Shaw uses Joan’s armor and male attire to emphasize how boldly and incessantly Joan subverts the misogynist norms embraced by medieval society. Joan’s armor—and, more generally, her decision to wear men’s clothing—is a frequent point of contention for Saint Joan’s male characters. During Joan’s trial, for example, the Inquisitor goes so far as to suggest that the act against nature Joan demonstrates in her decision to don male clothing is as grave a sin as heresy. Joan’s armor also symbolizes her practicality, as evidenced by the fact that her reasons for wearing it are often as pragmatic as they are rebellious Armor is practical for Joan’s military pursuits because it protects her from the violence of warfare. Further, if Joan is to live among other soldiers, it is imperative that they see her as an equal. Wearing armor and men’s clothing renders her more visibly equal to her male counterparts. Throughout the play, characters often suggest that Joan is mad and capricious but, in reality, most of her decisions are practical and highly calculated. When Shaw references Joan’s armor or male attire in Saint Joan, he reinforces Joan’s practicality and alerts the reader to the falsity of these claims.
Joan’s Armor Quotes in Saint Joan
ROBERT. How do you mean? voices?
JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
ROBERT. They come from your imagination.
JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
DUNOIS. I, God forgive me, am a little in love with war myself, the ugly devil! I am like a man with two wives. Do you want to be like a woman with two husbands?
JOAN. [matter-of-fact] I will never take a husband. A man in Toul took action against me for breach of promise; but I never promised him. I am a soldier: I do not want to be thought of as a woman. I will not dress as a woman. I do not care for the things women care for. They dream of lovers, and money. I dream of leading a charge, and of placing the big guns.
“But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep me from everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind.”
Joan’s Armor Symbol Timeline in Saint Joan
