Constructing a Cultural Icon: Nomos and Shaw's Saint Joan in Paris

George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan quickly became a play without a passport. Shaw began writing the play in England in late April 1923 and completed it in Ireland in August of that same year. After its production in New York in December 1923 and in London in March 1924, the play appeared on the Continent. In Paris, it ran at the Theatre des Arts from 28 April to 30 June 1925. The director in Paris, Georges Pitoëff, staged the play with his wife, Ludmilla, in the heroine's role. While Shaw's Joan is usually seen as the "foremother of Protestantism and of French nationalism", the play can be read in many other ways, as Saint Joan lends itself easily to several approaches and parallels. With an eye to Ireland, the play can be read as a gloss on the Charles Parnell story referred to in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where the Irish are seen as having betrayed their own MP. Joan's words to Dunois, "If the goddams and the Burgundians do not make an end of me, the French will", would be one place to begin such an analysis. The play could also be seen as a parable for Irish nationalism on the troublesome Protestant question in a society run by Catholics. Additionally, it could be viewed as a running political diatribe on British imperialistic tendencies overseas. However, as its reception in 1925 Paris suggests, Saint Joan may also be read as an allegory for a France undergoing a painful period of reconstruction after being shattered by World War I. While most critics are aware that Shaw's play was very popular in Paris (the Pitoeffs kept it in their repertory for several years), the reasons behind its popularity have yet to be adequately explained. Betrayal, sacrifice, dogmatic strife, and nationalist power plays fully overlap in the play to historicize the well-known story in terms contemporary audiences, particularly in Paris: found highly compelling. As I argue in this essay, the popularity of Shaw's Saint Joan in 1925 Paris involves three factors seldom discussed: the cultural semiotics of constructing an icon like Joan of Arc, the historical and political context of 1925 France as it relates to the play's reception, and the brash display of nomos (i.e., governance) in the trial scene.