character. The Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellain“attributes sublime virtues only to the nobility,” Huizinga observed of his Chronique des choses de mon temps , a history of the years 1417–74 that was written when“God, the theory went, had established an intangible order of which costume was merely the expression.” The Third Reich didn’t invent the yellow badge that announced its wearer as a Jew; it revived the idea from a decree made by Pope Innocent III in 1215 that Jews be “marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples.” *3 By the time Joan was born, two centuries of increasing social unrest had drawn the strictures of sumptuary laws that much tighter; never before or since has Europe insisted on so rigid and visible a classification of its citizens. Even were a prostitute successful enough to afford the fine clothes of an aristocrat, she could never be confused with a lady, required, as she was by law, to wear a striped hood or cloak. Within this context, Joan, whose dress revealed, in the opinion of her judges, “her obstinacy, her stubbornness in evil, her want of charity, her disobedience to the Church, and the scorn she has of the holy sacraments,” refused to acknowledge the most basic and essential distinction, that drawn between male and female.“It was characteristic of the time, of the doctors’ narrowmindedness, of their blind attachment to the letter without any consideration for the spirit,” Michelet wrote, “that no point seemed more grievous to them than the sin of having assumed the garments of a man.”
“Mark what I say,” Shaw’s inquisitor lectures, “the woman who quarrels with her clothes and puts on the dress of a man is like the man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist:they are followed, as surely as the night follows the day, by bands of wild women and men who refuse to wear any clothes at all.” Shaw’s representation of the clerics’ response isn’t drawn from historical record, but it represents the Church’s viewpoint well enough. As pronounced by an anonymous member of the University of Paris,“If a woman could put on male clothing as she liked with impunity, women would have unrestrained opportunities to fornicate and to practice manly acts which are legally forbidden to them according to doctrine … for example, to preach, to teach, to bear arms, to absolve, to excommunicate.”
Jesus drafted his own death warrant in the temple when he upturned the tables of the moneylenders and berated those who sold doves for holy sacrifice, publicly challenging a corrupt social order that allowed the rich to purchase sacred power—an order swiftly reinvented by the Church that deified him. So now had Joan drafted hers by drawing the attention of both those who made and guarded rules she refused to obey and the multitudes governed by their misogyny.
With the example of Saint Margaret and other virgin martyrs before her, Joan sheared off her hair; by doing so, she announced she had removed herself from the company of other unwed girls, who were expected to leave their heads uncovered in public, their hair undressed and falling down their backs as an advertisement for prospective suitors. At a time when women didn’t get their hair cut, ever, Joan’s barely covered her ears. Hers was the original bob, the haircut assumed by flappers as a symbol of female liberation and still known in France as la coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc. It would have been possible for Joan to preserve her hair’s length and still wage war, especially as women and girls often wore plaits coiled over their heads. Arguably, it would have been a comfort, or even a precaution, to have an extra layer of padding under a metal helmet designed not only to deflect arrows but also to preserve a knight’s skull from the impact of a rock dropped on his head from a parapet.
But Joan didn’t want a woman’s hair any more than she wanted a woman’s fate. By the time
“Mark what I say,” Shaw’s inquisitor lectures, “the woman who quarrels with her clothes and puts on the dress of a man is like the man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist:they are followed, as surely as the night follows the day, by bands of wild women and men who refuse to wear any clothes at all.” Shaw’s representation of the clerics’ response isn’t drawn from historical record, but it represents the Church’s viewpoint well enough. As pronounced by an anonymous member of the University of Paris,“If a woman could put on male clothing as she liked with impunity, women would have unrestrained opportunities to fornicate and to practice manly acts which are legally forbidden to them according to doctrine … for example, to preach, to teach, to bear arms, to absolve, to excommunicate.”
Jesus drafted his own death warrant in the temple when he upturned the tables of the moneylenders and berated those who sold doves for holy sacrifice, publicly challenging a corrupt social order that allowed the rich to purchase sacred power—an order swiftly reinvented by the Church that deified him. So now had Joan drafted hers by drawing the attention of both those who made and guarded rules she refused to obey and the multitudes governed by their misogyny.
With the example of Saint Margaret and other virgin martyrs before her, Joan sheared off her hair; by doing so, she announced she had removed herself from the company of other unwed girls, who were expected to leave their heads uncovered in public, their hair undressed and falling down their backs as an advertisement for prospective suitors. At a time when women didn’t get their hair cut, ever, Joan’s barely covered her ears. Hers was the original bob, the haircut assumed by flappers as a symbol of female liberation and still known in France as la coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc. It would have been possible for Joan to preserve her hair’s length and still wage war, especially as women and girls often wore plaits coiled over their heads. Arguably, it would have been a comfort, or even a precaution, to have an extra layer of padding under a metal helmet designed not only to deflect arrows but also to preserve a knight’s skull from the impact of a rock dropped on his head from a parapet.
But Joan didn’t want a woman’s hair any more than she wanted a woman’s fate. By the time
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