She Gets Inside Your Head: Joan of Arc and Contemporary Women’s Spirituality

Abstract

History has produced many images of Joan of Arc. We have made of her memory what we need it to be. Her figure calls up strong representations: from innocent girl among peasants to curious prodigy at court, from magical virgin to witch and whore. Among these many Joans are some we would deem bizarre, even offensive to her memory. For example, I have recently come across “Joan, the Militant Kamelia,” written in the 1920s for the women’s order of the Ku Klux Klan; it claims that “voices like unto those that commanded Joan of Arc” now speak to American women, telling them to establish the supremacy of the white race.¹ Yet no matter how far from the historical Joan this appropriation by the KKK may take us, still we must acknowledge the way the Maid of France exerts influence over societies far removed from her own.