Mapping the Ancient World

In The Book of the City of Ladies, I wil focus on the first half of the book, which is including section 1 to section 15. The book open with Christine reading reading from Matheolus’s Lamentations, which is a work of attacking women and marrige. Upon reading these words, Christine becomes upset and feels ashamed to be a women. She challenged that why the God didn’t create women perfectly, since all men were slandering and attacking women in the society. In such context, I think not just Christine, most of the women in the society back then would believe that they must truely be bad because God did something bad to them. Until lady Reason appear to Christine and address her question by answering that god did not created a vile thing when he created women. Also, Lady Reason assigned Christine to built a wall to protect women from attacking. So I think this book is not just about Reason assign Christine to built a wall around the women city, but also about how christine built a wall to protect women. My reading question is: In the last paragraph of Chapter 15, it states that ” but we must follow it up with many more stones in order to raise high the wall of the building”. What do you think the “stones” symbolize?

Before I get to my leading question, I would like to talk about how Lady Reason dispel Christine’s past belief, which is that women must truely be bad. She believes all the work she read rather than using reason to discover the accomplishment of women. Christine creats the Lady Reason in the book, to give herself and the other women reason to believe that women are not evil or useless but instead have a significant place within society. To built a wall that would never fall, if Lady Reason didn’t carry away the uncorrect belief from women, it is impossible to built a good foundation to support the wall.

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