Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Saint Joan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Institutions and the Corruption of Integrity
Gender
Sanity vs. Madness
The Quest for Personal Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
It’s a June night in 1456, 25 years after Joan’s execution. Charles VII—now 51 years old and known as Charles the Victorious on account of his military successes—lies reading in bed. Beside him is a table, upon which rests a picture of the Virgin Mary. Ladvenu enters Charles’s room and tells him that Joan has finally received justice. He’s come from an inquiry that exposed the court’s perjury. The Church now sees Joan as innocent and her accusers as corrupt. Charles doesn’t care about Joan’s reputation; he is only relieved to know that he wasn’t crowned by a heretic so many years before. Now, nobody can question his legitimacy as king. Wryly, he speculates that, if Joan could be magically resurrected, “they would burn her again within six months.” Ladvenu exits the room.
The table beside Charles’s bed reinforces his institutional ties to the monarchy, and the picture of the Virgin Mary that rests upon it shows that he also answers to the Church. Charles’s selfish response to Ladvenu’s news about Joan further reinforces his institutional obligations. Charles doesn’t care that Joan’s reputation has been rightfully restored—he only cares that her restored reputation affirms the legitimacy of his own claim to power. Still, his speculation that “they would burn her again within six months” betrays a cynicism toward institutions and their desire to maintain the status quo.
Themes
Literary Devices
Suddenly, the candles go out. Charles hears Joan’s voice. She appears as an apparition, revealing herself to be a dream. Joan tells Charles she doesn’t remember much about being burned, and Charles tells her about the successful military pursuits he forged after her death. More importantly, he informs Joan that the court’s conduct has been ruled corrupt, her sentence has been reversed, and the Church will place a cross where they burned Joan to memorialize her. Joan replies simply: “it is the memory and the salvation that sanctify the cross, not the cross that sanctifies the memory and the salvation.” She believes her memory will “outlast that cross.” Charles scoffs at her characteristic “self-conceit.”
Joan’s observation that “it is the memory and the salvation that sanctify the cross, not the cross that sanctifies the memory and the salvation” is a criticism of empty, symbolic gestures. The Church would like to believe that its memorial to Joan will “sanctify” her memory and reverse the wrongs done unto her by the Church. In contrast, Joan sees the cross as meaningless: because she doesn’t see the Church’s apology as sincere, the cross does little to “sanctif[y] the memory and the salvation” it purports to convey. To Joan, “memory and salvation” can only be reached from within: they cannot be obtained from symbolic, external means.
Themes
Literary Devices
Suddenly, the apparition of Cauchon appears. After the Church declared Joan’s innocence, Cauchon—who was already dead—was excommunicated, his corpse tossed into the sewer. Embittered, he complains that his dishonoring “saps the foundation of the Church.” Cauchon maintains that he showed great mercy in his treatment of Joan—he was neither corrupt nor cruel. To Cauchon’s complaint, the Dauphin replies: “yes: it is always you good men that do the big mischiefs,” yet he defends his own inaction in saving Joan by claiming that he was acting on behalf of France’s national interest. Joan asks Charles if the English are gone, and the apparition of Dunois appears. Dunois—who is still alive—tells Joan he drove the English out using her successful military tactics. Dunois expresses remorse for letting the English burn Joan, making the excuse that he was busy fighting and couldn’t help her.
Cauchon frames his embitterment about being excommunicated in terms of the destructive impact it has on “the foundation of the Church,” underscoring his ties to the institution of the Church. Charles’s critical remark toward Cauchon is hypocritical, as Charles, too, cites his obligation to an outside institution—in his case, the nation of France—to defend his own failure to help Joan. In this way, both Cauchon and the Dauphin were “good men” to their institution who indirectly inflicted “big mischiefs” on Joan as a result of these outside obligations. Dunois makes a similar excuse, citing his martial obligations as the primary reason he couldn’t assist Joan.
Themes
The clock strikes and the apparition of an English soldier appears, singing a rough, “improvised tune.” The soldier, a “saint,” has come “straight from hell.” He is granted one day free from damnation each year for his “one good action.” Joan recognizes the soldier and explains that he was the man who gave her the improvised cross in the final moments before her death. The soldier says that hell isn’t so bad; in fact, there are plenty of “emperors and popes and kings” there to keep him company.
The improvisatory nature of the soldier’s tune evokes the sensibilities of the common people and stands in contrast to the institutional sensibilities of churchmen and noblemen that have entered the room before the soldier. The soldier’s admission that hell is filled with “emperors and popes and kings” is humorous and suggests how little glorified titles say about the truth of one’s character: even (and perhaps, especially) the most lauded and worshipped individuals are capable of acts of evil and corruption.
Themes
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The door opens and an old man enters: he reveals that he is Chaplain de Stogumber. Stogumber expresses remorse for the cruelty he inflicted upon Joan, though in his old age he does not recognize her before him. Joan’s execution might have been horrific, but Stogumber says it “saved” him, forcing him to become “a different man ever since.” Cauchon scoffs at this: “must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?” he asks.
Stogumber appears to be the only character for whom Joan’s death had a real, lasting impact: the horror of her execution “saved” his soul, and he responded by taking direct, charitable action to become “a different man.” Cauchon is too cynical to accept Stogumber’s transformation without critique. When he speculates that “a Christ [must] perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination,” he suggests that simple people like Stogumber lack the intellectual capacity to change on their own behalf and need “Christ” figures like Joan to sacrifice themselves to gain enlightenment.
Themes
The Executioner appears, announcing that Joan’s strength of spirit makes her “more alive” than Stogumber. Warwick enters next and congratulates Joan on her cleared name. He apologizes, maintaining that her execution was not personal—it was “purely political,” and a mistake, at that. A “clerical looking gentleman” appears dressed in 1920s clothing, which the medieval characters find hilarious. The gentleman disregards their laughter, for he comes to them with serious business: he’s been sent to tell them that, 500 years after her death, the Catholic Church has canonized Joan as a saint, and she will be celebrated every year on May 30, the anniversary of her death. Joan is elated. One by one, each of the characters in the room kneel and praise Joan, offering the good she brings to the different sectors of society they represent.
Joan’s strength of spirit alludes to the heightened sense of confidence and self-assurance she has demonstrated throughout the play. The Executioner’s decision to pass off Joan’s execution as “purely political” is in line with the previous excuses characters have offered Joan. Nobody had a personal vendetta against Joan: they were merely acting on behalf of the institutions to which they were answerable. The appearance of the "clerical man" from the future makes clear that once the institution of the Catholic Church validates Joan by canonizing her, each of her accusers are allowed and obligated to praise her. Nothing about their relationship to Joan has changed—only an institution of great power’s reception of her.
Themes
In response to everyone’s praise, Joan proposes that she rise from the dead and join them—she’s a saint now, after all, and can perform miracles. Darkness falls upon the room as everyone rises rapidly to their feet, making nervous and hasty excuses for why Joan cannot be resurrected: unanimously, they agree it would be best for Joan to remain dead. One by one, everyone leaves the room.
Joan’s accusers don’t actually care about her on a personal level—they’re only concerned with how the Church’s canonization of Joan enables them to repent for the cruelties they committed against her and gives them a path toward redemption and ideological validation. They need Joan to exist solely as a dead symbol, but they remain unable to accept her as a living being who can threaten the status quo.
Themes
Literary Devices
The soldier is the last character to go. He tries to comfort Joan, asserting that all those who left her to die are not worth her time. He insists that Joan has the same right to her own convictions as they do to theirs, if not more so. Suddenly, the clock strikes midnight and it is time for the soldiers to go: his day off from damnation is over, and he must return to hell. Alone, Joan cries out: “O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?”
In stating that Joan has more of a right to her convictions than the others do, the soldier suggests that Joan’s convictions are more virtuous because she has arrived at them via individual, intellectual exploration—not via the dogmatic instruction of institutions. Joan’s final plea to God reinforces the idea that the world is never “ready” for saints, or people who operate outside institutions and disrupt the status quo. Ultimately, the world will always reject individuals like Joan, passing them off as insane or a nuisance to society.
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