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When George Bernard Shaw wrote Saint Joan in 1923, the mood in the entire world, and in Europe in particular, was fatigued from the ravages of World War I. However, during this time many social movements continued, including the women’s suffrage campaign and the continuing disparity between the upper and lower classes in Britain. Shaw uses the character and circumstances of Joan to elucidate many of his political beliefs, including his critical view of the British class structure, his feminism, and his deprecation of organized religion.
Perhaps more important than the actual play in Saint Joan is Shaw’s preface, which is effectively a lengthy extended essay on not only the subject matter proper of the play but also the various social causes that Shaw advocates. This is typical of Shaw, who frequently used historical or mythological storylines to convey a subtext of contemporary criticism. Always incisive and tinged simultaneously with sarcasm and intense concern for the human condition, Shaw’s prefaces expose his complex and innovative political beliefs.
At various points, Shaw remarks on the British preoccupation with social and gender roles. According to Shaw, the reason that Joan of Arc was so politically isolated in the time leading up to her burning at the stake is primarily that she was a lower-class teenage woman who had the pretense to “order everyone about, from her uncle to the king” . Even though Joan is responsible for France’s salvation against the British, she is not celebrated; in fact, when the British capture and try her, the French king attempts nothing on her behalf. Shaw claims that this remarkable and surprising nonchalance derives from masculine, upper-class resentment against Joan.
It was unheard of at Joan’s time, the middle medieval ages, for a young woman to take such assertive control over military affairs. Even more outlandish was the gravity and the sincerity with which Joan conducted herself, for her directives to the monarchy and the aristocracy were never grounded in “I say so” but in “God says so” . Despite Joan’s tremendous service to her country, its leadership could not help but be irritated by her self-righteousness and her confidence. Shaw connects this dissertation with the state of affairs in early twentieth-century Britain, where the ancien régime, still reeling from the tumult of World War I, nervously regarded the ascendancy of the women’s rights and the worker’s rights movements. The two major successes of the British women’s suffrage movement bracketed Saint Joan’s publication: women over 30 years of age were granted the franchise in 1918, and all persons over 21 years of age were allowed to vote in 1928.
Church disestablishment was yet another issue, though latent, in postwar Britain. Shaw’s commentary on religion is not openly antagonistic, but it is subtly biting. The reason given for Joan’s execution is heresy, but Shaw declares that the real reason was that the church, like the French state, feared Joan’s growing influence. Believing herself to have received instructions directly from God, Joan’s “notion of a Catholic Church was one in which the Pope was Pope Joan” . Though she is herself unaware of it, Joan’s innocent aloofness is interpreted as arrogance.
Shaw proceeds to dissect the morality of Joan’s execution as he nears discussion of the modern church in the context of contemporary life. Notably, Shaw avoids direct condemnation of Joan, her accusers, or the inquisitors; hence, Saint Joan has often been called a play without a villain. Shaw does accuse the clergy of seeking temporal power from a spiritual base, but proceeds to argue that the offenses of the church are no worse than those of the doctor and the politician, who proselytize prescriptions and policies to a foolishly credulous citizenry. The Vatican leadership, on the other hand, was “at worst a political conspiracy to make the Church supreme temporally as well as spiritually” .
