Her parents wanted her to marry, and picked out the dick-equipped stranger who would be her lord and master. She refused, and was sued for breach of contract. She argued successfully in court that she had never agreed to the match. Her father was enraged. He dreamed that she would run off with soldiers—in other words, become a camp follower, a whore, give away for free what he had wanted to sell—and declared he’d take her to the village pond and drown her first. At this point Joan’s two virginal visitants, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret,
