fusal to give up her transvestism. Each of these facets of her presentation was essential to her acceptance as a possibly genuine representative of God. Each of these choices and behaviors rendered her emphatically not-female. This non-female persona had a double function--it was essential, in a social sense, to her ability to lead and advise, and it was the demonstration, in a religious sense, of the sanctified nature of her mission.
Joan's Rejection of Women's Roles and Choice of Virginity
When Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake, her body was exposed to the crowd in order to demonstrate that she truly was a woman. In an anonymous account, a Parisian citizen wrote that, once Joan was dead and her clothes mostly burned away, "her naked body was shown to all the people and all the secrets that could or should belong to a woman, to take away the doubts of the crowd" (quoted in Warner 14). According to her executioners, many of the people feared that Joan might have been a demon, and they needed to be assured that she was merely a woman. Yet, the necessity of proving that Joan was a woman was clearly based on more than just this supposed fear about her humanity.
It was true that, among her enemies, Joan's behaviors and her successes were seen "as something fearful, monstrous, unnatural" (Lightbody 60). Even those who supported her looked on Joan as guilty of unnatural behaviors that were acceptable only because they were sanctioned by her visions. But, in order to subject her to a trial for heresy, these fears had to be organized in such a way that they clearly demonstrated her defiance of the authority of the Church. Thus, "the vital question upon which the whole trial turned, was that of submission to the Church" (Scott 106). The fact of Joan's gender was important because her inquisitors' placed their emphasis on two factors: the fraudulence of her claims of virginity, and the fact that her transvestism was a...