The End of Chivalry?: Joan of Arc and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Writer

Abstract

While the First World War prompted the final extinction of chivalric ideas of warfare, the intriguing and complex figure of Joan of Arc had shaken chivalry to its roots centuries before. Joan is “the maid whose love of chivalry ended the age of chivalry even as it ushered in a new age, the outcome of which is not yet known” (Wheeler and Woods, ix). Three Pre-Raphaelite portraits of Joan of Arc manifest the three main depictions of the saint that the nineteenth century produced. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Joan of Arc Kisses the Sword of Liberation (1863) is an androgynous knight: the fair face could be Galahad or Lancelot as easily as Joan. Joan’s gender is not important here, the only indication of her femininity is the beads strung about the neck. Pictured kissing the sword of liberation as an offering before the feet of the crucified Christ, Rossetti’s Joan is simultaneously a spiritual warrior, on a divine mission, and the martial savior of France, the white lily in the foreground symbolizing both Joan’s virginity and her nationality.