Manhood and Courage in Henry VI, Part 1

Joan la Pucelle defeats Talbot in single combat, and Talbot’s mind reels. “My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel,” he says, unable to comprehend what has happened. He has fought in thirteen battles and been called the scourge of France. No man has bested him. Yet a girl in armor has cast him down. Talbot can accept defeat from a human enemy—that is the risk of war. But he cannot accept defeat from what he believes is a witch, because the victory violates a law of nature. In Talbot’s understanding, manhood and strength are inseparable from the male body. When a woman defeats him, it unmakes his identity as a man. The play uses this moment to ask: what is manhood, exactly? Is it the strength in your sword-arm, or is it something else?

As the play progresses, two models of manhood emerge in conflict. Talbot embodies the old code: manhood is courage, loyalty, martial prowess, the refusal to flee or bend. He is aging, his body failing, but his spirit remains unbowed. When York and Somerset squabble over precedence while Talbot dies at Bordeaux, we see the new model: manhood is ambition, political calculation, the willingness to sacrifice others for your own advancement. Fastolfe represents the moral nadir—he flees the battle and is stripped of his knighthood because he is a coward. But York and Somerset are not cowardly; they are just indifferent to anyone’s suffering but their own. Their manhood is expressed through the manipulation of power, not through direct action. The play shows us three versions of manhood and suggests that the newest one is winning.

Joan herself complicates this entirely. She dresses as a man and fights like a man, and the play punishes her for it. When she is captured, she denies her father and claims pregnancy to escape execution, and in doing so she is revealed as a liar and a witch. Her manhood—or her performance of it—is exposed as fraudulent. Yet Margaret, who appears at the play’s end in her feminine beauty and courtly manners, possesses a power that is arguably more dangerous than Joan’s. She does not need armor or a sword. She seduces the king with her mere presence and allows Suffolk to rule through her. Margaret’s power is the power of the new age, and it works. The play suggests that Joan’s direct, masculine courage belongs to the old world that is dying. Margaret’s subtle, feminine manipulation belongs to the world being born.

The play’s final image shows Talbot cradling his dead son. “Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.” This is manhood at its most stripped down: not conquest or ambition, but love and witness. A father holds his son’s body and that is all the manhood left. The play does not resolve the question of what manhood is. Instead, it shows us a world in transition, where the old courage of Talbot and young John—the willingness to die for honor—is being replaced by the new courage of politicians and counselors, which is really just the willingness to live at any cost. The fact that we mourn Talbot and despise Suffolk tells us something about which version the play thinks is worth having. But the play’s action suggests that the world will not let us keep it.