(And, indeed, by 2014 a conservative Catholic newspaper in the US would run an article under the headline 'Joan of Arc: Scourge of Modern Feminists'.) She is a Catholic saint who was condemned as a heretic by the Catholic church a hero to republicans and monarchists, Vichy and the Resistance, the right and the left. ItВ isn't the only incongruity in Joan of Arc's afterlife instead, it's a symptom of her endlessly protean capacity to be all things to all people. (In 1911, asВ if to emphasise her mythical status, her white charger was led by a fellow protester dressed as Robin Hood.)Д«ehind the iconic dazzle, however, there is incongruity in the idea that aВ medieval visionary who fought for theВ God-given rights of her king should become, half a millennium later, an inspiration to campaigners for women's right to vote in democratic elections. She wore suffragette colours and brandished a banner of theВ Women's Social and Political Union on a poster promoting the Suffragette newspaper, and, in 1909, and again in 1911, members of the WSPU marched through London with an armour-clad 'Joan' riding at their head. For the suffragettes, she was вЂ“ literally вЂ“ aВ poster girl. As the years passed, Joan was figured, too, as an Amazon вЂ“ one of the virginal warriors ofВ Greek mythology вЂ“ or as a personification of heroic Virtue: chastity, justice and fortitude in one ideal exemplar.Д«ut it wasn't until the development of feminism proper that Joan of Arc became a properly feminist icon. This 'protofeminist' writer had made of Joan a protofeminist icon, comparing her to the biblical heroines Esther, Judith and Deborah, through whom, she said, God had delivered his people from oppression. And not onlyВ that: 'Oh! What honour for the female sex!' No one, she wrote, could doubt God's regard for womankind, now that he had chosen as an instrument of his will aВ simple young girl and given her 'aВ heart greater than any man's'. This was heaven's doing, she declared вЂ“ a vindication of the Dauphin's God-given right to the French throne. Her utter conviction вЂ“ and the desperate straits in which the Armagnacs found themselves вЂ“ persuaded the Dauphin's theological advisers that she should beВ put to the test, and, in May, dressed in shining armour, she led his troops toВ astonishing victory at the besieged town of OrlГ©ans.ДЇor Christine, a staunch partisan ofВ the Armagnacs, the sun had come out after years of darkness. The girl was bizarrely dressed вЂ“ in men's clothes, with her hair cut short вЂ“ and she brought a startling message: she was sent by God to drive the English out of France. That February, a peasant girl from aВ village named DomrГ©my had arrived at the court of the Dauphin Charles, leader of the Armagnac French, the anti-English faction in France's brutal civil war. But in the summer of 1429, by then in her 60s, she emerged one last time from a decade of literary silence to celebrate in effervescent verse the achievements of a yet more extraordinary woman: Joan of Arc. In 1418, after a long career during which she had defended the cause of women against literary misogyny in a scholarly debate known as the querelle des femmes, she retreated into religious seclusion, horrified by the civil war and English invasion that, between them, were tearing her beloved France apart. Despite the odds stacked against her byВ her gender, this daughter of a Venetian physician at the French royal court became one of the most distinguished writers of the later middle ages. C hristine de Pizan was aВ remarkable woman.

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