Excerpt:
Almost all little girls have a love affair with horses. [I did!] They also seem to go through a Joan of Arc phase, too. I was indifferent to the equestrian sports – but I read all the books in my library on the illiterate virgin from Domrémy who gave birth to a nation.
...She may be a powerful reminder that events can be successful without turning out quite as we imagined...
We know her, not only as a warrior, patriot, and saint, but also as the heroine of two great plays: Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw, and Jean Anouilh‘s The Lark.
The most famous passage from Shaw’s play follows her agreement to sign a confession renouncing her “voices,” to live under permanent confinement.
“You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again climb the hills. To make me breathe foul damp darkness, without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil.”
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