And yet. . .

 I ran an old editorial cartoon a couple of days ago from an August 23, 1920 newspaper.

August 23, 1920. Portents

From the Sandusky Ohio Star Journal, August 23, 1920.  "The Sky Is Now Her Limit".

I also cross posted that on Reddit's 100 Years Ago subm where somebody made this observation:

Pretty much everything has been ticked off except presidency and it’s looking like that will likely change soon as well!

I hadn't thought of that, but that's correct.

Which makes me wonder why item number one on the rungs is still around.  The slavery one, that is.

Now, this isn't going to be a feminist manifesto proclaiming that something like marriage is slavery, or some other such nonsense.  No, rather, by slavery, we're referring to concubinage.

That may sound odd, and even impossible in the modern context, but it isn't in this one.  

A concubine, as well all know, is a species of prostitute, the prime thing being different from conventional prostitutes is that their services were bound to a single master rather than simply sold to everyone and, therefore, I am perhaps being polite here.  By way of movies, television, magazines and, most importantly now, the internet, thousands upon thousands of women prostitute their images to those unknown and by extension putting their entire gender into a type of ongoing concubinage.

We've dealt with this before.  Starting in 1953, when Playboy magazine brought photographic prostitution into the mainstream, starting first with Marilyn Monroe.  Monroe managed to overcome the scandal, through the intervention of Life magazine which published her naked photographs first, but she was never really able to overcome the image.  She'd always be, in the eyes of thousands of men, about to take off her clothes, no matter how clothes she might really be.

The way we'd probably like to remember Marilyn Monroe, if we could. We really can't, however, as she built her career on her figure in a more revealing way than still rather obvious here (with a nice Yaschaflex camera by the way).  From this earlier thread here.  Playboy's co-opting of her body, sold several years earlier to a calendar photographer when she was unknown and desperate, nearly ruined her career, which was saved only by Life magazine determining to beat Playboy to the punch and publishing it first.  Life's parry saved her from an immediate ruined career, but the overall publicity launched Playboy.  In the end, of course, she'd be only one of the lives effectively ruined by Playboy, although her own selling of her image in less graphic form, combined with an early tragic history, played a larger measure in that.

Anyhow, since that fateful 1953 publication date, the prostitution of the female form has expanded enormously.  And hence the slavery.

Every Kate Upton who appears for the viewing pleasure of thousands of unknown men strikes a blow at women of achievement.  There's no two ways about it.  So that first rung remains one to be overcome.

And, of course, in some direct ways, the portrayal of young women in anonymous pornography is actual slavery, aided along by drugs, desperation, and social decay.

Novella d'Andrea, a professor in law at the University of Bologna and daughter of canon law professor Giovanni d'Andrea, who gave her lectures from behind a screen lest her beauty distract her students.  Both of Giovanni's daughters were professors of law.  What?  You didn't think that possible in the 1330s and 1340s. . . well it was.

No matter how far women come, until their routine selling of their images ceases, and until women themselves stop participating it when they voluntarily do, and until its no longer tolerated by men and women, true equality will never really be achieved.

May 16, 1920. The Canonization of Joan d'Arc

A doodle of Joan d'Arc by Clément de Fauquembergue on the margin of the protocol of the Parliament of Paris from May 10, 1429, two years prior to her death.  Clément de Fauquembergue was the parliamentary registrar and the news of the her victory at Orleans had just reached Paris.  The doodle is the only know illustration of her done during her lifetime.

On this day in 1920, Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan d'Arc, the 15th Century peasant girl who lead French forces in a revived effort to recapture lost grounds from the English after hearing voices commanding her to act for the French crown.  She ultimately paid for her efforts with her life, being burned at the stake after being falsely convicted of heresy, a charge now universally regarded as absurd and which was itself reversed in 1456.

Even no less of figure as Winston Churchill regarded Joan as a saint.  That the illiterate farm girl was able to gain access first to the French crown and then the army in the field commander was and is proof of her divine mission. With the army, she offered advice to its noble commanders which was frequently taken and French fortunes against the English in fact reversed and their army started to do remarkably well.

She is believed to have been born in 1412 in a region of Lorraine that retained loyalty to the French crown during the Hundred Years War, a contest between the Plantagenets, the Norman rulers of England, and the House of Valois, the rulers of France, over who should rule France. The house she grew up in and the village church there still stand.  As those who have ready Henry V know, the English long maintained that they should rule both kingdoms and they often regarded France as more important than in England.  That contest commenced in 1337 and featured a long running series of campaigns.  Trouble in the French royal family had been taken advantage of by Henry V who had been able to greatly expand the amount of English controlled territory in the 1415 to 1417 period.  By 1429, when Joan commenced her mission, half of France was controlled directly by England or by French duchies that were loyal to England.

The English commenced a a siege of the FRench city of Orleans in 1428, a town that was a holdout in its region for the French king, Charles VII.

Joan began to have visions in 1425, at which time she was 13 years old.  She identified the first figures she saw as St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who told her to drive the English out of France and take the Dauphin to Reims for his consecration.  At age 16 she made demands upon a relative to take her to see the crown which were received with scorn.  Nonetheless she was taken to Vaucouleurs where she demanded an armed escort to the royal court, which was denied. Returning the following year, she secured the support of two soldiers and their urgings and support she was conducted to the court after she reported the results of a distant battle she had not been at two days prior to messengers arriving to report it.  She as then escorted to the court disguised as a male soldier as it involved crossing hostile Burgundian territory.  At that time she was 17 years old and Charles VII 26.

She secured permission to travel with the army, which was granted.  Everything she used in the mission was donated to her, including the banner that she used.  She never used any weapons in battle but rode under her banner. She did, however, gain access to councils of war and was listened to. As noted, the fortunes of the French reversed in this period.  The siege of Orleans was broken by the French and Reims taken. The Dauphin was crowned as a result in Reims.

After a brief truce between the English and the French she was captured in battle in 1430 and put on trial for heresy.  Heresy being a religious offense, she was tried by English and Burgundian clerics, but the English officers oversaw the trial.  The trial was irregular and conducted without religious authority and without the individual commissioned to find evidence against her being able to find any.  Her conviction hinged on her having worn male clothing when under escort across hostile Burgundian soil.  She was convicted by this tribunal of heresy and burned at the stake in May 31, 1431.  Her executioner later greatly feared that his service in this role would result in his damnation.

In spite of her death, the dramatic reversal in French fortunes continued on and by 1450 the English had been pushed off the continent.  In fact, French borders surpassed their current ones, as France's resulting borders included what is now part of Belgium, a not surprising result given that Belgium is a multiethnic state.

A regular canonical trial to examine the first one's propriety was convened in 1455 and reversed the conviction in 1456.

She's been a popular figure ever since her death and in any age the nature of her mission is hard to deny.  Illiterate and born in a region separated from the retreating French royal lands, she nonetheless managed to convince the French crown and the chivalric leaders of its army that she had a divine mission, something that was aided by her knowledge of things that she could not have known but for her commission.  Under her, in spite of the fact that she was a teenage girl with no experience in military matters, French military fortunes permanently reversed.

It's no doubt her youth and gender that have caused her popularity to remain outside of France, but she is a saint whose nature should cause moderns to pause.

MKTH photograph of the statue of St. Joan d'Arc in Notre Dame de Paris.

She was not, as some no doubt imagine her, as some sort of proto feminist teenage leader in an age of male patrimony and would not have seen things that way.  She was singularly devout and saw her mission as a religious one.  She was known to be opposed to the heresies of her era and Islam. She was intensely Catholic and caused the army she lead to be adherent to the faith.  The war for control of France changed from a contest between two royal families to a war with religious overtones and even, as viewed from a modern eye, as one involving nationalism in an early form.  Her modern fans would do well to take note of her mission and the fact that its impossible to imagine it without crediting the divine voices that she attributed it to.

And indeed, her mission did have impacts on the religious map of Europe in ways that would not be possible to appreciate at the time of her execution at age 19 in May, 1430.  England was pushed off the continent in 1450 by which time Henry VI was king. That same year he was forced to put down a rebellion against the crown in England.  In 1533, a mere 83 years later during a period of time in which events often moved slowly, King Henry VIII would take the formerly devout England away from the Church and marry his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn, bringing the Reformation to England in a personal effort to generate a male successor through a fertile female. The following acts would result in crown licensed theft of church property, murder and decades of strife and war.  While France would fall to secularism in 1790, its position up until that time remained stalwart.