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Unit 26: Saint Joan: Themes

26.1 Joan as a Hero of the Imagination Notes

When Shaw invokes the “imagination” in reference to Joan, he does not mean that Joan was
consciously “making up” the voices and visions she experienced, or that, as her accusers state in
Scene VI, that she was “pretending” to receive messages from the saints. Rather, Shaw means that
Joan possessed a faculty for transcending the everyday concerns of most people; she was gripped
by, shaped by, driven by what Shaw calls the “evolutionary appetite” for humanity’s advancement
to a degree that most people are not. She is a “visualizer.” Shaw’s conviction on this point accounts
for the several references to imagination in the play.

Baudricourt’s “They come from your imagination,” Scene I; “Must then a Christ
perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?,”
For Shaw, the imagination is the source of humanity’s progress, and Joan is one of its strongest
representatives. In this respect, and not in the traditional ecclesiastical sense, Joan is, for Shaw, a
“saint.” She is “the unaveraged individual, representing life possibly at its highest actual human
evolution and possibly at its lowest, but never at its merely mathematical average.” She is “upstart”
in the positive sense of the word-but also in its negative sense, which, in Shaw’s view, ultimately
leads her to her doom.

26.2 The Will to Power

In his preface, Shaw points to the major social and cultural forces of the Middle Ages-the church
and feudalism-as rocks against which Joan, in her innocence and naiveté, was dashed. Throughout
the play, but especially in Scene VI, Shaw depicts Joan as someone who does not understand the
powers she is up against; a victim of a collision between various peoples’ quest for and use and
abuse of power. Thus the Archbishop can warn Joan, in Scene II, that it is dangerous to be “in love
with religion”; and thus, for another instance, the Inquisitor can state, after her trial is concluded in
Scene VI, “[I]t is a terrible thing to see a young and innocent creature crushed between these mighty
forces, the Church and the Law.” Cauchon tells Warwick in Scene IV, “I know well that there is a
Will to Power in the world. I know that while it lasts there will be a struggle between the Emperor
and the Pope, between the dukes and the political cardinals, between the barons and the kings. The
devil divides us and governs.” To a large extent, Shaw’s characters serve as ciphers for the powers
they represent, and the conflicts between them on stage dramatize larger, more abstract conflicts
among these powers. Notably, Joan, who represents the “super-personal” (that is, concerned with
more than the individual) power of the evolutionary appetite, is destroyed by these conflicts.

There were two major social and cultural forces—the church and feudalism, explain
this statement.

26.3 Religion

Saint Joan chronicles the life of a Catholic saint. As such, we’re sure it’s no big surprise that religion
is a major theme. In the play, we see the one of the earliest clashes of Protestantism and Catholicism.
There’s also much discussion of popular religious topics such as faith, heresy, martyrdom, and
repentance.

26.4 Women and Feminity

Joan was an early pioneer of women’s equality. In a time where it was completely unheard of, she
wore men’s clothes, became a soldier, and advised the most powerful men of her day, as Saint Joan
details. She has inspired generations of women to challenge gender roles.

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