Short Summary - Saint Joan : George Bernard Shaw

  Short Summary - Saint Joan : George Bernard Shaw

[alert-success] Saint Joan : George Bernard Shaw

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         Robert de Baudricourt gives a young country girl named Joan of Arc, or sometimes just The Maid, an interview because she won't leave until she talks to him. This was in the year 1429. She tells him that she needs horses and armour to go to the Dauphin of France and end the English siege of Orleans. She knows that a siege is possible because Saints Margaret and Catherine have told her what to do. Captain de Baudricourt agrees to The Maid's request after she shows him how simple she is.  

        The Maid has a lot of trouble when she gets to the Dauphin's castle, especially with the Dauphin, who doesn't want anything to do with war or fighting. Joan's demands that something be done to improve France's military situation are ignored when the situation is discussed. However, when she is alone with the Dauphin, she is able to give him enough courage that he finally agrees to let her lead the army, knowing that she can't make France's situation worse. 

        Then, Joan goes to the Loire River near Orleans, where she meets Dunois, the leader of the French forces. He tells her that they need to wait until the wind changes, but Joan is determined to lead her troops against the English stronghold right away. Suddenly, the wind does change in a good way, and Dunois swears allegiance to The Maid. 

        Later, in the English camp, Warwick, the leader of the English forces, and de Stogumber, his chaplain, say that The Maid must be a witch because there is no other way to explain the heavy English losses and defeats besides witchcraft. 

        Peter Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, comes in and talks about what will happen to Joan of Arc. Cauchon's main intellectual worry is that Joan is replacing the authority of the Church with her own private sense of right and wrong. Warwick doesn't care about what the Church thinks. Instead, he's worried that Joan is telling the common people and serfs to swear allegiance directly to the king. However, the feudal system depends on the lower classes swearing allegiance to their immediate lords and masters. The feudal system might fall apart because of Joan's simple pleas. Cauchon also says that Joan is trying to get ordinary people to show more loyalty to their home countries (France and England) than to the Universal Catholic Church. This would make the Church even less powerful. So, even though they have different reasons, they both agree that The Maid should be killed. 

        After more victories, Joan was finally able to keep her promise to push the English back and make the Dauphin king in the Cathedral at Rheims. After the ceremony, Joan can't wait to move on to Paris and drive the English out. The Dauphin, on the other hand, is happy with what he has retaken. Commander Dunois is reluctant to start a new campaign after all of the recent victories, and the Archbishop is starting to think that Joan is too proud and stubborn. Joan then realises that she must stand alone, just as "saints have always stood alone," even though she has been warned that if she falls into the hands of the enemy, neither the military, the state, nor the Church will help her. 

        After about 9 months, Joan is on trial for heresy. She has been locked up and in chains for the past nine months, and her "voices" have been asked about many times. After asking her a lot of hard questions about religion, her accusers get Joan to admit that the voices she heard were not from God but from Satan. After she denied hearing voices, the judges locked her up and told her she could only eat bread and water for the rest of her life. Joan doesn't like this awful punishment, so she tears up her confession. She is taken right away to the stake and burned as a witch. The Executioner then comes in and says that Joan's heart would not burn. 

        In the Epilogue, which takes place about 25 years later, Joan shows up again in front of the king, who was once the Dauphin, and her main accusers, who have now been found guilty by a later court. This court found Joan innocent of all charges and her accusers guilty of all kinds of crimes. 

        The story then moves to 1920, when the Church says that Joan is a saint. She now has the power to come back as a living woman, and she asks everyone in the room if she should. All of them find this horrifying, and they all admit that they want her to stay dead. "How long until the world is ready to accept its saints?"is the question that Joan asks God at the end.

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