Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella of France: Impact on Women in Society

Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella had a significant impact on women in the Later Medieval English society. Whilst both Joan and Isabella came from French backgrounds and were indeed French, they both influenced and had a part in changing England. In this essay I will be looking at the events that they participated in and how it affected England and the later consequences for the women and any social changes that occurred for women of their period. The essay will also be looking at how they broke the gender stereotypes and limitations placed on them.

The model for a good woman in the period between 1272 – 1526, was one of devout religiousness and one who did not go against the rules and boundaries placed down upon them by the patriarchal society that they lived in.[i] A wife was left in charge of praying for the family and was required to studiously attend to the spiritual needs of those under her husband’s household. As according to: The model for a good noble woman is;

“… will adopt the following way of life. She will rise quite early every day and address her first words to God, saying, ‘Lord, I beseech thee to guard us this day from sin, from sudden death and from all... she will not insist on having a great attendance of servants around her…”[ii]

For noble women and Queen’s in particular, there was far more emphasis placed on piety and religious devotion. A Queen was also required to spend time listening to the petitions of the people and allowing herself to be counselled by;

“… This lady will establish a certain number of wise gentlemen who will sit on her council, who she will deem good, loyal, virtuous and not too covetous.”[iii]

Having a good council was a requirement for both Kings and Queens. Those whom received or allowed themselves to fall into bad council were soon seen to be unfit for the governance of the realm and were soon overthrown as can be seen with Isabella’s husband later in her life.[iv]

In the period surrounding Queen Isabella and later Joan of Arc, many significant changes were occurring throughout England and the rest of the world. After the effects of the Black Death, changes in social standing and class were taking place. These changes not only affected the men but also the women of all classes – particularly those of lower social standing.[v] Whilst they attempted to try and better their lives after the devastating effects of the plague, there was a change in the education of women. Women were now taught more and allowed to be better educated than they had been previously, in such fields as literacy and other subjects. Women were still, however unable to learn about warfare and other matters viewed as a more masculine domain.

“She was both an entity and a nonentity. She was both valued and valueless. She was a guardian of the home and at the same time feared to be the destroyer of the home. She was loved and hated; she was sought out and hidden away; she was praised and she was scorned. She was condemned by theologians and yet these same male theologians raised her to the altar acclaiming her to be a saint. She was both the Destroyer of Mankind (as the fallen Eve) and she was Mankind’s savior (the Mother of God).” [vi]

Prior to the Black Death however, women were highly limited as to what freedoms they had. Women were married off at a young age to older men with a dowry. They were then under the authority and charge of their husbands. The main role of the woman was in the household and taking care of the children when she was not bearing any. As health was not particularly well developed in the period, figures such as high as 20 per cent of women died during childbirth.[vii] They continued to bear children throughout their adult life as death rates for children were quite high and the need for heirs and workers was quite pressing.

Isabella of France, also known as the ‘She Wolf of France’, was the daughter of King Philip IV and Jeanne De Champagne born in 1295.[viii] She was raised in France until the age of sixteen when she became wed to Prince Edward II. She and Prince Edward had been betrothed since 1299 as a political marriage between their fathers to bring peace between the two powers.[ix] As most marriages between two young people was common practise in the medieval period neither couple made an attempts to resist the union – in fact, it was said that Edward was beginning to become impatient at the delay.[x] Edward himself was already in his twenties by the time that the couple exchanged vows. As a noble woman, Isabella was expected to produce an heir for Edward II, which she did when she later gave birth to Edward III in 1312, and still fulfil her duties as a woman of the household.

Her marriage to Edward II was not as expected however. At the age of sixteen she had already formed her own opinions and displayed a headstrong attitude. Her troubles began when she noticed that her husband displayed tendencies not suitable for his standing.[xi] This, along with his behaviour and his rumoured preferences for members of his own gender made Isabella wary about her position and place within her husband’s life and household. Reportedly, Isabella had a dislike for the men that her husband favoured which included his close childhood friend Peter Gaveston and later Hugh Despenser.[xii] After their marriage in 1309, Isabella found herself at odds with Peter Gaveston as he already occupied a wife’s common place as her husband’s intimate confidant. Isabella found herself constantly neglected in their marriage as Edward frequently surrounded himself with his court favourites.[xiii]

After Edward ascended the throne, he continued to surround himself with the counsel and advice from Hugh Despenser and his father, whom through their influence alienated and undermined Queen Isabella’s influence and interaction with people of the court and her family members.

“When Hugh Despenser perceived that he was in disfavour with these two, he cunningly stirred up such discord between the King and Queen that the King refused either to receive the Queen or to visit her. This went on for quite some time…”[xiv]

It was these events that later led Queen Isabella to flee England with her young son Edward, Roger Mortimer and the Earl of Kent. She sought refuge with her brother – now the king of France. According to Froissart’s Chronicles, his place of refuge failed as it was believed that her brother was bribed by Edward and Hugh Despenser for the Queen’s return to England.[xv] Queen Isabella was a dutiful and patient wife during the early years of her marriage to Edward II, however, this is less known as her later life has been dramatised. Isabella’s relationship with Roger Mortimer was one of intimacy that would later become an issue for her after her husband’s deposition.[xvi]

When King Edward began to favour the counsel of the younger Despenser, many people of the realm began to protest and rebel against him. Edward was known to be a despotic and a weak ruler. Queen Isabella’s rebellion against her husband provided the people of England with a leader that they believed would help them remove the current leader from the throne and restore order to the Kingdom – a course of action that would later condemn her to the public.[xvii] When Isabella returned to England in 1326 via a deserted beach, they made their way to Bury St. Edmunds. Along with her, was the exiled Roger Mortimer, the Earl of Kent as well as an army that she brought with her from France that John of Hainault provided her.[xviii] Even though the army was placed under her command, the fact that Isabella managed to so successfully continue to maintain the army and gather more troops under a common cause shows her leadership and strength that the men of the medieval period underestimated.

“ … yet for the love of the Queen they had ventured across the sea in such small numbers for the conquest of a country such as England, in the teeth of the King himself and all his partisans.”[xix]

Queen Isabella did eventually succeed in deposing her husband; however her downfall was when the population perceived that she wielded power far greater than what was socially acceptable as well as Roger Mortimer’s influence over her and his attempts to control her son’s power for himself.[xx]

The Hundred Years War was an indirect result of Isabella’s actions in deposing her husband and later being involved in having her son overthrow her and taking over the throne. As Edward III had a legitimate claim to half of France, he believed that he was rightfully entitled to the French crown, a claim that the French denied and were prepared to fight against.[xxi] War broke out when Gascony – a province held under English rule – was taken over by Philip VI. It had been further incensed by the French’s lack of response to paying the English king the homage he believed he deserved in order for peace with France to be maintained. With the introductions of chevauchée and the systematic burning of French villages along the English and Burgundian borders - it was dangerous for French civilians during this period and also the time Joan of Arc was born and raised.[xxii]

Joan of Arc was born in Domrémy in 1412 to well off farmers, Jacques D’Arc and Isabelle Romée. As a child growing up, Joan already began to display signs of her later teenage life. As her parents lived near Burgundy, Joan was no stranger to the battles that continued around her as an impact of the Hundred Years War. Joan was expected, however, to tend to the farm animals and to help out with her mother in the other daily chores that the women were involved with.[xxiii] It was during her pre-pubescent years that Joan began to hear the voices of which she believed were divine instructions;

“She further confessed that when she was thirteen years old she had a voice from God to aid her in self-discipline. And the first time she was greatly afraid. And this voice came about noon in summer in her father's garden, and she had fasted the day before.”[xxiv]

In many of these aspects, Joan of Arc went against the stereotype. Not only did she lead the French Army against the English in battle and turn the tide against them in the war by lifting the Siege of Orleans, she also displayed very modern ideas such as wearing men’s clothing and being ‘one of the lads’.

“The reputation of this woman had already gone forth into many parts: how, wholly forgetful of womanly honesty, and having thrown off the bonds of shame, careless of all the modesty of womankind, she wore with an astonishing and monstrous brazenness, immodest garments belonging to the male sex; how moreover, her presumptuousness had grown until she was not afraid to…”[xxv]

This caused an outrage in the English and their allies, whom later captured Joan and condemned her as a heretic and a witch. Joan did however, still displayed some characteristics of being a good woman model, such as her devout belief in God and her daily prayers in her tent or the chapels that the French army visited.[xxvi] However, it was part of this that caused Joan's downfall when she was captured by the Burgundians. Joan's belief that she was sent on a mission by God to expel the English from France caused her to accused of witchcraft, a claim that she briefly repented.

Joan's trial and subsequent execution could have been influenced by her gender but also because of her over stepping the boundaries that the men believed in. Joan did possess however, an uncanny sense of the word games that the priests and Inquisitors used when questioning her.

“Asked if she knows she is in God's grace, she answered: "If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”[xxvii]

In saying this, Joan managed to avert the double-edged blade aimed at her. By agreeing, Joan would have been acknowledging that she was a witch by Christian viewpoints, by denying it; she would also have been securing her guilt as only God knew who was in his grace.

Although the men of the French Army and even the Dauphin of France allowed Joan to lead the army and help to win several battles against the English, after her capture they allowed her to remain in English custody and did not mount much of a group to retrieve her from her captors.[xxviii] It is interesting to note that although she helped gain significant victories for the French against England and Burgundy, that many of the men with whom she considered comrades and allies, including King Charles VII whom she had a hand in ascending to the throne, did not mount an attempt to free her from her captors – nor provide any kind of ransom money for her return. Typically, the family of the captured party is the one to pay for their release, but even though Joan’s family were well off farmers –the army commanders believe that Charles should have paid for her release given her part in the French turnabout. Even though there has not been any arguments for whether it would have been different had Joan been a man, this lack of effort to free Joan could be placed down to her gender as well as adding to Joan’s symbolic element and the creation of a martyr to further rally the army against the English.

Joan of Arc had more power as a symbol rather than a military leader. Whilst her victory at Orleans cannot be denied, it was the hope and moral boost that inspired that sagging French troops to victory. As Joan was uneducated in most subjects, particularly those of warfare which was considered men’s business, the completeness of the men’s trust in her abilities and their view on her equality with them is brought into question.[xxix]

Although the men of the French army would have no doubt respected her, they would still have considered themselves more knowledgeable and superior to Joan. Joan’s desire to wear mens clothes and the short cut of her hair to make herself more masculine would have made many of the less open minded men uneasy and is an important factor in Joan’s subsequent execution.[xxx] Any display of literacy or desire beyond of that was accepted – in this case – Joan’s participation in warfare and unwomanly behaviour allowed for her captors to easily charge her as a heretic and a witch in league with the devil.

Both Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella show signs of confidence and a natural stubbornness in their opinions that was against the commonly held view of women and their social place. As both were of French descent, the impact they made on English history had quite an extent for women who came from a rival country. Whilst Queen Isabella had been the model of a good woman and wife in her earlier years, her later affair with Roger Mortimer and her confidence in ordering men on a battlefield later caused her to become alienated by the men of her society.[xxxi] Joan showed immense piety and devotion to her religion, but in the end her more masculine behaviour and a shedding of what was to be everything of her gender caused her to become a victim of the very religion that she worshipped.[xxxii]

They did show that women were equally as capable as the men in commandeering an army, even when their education lacked. Both women were fairly isolated in their cases as being role-models for women in the later centuries, there was a gradual increase of power that women held after both women died. Queen Isabella’s son, in fact, had a mistress called Alice Perrers, who managed to obtain more power than a woman had previously held before she was exiled from the kingdom after Edward III death, she and many other women continued to follow in Queen Isabella’s and Joan’s footsteps as women who broke their social standing and held power in a masculine world.


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[i] C. Larrington ed., Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) pp. 179 - 181
[ii] C. Larrington ed., Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) pp. 179
[iii] C. Larrington ed., Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) pp. 180.
[iv] C. Larrington ed., Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) pp. 180 - 181
[v] http://www.britainexpress.com/History/medieval/black-death.htm accessed 29 April 2010
[vi] Frederick Ide, Aruther. Special Sisters: Women in the European Middle Ages. Mesquite, United States of America: Ide House, 1983.
[vii] Trueman, Chris http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_women.htm, published 2000, accessed 27 April 2010
[viii] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[ix] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[x] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[xi] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[xii] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 39 – 45, 106 - 110
[xiii] Heidi Murphy, http://britannia.com/history/biographies/isabella_france.html accessed 15 April 2010
[xiv] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pg. 40
[xv] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pg. 41
[xvi] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[xvii] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[xviii] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pg. 41
[xix] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pg. 43
[xx] Goeffrey le Baker, Chronicle, The Judgment of Roger Mortimer 1330, pg. 53
[xxi] Jean Froissart, Chronicles, G. Brereton ed. And trans., (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pg. 55
[xxii] Allen Williamson, http://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_short_biography.html accessed 17 April 2010
[xxiii] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxiv] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxv] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxvi] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxvii] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxviii] http://primary-sources-series.joan-of-arc-studies.org/PSS021806.pdfv accessed 15 April 2010
[xxix] Allen Williamson, http://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_short_biography.html accessed 17 April 2010
[xxx] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010
[xxxi] Johnstone, 1936. H. Johnstone , Isabella, the she-wolf of France. History 21 (1936), pp. 208–218
[xxxii] W.P. Barrett, The Trial Of Jeanne D'Arc translated into English from the original Latin and French documents. (Gotham House Inc.) 1932, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.html accessed 29 April 2010

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