Does Shaw Really Know Joan?

While reading Imogen Stubbs’ short essay “On Playing Joan” I took particular interest opening statements on the relevance of the play “Saint Joan” and the relevance of Joan herself in today’s society. Even in class I believe the sentence “everyone knows about Joan of Arc” was tossed around, making her story seem somewhat trivial. From history classes in high school I can recall that she was a female soldier of France who was burned at the stake at a young age. That is all anyone seems to remember about her. While the play “Saint Joan” is based on true events, it gives an insight into her personal self. My question is, however, if this personal self is at all an accurate portrayal of Joan of Arc.

George Bernard Shaw was not privy to the insights of Joan, which makes me question how she is presented in his play. In Tori’s presentation on the playwright she mentioned that a critic of Shaw’s stated that Shaw created Joan’s character as a representation of himself, evidenced by the mention of Shaw’s personal religion, Protestantism. Before learning this, I had already been slightly annoyed by Joan’s dialogue because she seemed far too blindly optimistic and for lack of a better word, far too feminine, than I pictured the great soldier Joan of Arc. I wasn’t disappointed by the way she was portrayed, rather I was confused because this character didn’t fit into the tomboy, fierce stereotype that Joan embodied in my mind.

While neither Shaw, nor I can say exactly how Joan should be portrayed, I think it is important to recognize that they way that we are exposed to Joan in this play is, for all intents and purposes, a fictional representation.