Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2004 5:58 pm
"An uncommonly intelligent small-town girl driven mad by the ruthless, arrogant, murderous British soldiers, who had occupied her village since the age of nine."
At thirteen she began hearing voices, perhaps due to an overactive Id penetrating her conscious mind, and like any good Middle Ages Catholic girl, believing this to be the word of God, set out to rid France of the troublesome British. After finally convincing the French Prince, she joined the army as its driving force, and unleashed the previously suppressed seventeen-year-old-female wrath, fuelled by the sexist taunts of her fellow soldiers, upon the British forts. She fought beside the Prince until his coronation, when he abandoned her in favour of a more luxurious lifestyle and did not aid her in any way when she was captured, tortured, sentenced, and burnt alive by the British in her own country. Yes, at nineteen she was unjustly prosecuted for the preposterous charges of sorcery and heresy. The real, unspoken charges were simply: she was French, a soldier, and a woman who had contradicted everything the female sex role stereotype insinuated about women and their rightful place in the home – this concerned them. The anger of a woman is much more lethal than a man’s – they have more tricks, fewer tender spots, and no scruples to use them. The world was not ready for this ordeal; it would change their society in a way they did not like and being traditional, foolish religionists, it was considered ‘unchristian’.
Barely recognised by historians who greatly favour the nobility, she is, no less, a saint when, indeed, she should not be. The only thing that separates her from any other soldier is simply that she was a woman in a time when men ruled the world.
At thirteen she began hearing voices, perhaps due to an overactive Id penetrating her conscious mind, and like any good Middle Ages Catholic girl, believing this to be the word of God, set out to rid France of the troublesome British. After finally convincing the French Prince, she joined the army as its driving force, and unleashed the previously suppressed seventeen-year-old-female wrath, fuelled by the sexist taunts of her fellow soldiers, upon the British forts. She fought beside the Prince until his coronation, when he abandoned her in favour of a more luxurious lifestyle and did not aid her in any way when she was captured, tortured, sentenced, and burnt alive by the British in her own country. Yes, at nineteen she was unjustly prosecuted for the preposterous charges of sorcery and heresy. The real, unspoken charges were simply: she was French, a soldier, and a woman who had contradicted everything the female sex role stereotype insinuated about women and their rightful place in the home – this concerned them. The anger of a woman is much more lethal than a man’s – they have more tricks, fewer tender spots, and no scruples to use them. The world was not ready for this ordeal; it would change their society in a way they did not like and being traditional, foolish religionists, it was considered ‘unchristian’.
Barely recognised by historians who greatly favour the nobility, she is, no less, a saint when, indeed, she should not be. The only thing that separates her from any other soldier is simply that she was a woman in a time when men ruled the world.