By Paul Carrier
In 15th-century France, a teenager claims three saints have been appearing to her since she was 12 years old, instructing her to drive the English from French soil and secure the coronation of the dauphin, the rightful heir to the French crown, as King Charles VII.
Acting on what she says are God’s instructions, the illiterate girl now known in the English-speaking world as Joan of Arc obtains an escort to Charles’ court in Chinon. She eventually persuades him to place her in command of an army that lifts the English siege of Orléans.
That victory was a turning point in the Hundred Years War, because the fall of Orléans would have paved the way for the English and Burgundian forces that already controlled northern France to seize the rest of the country. Instead, Joan’s army went on to win other battles. Charles was crowned at Reims in 1429. And 24 years later, France finally expelled the remaining English troops from its territory.
Speculation about the origins of Joan’s visions runs the gamut, from migraines to bovine tuberculosis. The Catholic Church canonized her as a saint in 1920, and some Catholics believe Joan’s revelations were exactly what she claimed them to be: divine messages.
In The Maid, a fictionalized account of Joan’s rapid rise and fall (she was burned at the stake as a heretic when she was only 19), Kimberly Cutter does not take sides in the debate over the voices that inspired Joan. “She believed that she was on a mission from God (though many today dismiss her as schizophrenic or epileptic), and that the Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret spoke to her and provided her with guidance,” Cutter writes noncommittally in an author’s note.
Cutter does assume, as do scholars, that Joan was sincere in her beliefs, whatever their source. The Maid shows us the ecstasy, turmoil, zeal and angst of Joan’s inner world as she rose from peasant to national heroine, a teenager whose faith, courage and intelligence transformed a nation. In the process, we are moved by her strength and accomplishments, even if the reader may question or reject her visions. Joan's short but amazingly eventful life remains compelling to this day because of what she did, which cannot be diminished by any skepticism about why she did it.
The story is told in the third person, but Cutter occasionally inserts Joan’s brief first-person accounts into the narrative.
“Day after day in Vaucouleurs (before Joan met the future king) I let the voices tell me of the creature I must become,” she says in The Maid. “A symbol, pure and fierce. Simple as a blade of grass. Braver than a lion. A marvel of conviction and rage and faith. The Maid of Lorraine. Believe that you are the Maid of Lorraine, the voices said. Know that you have always been the Maid of Lorraine.”
Joan emerges as a pious, tough-minded child who initially revels in the beauty of her visions, only to sink into confusion and fear before embracing the seemingly preposterous notion that she is to be France’s liberator. What is most compelling about Cutter’s take is the metamorphosis of an innocent young girl into a brash and determined warrior.
Cutter convincingly portrays the transformative power of Joan’s visions, as when she is visited early on by the archangel Michael: “In poured the thrilling light, the joy. A golden burr in her right eye and the spreading warmth in her cheek, along her neck, down her spine. The archangel spoke softly. Learn to ride, little one. Teach yourself to ride.”
Even when she was taken captive after a string of victories (and some defeats), this uneducated teenager outwitted her interrogators during an ecclesiastical trial that the Catholic Church later nullified. Although she briefly recanted her claims of divine guidance, she later reasserted them, and died a gruesome death as a result.
As Cutter says in an author’s note at amazon.com: “No one else had such conviction. Such faith. Such ferocious courage. Also, unlike so many of history’s great women, who were famous for standing behind great men, Joan stood alone. Behind no one. Her desire was her own; her glory was her own; her downfall was her own.” Joan was, Cutter writes, “a real girl . . . . A real flesh-and-blood teenager did all this.”
