A Uniqueness that is Joan of Arc

Julia Forest

Copy Editor

Joan of Arc may be a very well known story, but Professor Bernard Dobski points out how Mark Twain’s portrayal of Joan of Arc is extremely unique, making her a very complex political figure. “The Joan he’s got here is a cut from a very different cloth. I think he presents her as a master political strategist, manipulator with massive political ambitions, which I attribute to a desire to found a new age, breaking from the church,” Dobski said.

On February 26th, Professor Bernard Dobski, who teaches Political Science, discussed his new book, Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc, political wisdom, divine justice, and the origins of modernity, in Curtis Performance Hall. Professor Christopher Gilbert, who teaches English, served as the moderator. The event was sponsored by Assumption University’s Provost Office.

Prior to reading Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Dobski recommends being familiar with some of Twain’s previous works. “I would say there is a series of prefaces, but the real preface to it is another novel called A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, which I believe Twain intends to pair with this novel…,” he said.

On the contrary, Dobski also mentioned how Joan of Arc doesn’t read like any of Twain’s other pieces of literature. “Joan of Arc, which is an admittedly weird book, Twain calls it, near the end of his life, his best book. He doubles down on this in a number of different forums, says he didn’t spend half as much time on any of his other works, that this was his labor of love, and yet nobody reads it, or at least very few people I know read it, even among Twain scholars, very few people read it,” Dobski said.

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is written in three parts. Part one is about the French Catholic female saint’s upbringing in Domrémy and her divine revelations. Part two focuses on Joan’s political and military career and finally, part three is about her trial and execution. The whole novel is told as a memoir by Joan’s friend, Louis de Conte, and it’s set in 1492.

“The argument of the book, simply put, is Twain is using this as an opportunity to flesh out his approach to the divine right of kings, while also recounting the kind of origins of modernity, a theme that really, I think, he was obsessed with for most of his life and can be seen throughout his work,” Dobski said.

Twain’s admiration for Joan influenced how he represented her as a political figure. “She represents this wonderful standard of statesmanship, a certain kind of statesmanship, of how to mold individuals, shape their characters, reorient their longings, so that they can be satisfied in a new way through her kinds of politics, and thereby, divorce them from traditional authorities, whether it be crown or altar,” Dobski said.

“One of the things Twain likes to do with Joan is he’s always talking about her in comparison or in conjunction with animals. She bandages animals, she feeds animals, she nurtures animals. He even talks about animals as being kinds of people…You get this sense that Twain’s Joan is really working with the earthly bestial part of human nature and limiting it to that, and showing how we can move away from the more spiritual elevated concerns of the crown and altar to a new modern secular age. I think that’s what he’s doing with that Joan,” he continued.

For Dobski, Twain’s Joan of Arc helps us to understand how modernity came out of The Middle Ages, especially because of Joan’s disapproval towards the king. “I don’t think Twain here is necessarily endorsing modernity. I don’t think Twain wants to go back to the pre-modern world either. I don’t think he wants to go back to the Middle Ages. But I think he’s providing a very critical view of the mechanics of that transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. I think part of that criticism involves thinking about the human concerns for justice and what that transition does to the way we think about justice, what it does to how we define justice or understand justice.”

“I think one of the reasons why Twain thinks this book is his best is because it allows us to see both the roots of our concern that justice be done in the world and the limits and possibilities of securing justice in this world. And our profound hopes that justice be divine in nature, that the earthly political order be brought into line with divine justice,” Dobski said.

Dobski believes that Twain’s political commentary should make us question our human nature and become more thoughtful. “…I do think Twain wants to say if we’re gonna live in modernity, we have to live alive to its strengths and its weaknesses, which means being attentive to the fact that human beings have this other longing for justice that opens them up and makes them open to the call of the divine,” he said.

Twain, who’s known to be a humorist, does not include as many comedic moments in his Joan of Arc as he does with his other books, but some comedy and laughter still persists within the novel. “…part of it’s the laughter, it’s the derision, it’s bringing the high down to the low, it’s exposing pretense, but maybe at its best form, its most purified form, it’s a kind of expression of wisdom that brings its audience around that view as well. And so if that’s how I’m going to understand comedy, then Joan is hilarious,” Dobski said.

Dobski also brought up the benefits of Twain and his characters being unreliable narrators. “It’s the kind of thing where Twain wants you to figure things out for yourself. It’s going to create or construct this work in such a way that you’re invited into a kind of journey with it, prompted to undertake an exploration that will lead you to new insights…He can’t simply show you what he wants you to know and have you thereby know it, simply by virtue of showing it to you. Only way you’re going to get it is if you do the work yourself.”