Joan of Arc and Radclyffe Hall: Inspiration and Influence
Steven Macnamara
University of Nottingham
Abstract
This paper explores the significance of the life and legacy of Joan of Arc upon the
work of Radclyffe Hall. Although it is not surprising that history’s most famous
cross-dressing woman should influence, either consciously or unconsciously, one
of literature’s most infamous cross-dressing female writers, what Joan of Arc
offered Hall remains unrecognised in literary and gender studies. By
contextualising the social and cultural significance of Joan of Arc during Hall’s
life, this paper presents an alternative way of viewing Hall’s work and her identity
as a female masculine woman.
Previous academic studies have explored Hall’s female masculine identity
in relation to her obsessive interest in the male figures of Jesus Christ, Oscar Wilde
and Nöel Coward. Although these male role models are useful in understanding the
consciously constructed elements of Hall’s masculinised identity, they also act to
perpetuate the notion that female masculinity is a reflection of social masculinity.
Instead this paper will demonstrate that Joan of Arc, who was the best and most
formative example of female masculinity available to Hall in her day, was an
influence on her work and identity. At the turn of the Twentieth Century there was
a peak of social and cultural interest in Joan of Arc, as she was canonised in 1920
and was the subject of several plays, films and books. In a world generally devoid
of images of female masculine women, Joan of Arc would not only have provided
Hall with a strong example of female masculine identity, but also one which was
able to infiltrate hegemonic structures of gender and belief. Therefore, this paper
will argue that the social and cultural heritage Joan of Arc provided Hall can be
evidenced in her novels and her life, and consequently offers a more appropriate
female-centred comparative role model for Hall’s female masculine identity.
Key Words: Cross-dressing, female masculinity, identity, gender, role models,
religion, sexuality, culture
*****
Although there is no hard evidence to link Radclyffe Hall to Joan of Arc, there
is a wealth of circumstantial and contextual evidence, as Hall lived through a
significant period of religious, cultural and public interest in the saint and woman
who was Joan. It would be inconceivable to suggest that someone of Hall’s class,
education, culture, faith, gender and sexuality would not have been aware of or
exposed to this Joan of Arc renaissance at the turn of the Twentieth Century. By
mapping the key events surrounding the figure of Joan of Arc and placing these
Joan of Arc and Radclyffe Hall
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within the context of Hall’s life and her writing, this paper will illustrate some of
the previously undiscovered influences of Joan of Arc on Radclyffe Hall.
Hall would have been fourteen years old in 1894 when the Vatican’s
Configuration of Rites voted unanimously for the cause of Joan of Arc’s
beatification. Nearly four hundred and fifty years after her death, Joan had not only
inspired, intrigued and influenced generations of historians, writers and artists, but
she had also become an accessible, accepted and recognisable image of female
cross-dressing. While it can only be speculation that the fourteen-year-old Hall
would have been aware that Joan was en route to becoming a saint, it is highly
probable that Hall was already aware of Joan of Arc’s existence before this event,
either through stories about her or artistic depictions of her. Accounts from her
adult life, indicate that Hall had a tendency to view or portray herself as a martyr,
with perhaps the most extreme example being the reported case of stigmata whilst
writing the Jesus-inspired fable novel, The Master of the House (1932).1 However,
for the young Hall, the accessibility and prominence of the figure of Joan of Arc
would have offered her an alternative vision and version of female identity, a
feminine identity that was different, but more importantly one which was accepted
by society and the Church.
Biographical details of Hall’s early life are frustratingly scant, but it would
appear that even from an early age she never wavered from or doubted her
attraction to women. According to Una Troubridge, Hall’s long-term partner, Hall’s
sexual awakening occurred as she listened to her stepfather’s female pupils singing
in the garden studio. It would be here that Hall heard a voice that made her fall in
love with its singer, even before she saw the face of the performer.2 While there is
probably an element of truth in this account of Hall’s first love, the story has a
remarkable fairy-tale quality, which is likely to have been shaped by the telling and
retelling of the tale. Hall and Una were both devout Roman Catholics, but they also
had fantasist and romantic tendencies, and what is striking about the tale of Hall’s
first romantic attachment to another woman, is its similarity to Joan of Arc’s
calling from God. Joan was thirteen and in her father’s garden, when she heard the
voice of God for the first time.3 The credibility of both Joan’s and Hall’s encounter
with voices in their father’s/step-father’s garden is entirely debatable, but both
stories serve the same purpose: external celestial voices act as an epiphany, a
catalyst that legitimises the future life choices of Joan and Hall. Yet the sanitised
and highly romantic account of Hall’s lesbian awakening appears to be just too
similar to Joan’s calling to be mere a coincidence. During Hall’s and Una’s
lifetime, Joan of Arc, a cross-dressing woman, became a saint, so it is possible that
in their attempt to make Hall’s sexuality palatable, they have (un?)wittingly turned
to history’s most famous cross-dressing woman for inspiration and the hope of
mass understanding. If the world accepted Joan of Arc’s cross-dressing, because
she claimed to have been instructed by a voice in a garden, then maybe the world
would accept Hall’s sexuality, because it was not sparked by the reality of physical
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and sexual desire. Their encounters and reaction to the divine and ethereal voices
suggest that Joan and Hall should be viewed as spiritually different from the rest of
humanity, as their destinies have been predetermined by God instead of being
driven by their own moral choices.4
By the time Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909, the twenty-nine year old Hall
had had several female lovers, but she was in her first serious relationship with the
Roman Catholic, Mabel ‘Ladye’ Batten. Ladye was a renowned socialite and
amateur singer with a habit of nicknaming friends. Ladye affectionately called
Hall, John, Johnnie or Jonathan, but in 1909 Hall settled on the name John and
would use it for the rest of her life. Biographers suggest this name is either a
reference to her great-grandfather or a homage to the biblical tale of David and
Jonathan, particularly as Oscar Wilde cited the relationship as an example of ‘the
Love that dare not speak its name’ in his trial in 1895. 5 As there is no definitive
reason why Hall adopted the name John, the default position of biographers and
academics has generally been to rationalise this choice of name within the confines
of male masculine identities. Yet, John is the masculinised version of Joan and
whilst it is not uncommon for names to have male/female variations, it is curiously
intriguing that during a period of intense religious and cultural interest in the crossdressing Joan of Arc, Hall should settle on the name John to express her female
masculine identity.
In addition, the name Joan must have had some significance for Hall, as her
first completed novel, The Unlit Lamp (1924), focuses on a tomboy character
called Joan Ogden. In the novel, the young and intelligent Joan attempts to escape
the clutches of her mother through education and the friendship of her tutor
Elizabeth Rodney. Joan is torn between two opposing voices, her mother and her
tutor, as they both present her with a moral and life-changing choice, but ultimately
she sacrifices her life and the possibility of a relationship with Elizabeth, to nurse
her mother, out of a sense of loyalty and duty. Joan’s martyrdom is typical of Hall’s
centralised characters, but where religious parallels have previously been drawn
between her other characters no comparative religious allusion has been made with
the character of Joan Ogden. Hall’s Joan may not be a warrior and her efforts to
leave the family home are thwarted, but her fate is still that of a ‘burnt sacrifice’,6
as she is condemned to a living hell of subservient drudgery, loneliness and wasted
opportunity.
Although Hall was ambivalent about the growing feminist movement in the
early part of the twentieth century, both Ladye and Hall were part of the suffragette
movement between 1910 and 1912. The various strands of the suffragette
movement used the images of Joan of Arc, as an iconic woman who represented
valour and courage. 7 During their active time with the movement, Ladye and Hall
would have been exposed to at least one of more images of Joan of Arc: as she was
used in promotional material and literature; suffragettes would often dress as Joan
Joan of Arc and Radclyffe Hall
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to lead processions or demonstrations; and Christabel Pankhurst often referred to
Joan as the patron saint of the Suffragettes.8
As well the suffragette adoption of Joan as a symbolic figure-head, during 1909
the Women’s Catholic League collected money from Roman Catholic women and
girls across the country to install a mosaic of the beatified Joan of Arc in
Westminster Cathedral.9 The mosaic was installed between 1910 and 1911 and
depicts Joan in a suit of armour, with a skirted bottom and short hair. 10 Hall
converted to Catholicism in 1912 and her confirmation took place in the Cathedral
on 20 October 1912. In addition, there are documented visits that Hall made to
Westminster Cathedral between 1910 and 1916.11 Hall’s, Ladye’s and Una’s
attendance at the Cathedral is evidence that Hall would have looked upon this
image of Joan at regular intervals during her religious life and her devotions.
The final years of Hall’s and Ladye’s relationship were difficult and strenuous,
as Hall had numerous affairs. However, things were further complicated in 1914
when Hall and Ladye were involved in a car accident. Although Hall was relatively
unhurt, Ladye would never fully recover from the accident and during the
following year, Hall met Una, Ladye’s cousin and the pair started an affair. Ladye
died on 25 May 1916 and a requiem mass took place in Westminster Cathedral on
30 May 1916.12 Ladye’s death left Hall racked with guilt and as a consequence she
turned to spiritualism in order to communicate with Ladye and seek forgiveness for
her affair and subsequent relationship with Una. As a result of her research and
work on spiritualism, Hall was invited to present a paper to the Society for
Psychical Research, but as the paper alluded to her relationship with Ladye it
caused upset amongst some the society, with St George Fox-Pitt declaring she was
a ‘grossly immoral woman’.13 Hall was left with no option, but to sue Fox-Pitt for
slander. In the year of Joan of Arc’s canonisation, 1920, Hall had not only started
working on The Unlit Lamp, but she had also faced her first trial and won. By the
end of the year she had cropped her hair short and pushed beyond the mannish
fashions of the new woman, by wearing clothes and accessories designed
specifically for men, yet she still continued to wear skirts as part of female
masculine identity.
Hall’s reputation and fame as a writer, grew steadily with the publication of
The Forge (1924), The Unlit Lamp and A Saturday Life (1925). Although The
Forge and A Saturday Life are light comedy novels, they share with The Unlit
Lamp the same thematic martyrdom of the centralised female character: characters
like Joan Ogden, with short hair and ambiguous sexual tendencies, who eventually
martyr themselves for the sake of other people’s happiness. However, it was with
the publication of Adam’s Breed (1926) that Hall established her reputation as a
writer of merit as she won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait
Black Memorial Prize in 1927. One of the recent winners of the Prix Femina had
been Joseph Delteil’s Jeanne d’Arc (1925), which was translated into English in
1926. There are no accounts of Hall reading the novel, but there is a chance that
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she may have read the previous winning novels, as she had been a member of the
PEN club since 1922. Adam’s Breed is significant, in that it is the first novel that
Hall wrote where her allusion to a saint was obvious to her contemporary readers.14
One of the most significant theatrical outings for Joan of Arc in the early
twentieth century was George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (1923). There are no
published accounts of Hall or Una attending the play, but they were regular theatre
goers and were acquainted with both Shaw and Sybil Thorndike, who played Joan
on the stage, in London, to great critical acclaim. It would seem highly probable
that Hall and Una saw or at the very least read Saint Joan, as Joan’s isolation is a
recurring theme within the play and a topic that Hall would explore in her most
infamous novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). The much derided ending of The
Well of Loneliness can be contextualised, if compared to Scene V of Saint Joan, as
Joan laments her loneliness and declares, ‘Well, my loneliness shall be my strength
too; it is better to be alone with God’.15 Joan’s speech is powerful and defiant, but
with a degree of vulnerability, as she is abandoned by the King’s Court and the
Church, but retains her belief that God is still with her and the common man loves
her. At the end of The Well of Loneliness Stephen is abandoned, but then visions of
the world’s inverts appear, crying ‘tears of fire’16 that pour down on her as they beg
her to speak with God and to represent their cause to him. In her moment of
absolute loneliness and feeling the ‘burning rockets of pain’17 from the inverts of
the world, Stephen is empowered to communicate directly with God and to ask for
acceptance. Whereas Saint Stephen, as the first Christian saint, has often been seen
as the inspiration for Stephen Gordon, there are grounds to view her
characterisation as a Joan of Arc figure. Stephen is a tomboy, she cuts her hair
short and goes to war; and just as Joan of Arc had a chance to escape the stake, but
chooses to stick to her principles, Stephen also has the opportunity to live a
partnered life with Mary. Instead Stephen sacrifices her happiness, in order to save
Mary, but in doing so, she condemns herself to a life of loneliness.
During November and December 1928, The Well of Loneliness was trialled and
banned as an obscene novel. The court case was a global sensation and although it
was Hall’s publishers who were on trial, the focus of the media attention was on
Hall herself. By a curious twist of coincidence, in 1928 Delteil’s novel formed the
basis of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). The
film focuses primarily on the trial and death of Joan of Arc and was released in
Europe between April and October 1928. The film was ‘censored by the Catholic
Church in France and banned in England’, 18 but as Hall and Una travelled
extensively around Europe, they may have seen the film at some point during their
lives. However, what is significant is that a film that focuses on the trial of Joan of
Arc should be released in the same year that Hall faced her most vitriolic public
trial. Whilst comparisons have been made between the trials of Wilde and Hall,
because of their sexual orientation, the parallels of the trials of cross-dressing Joan
of Arc and Hall have gone unnoticed. In both trials the verdict was a foregone
Joan of Arc and Radclyffe Hall
__________________________________________________________________
conclusion and whilst Joan of Arc was given the opportunity to speak at her trial,
all Hall could do was look on as her reputation and literary career died in front of
her.
In response to the salacious interest The Well of Loneliness attracted, Hall’s
next novel The Master of the House centred on the Christ figure of Christophe
Marie Bénédict. While it is obvious that Christophe’s fate is to be crucified, there
are allusions to death by fire in the novel, as Anatole Khan lies in bed at night
afraid his neighbours ‘should burn him alive as a spy?’. 19 Also Jan, Christophe’s
cousin, prays for death, as even a death by fire would release him from his sinful
thoughts, ‘Cleanse me even as by fire’.20 Fire and death by fire, are recurrent
emblematic themes in Hall’s novels. In her first novel, The Unlit Lamp, the title
may allude to unfulfilled opportunities, but it also has a clear association with the
power of fire. Hall’s Joan may not perish in a fire, but Elizabeth and Joan do
witness a young woman who has caught fire and is engulfed in flames. In a futile
attempt to save the woman, Elizabeth burns her own hands, but her efforts are
wasted as the woman eventually dies. It is a shocking scene and in sharp contrast
to the rest of the novel, yet it would be a method of death that Hall would explore
again in her final novel, The Sixth Beatitude (1936), when the main character
Hannah Bullens runs into a burning house to save her children. As a Catholic and
an individual attracted to the concept of martyrdom, Hall would have been aware
of Joan of Arc’s death and the powerful pathos between Joan’s bravery and the
hopelessness of her situation. In all of her novels and short stories, these are themes
that Hall repeatedly explores, but in The Unlit Lamp and The Sixth Beatitude she
symbolically turns to death by fire as a literary device to reinforce the juxtaposition
between bravery and hopelessness for her characters in certain situations.
Hall would never publish another novel, but in her love letters to Evgenia
Souline, a young nurse who she met in 1934 and with whom she had an affair
while continuing her relationship with Una, she wrote:
Sometimes it seems to me that one almost touches the spirit of
the beloved in moments of intense physical passion – strange that
I feel this & yet I do. It is as though the flesh must melt, be
burned away by the intensity of its own desire and by the rapture
of its ultimate fulfillment [sic].21
Whilst an incredibly private declaration for Hall, it reveals the depths of her selfmartyrdom, as even in a moment of love and happiness she associates her feelings
with the pain of burning. Passion is both ardent love and suffering for Hall and her
imagery evokes the moment of Joan of Arc’s death. The presence of Joan of Arc is
tantalising close in both Hall’s writing and her life, but fact that Hall never
explicitly refers to Joan of Arc is also just as important, as Pierre Macherey states
‘What is important in the work is what it does not say’. 22 In the case of Joan of Arc
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and Radclyffe Hall, the affiliation or inspiration that Hall felt towards Joan of Arc
may have been so explicit there was no need for her to state it in her writing.
The evidence presented in this paper is a starting point in the interrogation of
Hall’s texts and reveals the potential for further exploration to fully ascertain the
influence of Joan of Arc on Hall’s writing. It also broadens the view of Hall’s own
female masculinity by focusing on a seminal cross-dressing woman rather than on
the male masculine identities she has previously been associated with. In addition,
it suggests an alternative mechanism for viewing Hall’s characterisation and her
thematic use of fire in her novels.
Notes
1 Sally Cline, Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (London: John Murray, 1997), 295.
2 Una Troubridge, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall (London: Hammond Hammond, 1961), 25.
3 At her trial Joan of Arc stated, ‘I was thirteen when I had a Voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time that I
heard this Voice, I was very much frightened; it was mid-day, in the summer, in my father's garden.’ Saint Joan of Arc’s
Trial of Condemnation, ‘Second Public Examination, Thursday 22 February 1431’, trans. by Mathias Gabel and Carlyn
Luzzolino, viewed 5 March 2013 <http://www.stjoan-center.com/Trials/>
4 Diana Souhami, The Trails of Radclyffe Hall, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998). Souhami suggests that Hall was
exploring and experimenting with other girls at an earlier age than previously discussed by other biographers, ‘When she
was fifteen she pushed up the sleeve of a student in a silk dress and kissed her arm. The girl laughed, seemed apprehensive
but interested, so Marguerite kissed her on the lips. She ‘repeated the exercise at every opportunity’ – until the girl left to
study in Paris.’, 22. Souhami’s account of the early life of Hall is interesting, however much of the material is unreferenced
or taken from unpublished works of fiction and writings by Radclyffe Hall.
5 Michael Baker, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1985). Baker describes ‘It was
Ladye who first changed Marguerite to John, probably after great-grand-father John Hall, who so resembled John in looks
and whose portrait Ladye adored. When all their friends became accustom to John or Johnnie, Ladye privately began calling
her Jonathan, in reference to the Biblical friends Saul [David] and Jonathan.’, 47. Richard Deallamora in Radclyffe Hall: A
Life in the Writing, (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) interprets Ladye’s adoption of the David and
Jonathan notion, as a symbolic statement on the bond of friendship that exists between men, ‘For her part, Batten had called
upon the male friendship tradition she gave Hall the nickname John, after David and Jonathan, the heroic pair of friends in
the Hebrew Bible.’, 93. Deallamore explores the concept that male friendships are traditionally not compared to the bonds
of marriage, but can exist as a secondary source of friendship in a marriage. Ladye’s adoption of the male bond is significant
in that it suggests the true the strength of the bond between herself and Hall.
6 Radclyffe Hall, The Unlit Lamp, 1924 (London: Virago Press, 1989), 118.
7 Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), ‘For the suffragettes, Joan seems to have held the status of “patron saint,” but in a qualified
fashion – qualified both by the relationship between religious sentiment and national feeling within the British women’s
suffrage movement and by the gendered character of suffragette appropriations of Joan.’, 86.
8 One of the most famous uses of Joan of Arc’s image by the suffragettes is a poster designed by Hilda Dallas advertising
Suffragette newspaper in 1912, see Diana Atkinson’s The Suffragettes in Pictures (Stroud: The History Press, 2010). insert
7. for an image of the poster. One of the largest suffragette processions took place was on 17 June 1911, when an estimated
40,000 to 50,000 women gathered in London and marched from the Embankment to Albert Hall, Annan Bryce mounted on
a horse was dressed as Joan of Arc and led the march, see The Times, 10 June 1911 for notice of the event. See Nym
Mayhall, TheMilitant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930, ‘Numerous historians and
literary critics have accepted and elaborated upon Christabel Pankhurst’s description of Joan of Arc as the “patron saint” of
the suffragette movement.’.85.
9 The Times, 1 October 1909.
10 The Times, 17 February 1911.
11 Cline, Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John: ‘23 October (1910), she prayed in Westminster Cathedral with Ladye and
Cara (Ladye’s daughter)’, 69.; ‘On 21 January (1912) John and Ladye heard Mass in Westminster Cathedral. On 20 October
(1912), John was confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Bishop Butt.’, 82.; and ‘On 8 August (1914) they (Ladye and Hall)
went to Confession at the Cathedral’, 96. In addition to these documented visits, a Memorial Service took place on 13
February 1926 at Westminster Cathedral for Una’s husband Admiral Ernest Troubridge, Hall did not attend the service, but
Una and her daughter Andrea were present, and Hall’s own funeral service took place in the Cathedral on 14 October 1943.
12 Ibid., ‘Ladye’s body was embalmed and placed in an open coffin for the Requiem Mass which took place at Westminster
Cathedral on 30 May (1916).’ ,130/1.
13 The Times, 19 November 1920.
14 The Times Literary Supplement, 18 March 1926.
15 George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, 1924 (London: Penguin 1984), 112.
16 Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness, 1928 (London: Virago, 1990), 446.
17 Ibid., 446
18 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Films, ed., Eric Michael Mazur (California: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 177.
19 Radclyffe Hall, The Master of House (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932), 378.
20 Ibid., 430.
21 Radclyffe Hall to Evgenia Souline, 27 March 1935, in Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall, ed., Joanne
Glasgow (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 111.
22 Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, trans. Geoffrey Wall (London: Routledge, 1978), 87.
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