Question

What is the central idea in Christine de Pisan's "City of Ladies," and why is it considered an early Feminist text? Are there any earlier Feminist texts that the author could have used as inspiration? Give an example if you have come across one in your reading.

Answer 1

• Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, written over six centuries ago, is neither simple nor simplistic. As the first known history of women in Western civilization from a female point of view, it embraces all virtuous women even beyond those specifically mentioned. Fashioned as an allegorical city, it should be considered a potential textual buttress for contemporary feminist consciousness.
• The Book of the City of Ladies, is commonly held to be the first feminist text written by a Western woman. In it, she directly confronts the sexism and misogyny that characterized and plagued not only the literature of her day, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe, but representations of women reaching back into antiquity.
• Her intention was to defend unwarranted attacks on the characters of women and to provide examples of the unquestionable virtue of her sex.
• Her unique work offers a window into the world of medieval women and the way in which they were perceived and treated by the society of the time.
• It also introduces the prevailing notions about womanhood and the debates that often raged in the world of men intent on protecting their positions as the unquestioned rulers of their social and political realms.
• By using examples of virtue and citing achievements from the past, Christine adopts a three-pronged focus targeting the intellectual, the spiritual, and the physical to show that women are no more fallible or praiseworthy than the greatest or worst of men.
• Christine de Pizan writes with the sole intent of proving that women are capable of being just as moral and intelligent as men.
• She can be considered the founder of the modern woman’s movement, making a bold statement in the
  Querelle des Femmes, a long continuous battle between authors who attacked and who defended women. Like a monumental building, The Book of the City of Ladies survives and thrives as an important cultural artifact, and like a monumental treatise, it pays tribute via words to women from the past.
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