ABSTRACT
Henry’s warning to his feuding lords that English dissension would result in the loss of their French possessions plainly distinguishes his reign from his father’s; Henry was fated to lose what his father had won as England descended into civil war. While the reigns of these kings were as different as the men themselves, however, the image of France remains remarkably consistent: France is always disordered. French confusion and weakness open the gates to Henry V’s conquest, and while France unites under Joan’s leadership, their success largely depends on the self-destructive factionalism that enervated English power and, significantly from the English perspective, on over-turning traditional gender hierarchies. England’s weakness allows the forces of French disorder to reign in the persons of Joan and her dependent dauphin. England, too, experiences disorder, but the English interpret their own disorder differently: English disorder appears as a fall from the ideal of order embodied in accounts of the short but successful reign of Henry V. 1 French disorder or “wavering,” on the other hand, is represented not as a fall from some ideal of French order, but rather as a fall from English order, imposed from without, and a return to the natural French state of inconstancy and instability. Even the French are made to recognize this. In response to Burgundy’s defection from the English side, an event that precipitates Henry’s warning, Joan makes her famous aside, “Done like a Frenchman—turn and turn again” (III.iii.85). From the English perspective, a view that Joan ironically shares as she chorically speaks to the English audience, Burgundy’s inconstancy is evidence of an essential French mutability. While the English see their own disorder as “unkind,” a failure to be true to their nature, French disorder is made to appear a manifestation of their essential qualities.
