Saint Joan: Fallacy 1 key example

This first scene introduces the question of whether or not Joan is sane. Rather than take a firm stance, Shaw uses humor to suggest that it is something of a moot point given that believing in the voices gives Joan a firmer sense of ethics than many of the "sane" characters. Robert's stance that the voices are a figment of Joan's imagination unsubtly hints that she is delusional. Joan takes the accusation of her overactive imagination in stride, but she points out that Robert is drawing a flawed conclusion from that fact. "Of course," she says. "That is how the messages of God come to us." How else would God speak to Joan, except through her imagination? She makes Robert look foolish for imagining a physical manifestation of God that shows up to converse with her. Poulengey reinforces the humor of the exchange by interjecting with "checkmate." This reference to chess positions Poulengey as a spectator to an intellectual battle that Joan has clearly won, despite her admitted "delusion" that she has a direct link to God.

The play is about the supposed spiritual connection Joan of Arc had to God in the 15th century, but Shaw was writing it at the end of an era when spiritualism had been extraordinarily popular. In the 1840s, the Fox sisters of Rochester, New York, pulled off a hoax in which they convinced people that they could communicate with dead spirits by knocking and cracking their knuckles in code. The idea of young women, especially white women, as spirit mediums spread like wildfire throughout the 19th century. There was another resurgence of spiritualism during and right after World War I because of the notion that mediums could help people communicate with their dead loved ones. Shaw, like many others, was skeptical. He didn't really believe that spirit mediums could talk to ghosts. He was nonetheless intrigued and wrote about more than one character who believed she was somehow clairvoyant. The story of Joan resonates with the stories of girls and women who called themselves spirit mediums in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Shaw depicts Joan as someone who may not really have a connection to God, but he questions how much that matters. Her belief that she hears divine voices in her imagination gives her much more personal integrity than characters who let the institution of the Church guide their behavior. According to Shaw, imagining voices that guide your behavior from within doesn't make you "crazier" than someone who follows Church teachings; even if the voices aren't real, they might as well come from God if they turn you into someone with a coherent system of beliefs and behavior independent of an institution.