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3 The Demise of Joan of Arc One of the more unusual Joan of Arc documents born of the First World War is a short, quirky book that was apparently self-published in 1926 by one William Paul Yancey titled The Soldier Virgin of France: A Message of World Peace by a Soldier of the A.E.F. Yancey’s conclusion that Joan of Arc’s highest accomplishment was to become a “sacred torch,” as opposed to winning battles, is characteristic of a narrowing of the heroine’s significance in relation to war in the United States after World War I. With the disillusionment that followed the end of the war, the virgin warrior had lost her appeal as a subject around whom to create a work of art. Instead, Joan was more often a device through which to speak about more general issues, such as the preparedness movement, as evidenced in the George Loane Tucker film Joan of Plattsburg of 1918. Representations of a strong Joan of Arc had served their purpose when women’s resources had to be appropriately directed , but as soldiers began to return home to the shifting gender roles of the period, the independent Joan epitomized by Geraldine Farrar in DeMille ’s Joan the Woman was ever less attractive. Yancey’s conflicted adulation of Joan of Arc is simultaneously a call for peace, an antipacifist tract, and a book of advice for women. The text praises the mystical Joan of Arc and admits to making up some of her story, yet is loaded with appeals to logic, proof, and truth in a narrative that weaves George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt into the medieval tale. Although the writer’s anxiety is evident in lines such as “We have reason to believe that somewhere in the vast universe there is a central place where an eternal commander directs . . . like a wise executive,” the book captures the 65 period’s ambivalence toward Joan. Yancey envisions Joan as a little sister to the Virgin Mary, who is likewise an example rather than an agent. For example , Joan “was commanded,” Joan “was given,” “it was decided,” and Joan “did not attempt to command the expedition. She only expressed desires and wishes, leaving all decisions to her knights.” The very idea of Joan’s physical presence causes the author consternation. Joan is a “tall, vigorous girl as God intended” with a “boyish form,” yet she is a seductress on the battle- field, as “the opposite side simply gazed spellbound at the sight of a beautiful girl in dazzling armor, holding a sacred pennon aloft while she gracefully rode a magnificent black horse at the head of an advancing column.” The description of her as “beautiful yet so manly” suggests that Joan moved disturbingly between the categories that defined the functions of women and men during war.1 As a book of advice for women, the book continues this slippage between roles. Yancey writes that women now must go out into the world to do the work of men; when they are often forced to do coarse work and be surrounded by coarse men amid the dangers of the world, they very much need a model of faith, of chastity, of purity of body and mind, of devotion to line of duty and of willingness to abstain from such gratifications as may mar their ability for success. [In addition] the world needs a model to teach men respect for the rights of woman. Man needs to be taught that the Creator does not intend woman to be his slave or toy, but to do her part of the world’s work.2 Later Yancey abruptly inquires: “Ye twentieth century girls: What would you do? . . . You have a valid excuse for failure to fulfill your mission . . . take the hand of the knight whose heart you have won, and leave the unworthy king his fate. But you would, like Jeanne, rise above your difficulties and tell the temptor where to go.”3 The goal of this mission finally is represented in an image found often in the poetry of the time, in which Joan is likened to a sacred torch. In this free play with history, legend, and expediency Yancey encapsulates many of the reasons Joan was so useful in the war years. She inspired and shamed men to act and eventually disappeared. More specifically, Joan of Arc entered the discourse of the preparedness movement...

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