Cantebury Tales

Christine de Pizan was one of the first feminist authors in the history of literature. She wrote many poems and books voicing her opinion on the injustice women of her time faced. One such novel is The Book of the City of Ladies. In a visionary dream, Christine is visited by Ladies Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. The three ladies inform Christine that God has chosen her to build an allegorical city in which to defend womankind, using examples of female virtue and achievement both from the past and her own day as the stones with which to build the city’s walls and towers. Reason provides materials for the foundation, Rectitude helps to build the walls, create the moat, and lays out the city, and Justice adds the finishing touches to the high towers and places. With the creation of this city, Christine forms a sort of utopia for all women by providing powerful positive images of women, ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints. She also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in her medieval culture.

Much of The City of Ladies was inspired by events in the author’s life that sparked some animosity a

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Christine's father had passed away in 1387. Lady Reason attacks the issue that women are by nature mean, or evil. Yet, this is not the case, for at the time God had not yet adopted a human form, so it has to be understood to mean the soul, which is immaterial intellect and which will resemble God until the end of time.

How I, a woman, became a man by a flick of Fortune's hand

How she changed my body's form

To the perfect masculine norm. The cause of death is not certain except to say it was an epidemic.

It’s now seven years that he’s gone, alas

Better I’d been buried that same day,

Like a mourning dove I’m all forlorn. Lady Judgment crowns the Virgin Mary as the Queen of the City of Ladies in order to refute a common belief by men of Christine’s day. It’s obvious to me that you do not esteem yourself any less for having this knowledge: in fact, you seem to treasure it, and quite rightly so’” (Pizan, 141). “Her purpose in writing was to voice her strong conviction that it is a human—and not specifically female—trait to be prone to sin” (Pizan, xxvii). Throughout The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine addresses each of the Ladies Reason, Rectitude and Judgment asking them to counter accusations degrading women in The Romance of the Rose by Jean de Meun. Christine and Etienne's marriage had been a happy one, which left Christine with two children, Marie and Jean.

A major theme in The City of Ladies is that of virginity, chastity and virtue. This point of view was probably planted by her father in her early years, since he too saw no wrong in a woman’s education in such things as the sciences. Women were usually condemned for being the cause of The Fall through Eve. Christine's mother was more conventional in her outlook and believed that her daughter should tend to her spinning and other such womanly tasks.

Approximate Word count = 2788
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)

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