Big Time Women from Way Back When: Jehanne of the Witches and A Woman's Comedy

Laila Abdalla is an associate professor of English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and former professor at McGill University.

This book comprises two plays: Jehanne of the Witches (1987), by Sally
Clark, and A Woman’s Comedy (1991), by Beth Herst. Both deal with
historical figures (Joan of Arc and Aphra Behn, respectively) who are
marked by their society not because of what they do, but because of what
they do as women. Together, Clark and Herst explore the courage of their
female protagonists, the dilemma of the men who love them, and the
machinations of a society that makes women simultaneously heroines and
scapegoats.

Clark’s play is about imagemaking. The playwright erases the delicate
vision of the virgin clad in armor and redraws Joan as a hefty, clumsy,
and rather slow peasant girl. In her examination of the making a legend,
Clark scrutinizes the power of sexual attraction between Gilles de Rais
and Jehanne, and the power of womanhood, which Jehanne tries alternately
to deny and to deploy.

Herst’s play is about the different levels of marginalized society.
Aphra Behn faces the alternatives of debtor’s prison or social
ostracization as a female playwright. Her actress friend must become a
wealthy man’s mistress in order to survive, but pregnancy reduces her
to the level of a servant and a whore. With respect to its marginalized
characters, this play asks the question, do we need to put on masks to
be accepted by mainstream society, or should we lower the mask and have
the courage to live according to our convictions? Herst leaves it to her
audience to make its own judgment.