The Inquisitor’s Tale

All three of the magical children are, in one way or another, outsiders, oppressed by the dominant culture of the world around them. Jeanne is a peasant and a girl; William is an illegitimate child and biracial; Jacob is Jewish. They are all members of groups whom the dominant medieval (and modern) cultures consider different, or outside of the norm. But, as William points out when he makes his lists of great people who aren’t white Christian men, “the norm” is a much more complicated thing than those who uphold it would like us to believe.

Not being a part of the most powerful groups in the medieval French society Gidwitz describes—which is to say, not being white, Christian, rich, and/or male—is also a source of strength for the children. They can often see things that the people in power cannot see, and use the powerful people’s blindness against them—for instance, when Jeanne and her parents are able to trick the knights who are hunting her into searching through a dunghill because “peasants do like filth, don’t they?” (22).

As the children become friends, they must overcome their own fear of each other’s differences, too.