Saint Joan of Arc (Sackville-West)

Saint Joan of Arc is a biography of Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West first published in New York and London in 1936. The Grove Press (New York City) re-issue of 2001 runs to 395 pages including appendices which collate the events of Joan's life, present a chronological table and give a bibliography of related pre-1936 works.

"Deeply and rightly as one mistrusts the historian who draws too freely on his imagination to fill in the details of the cold outline provided by official documents, there are occasions when it becomes only reasonable for him to do so."

Historians began to criticize this book shortly after its publication. One issue, as indicated in the quotation above, was that Ms. Sackville-West often created many details by engaging in personal speculation. This sometimes included subjects for which documented evidence does exist, but which the author either deliberately ignored or was unaware of. Sackville-West was a novelist rather than a historian, and may have been following the usual habit of novelists to invent plot elements while nonetheless presenting this book as a work of historical fact.

It seems inevitable that such an approach would elicit criticism especially when applied to a personage who is well-documented in historical sources. There are two matters in particular which seem to have sparked the most opposition.

The first issue is Ms. Sackville-West's suggestions with regard to Joan's sexuality, which include the implication (although never explicitly stated) that Joan may have been a lesbian. Historians - and, somewhat paradoxically, Sackville-West herself - have pointed out that this claim was based on nothing more than the standard medieval practice of coping with limited bedspace by having guests share a bed with others of the same gender. Sackville-West herself points out in Chapter VI that Joan's occasional practice during her childhood of having sleepovers with a little girl named Hauviette was "a common custom, especially between girls who had made their first communion together". But the author then cites a Latin translation of Hauviette's description of these sleepovers which Sackville-West claims is "curious" - as if it implies something less common - but without explaining why. Here again is an indirect implication of lesbian activity but without presenting any direct evidence. Joan of Arc was also occasionally bunked with girls such as the nine-year-old child Charlotte Boucher and other girls or women. But the eyewitnesses who mention such situations specify that Joan of Arc was chaste rather than sexually active, therefore any theory proposing a lesbian context to their statements would need to explain how they could be describing lesbian sex while simultaneously saying that Joan didn't have sex at all. This is the case with Marguerite la Touroulde, whom Sackville-West claims had said that Joan had slept with her "on terms of considerable intimacy"; but historians have pointed out that Marguerite la Touroulde had actually said that Joan "was a virgin", and the practice of sleeping in the same bed was the routine custom. Whatever Sackville-West may have meant by "intimacy" - a term which she doesn't elaborate on - an implication of sexual intimacy is not supported by the evidence, but in fact is contradicted by it.

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