femgenficathon

Title: Dark
Author: the_alchemist
Fandom: Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 1; historical RPF; the Christian bible
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Death by burning, rampant Catholicism
Prompt: 12) I might have been born in a hovel, but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars Jacqueline Cochran (1906-1980).
Summary: Joan of Arc sits in her prison cell the night before she is to be executed. This is Shakespeare's Joan, who dealt with the devil for her victories. But it wasn't always that way. Tonight she receives a visitor from her past: another woman who was born in poverty and defied the conventions of her age to achieve something great, but who has come down to us with a very different kind of reputation.

Author's Notes:
This story was born of a desire to integrate Shakespeare's La Pucelle with Joan of Arc as she's perceived today.

I was also thinking about the ideas of obedience and reputation, particularly as they apply to female saints. I think Shakespeare's portrayal of Joan was basically slanderous, and I'm not convinced that St Mary's reputation today is much better - there is very little that's meek about this woman who agreed to go ahead with a pregnancy outside marriage at a time when she could have been punished with death for it, and who sang about putting down the mighty from their seats!

I dislike the saying: "obedient women rarely make history", because it seems to me that history is made by women who are selective about what they obey. Neither Joan nor Mary was obedient to the conventions of her time, but both were highly obedient to something they perceived as more important. Yet one of them has come down to us as a rebellious feminist heroine and the other as an ultra-submissive 'good girl'. I wanted to put them in a story together to draw out some of the parallels.

Huge thanks to awesome beta readers atreic and venta.


( She had seen a woman burnt for witchcraft once ... )