Joan, the Maiden Head of Modernity

Chapter Six examines the political aspirations of Twain’s Joan. It begins by situating Joan within a “France” where territory, sovereignty, and national identity have been divided or missing for centuries. Because Joan cannot simply hope to resurrect an old France, she must form a new political body, one governed by a new regime and informed by her novel understanding of human nature. To this end, Joan draws on the aid of Arthur de Richemont to help her found and perpetuate a new state in which the Catholic Church takes a back seat to a secular authority that views its subjects not as free citizens or children of God, but as the bestial creatures with which the shepherdess Joan is so familiar. Read this way, Twain presents Joan as the founder of the modern West who seeks to change permanently man’s moral and political landscape. The last two sections highlight the Machiavellian aspects of Joan’s revolutionary project and lay out the evidence supporting the view that Personal Recollections charts the origins of modernity.