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The Book of The City of ladies published in 1405. It was published in medieval times. She wrote it as a response to several popular texts that she was reading at the time. She characterized women with a lot of negative traits. Popular fiction at the time was generalizing women as being naturally immoral, promiscuous, unable to be completely committed, week in terms of their fortitude. A lot of generalization we see today or a lot of fictional works today. But it was strong back then in medieval times. This bothered Christine De Pizan. And she wants to write a book to demonstrate that women aren’t naturally promiscuous, they do have strong fortitude, and they can commit to things. Basically, crushing a lot at of the negative stereotype generalization that was portrayed about women in popular text. She goes about providing a myriad of women, all different types of women both real and legendary, ones in myths, that basically crush a lot of those native generalizations that were popular at the time.

Montaigne set forth that nothing man-made can achieve the beauty and perfection of things created by nature. In the western man-made society, there were full of inequality, evil and greed. Comparing to Europeans, he thought barbarous Tupinamba were closer to nature. They had no words to describe the concepts of lying, treachery, envy or greed, and they would not steal resources from other tribes. They believed “valour towards their enemies and love towards their wives.” Under the naturalistic virtues, Tupinamba would kill and eat their prisoners as  a form of symbolic revenge. Unlike Europeans tortured their enemies into a state of cowardly submission, Tupinamba treated their prisoners well and the captives always faced death with bravery and scorn.

In his work, Montaigne widely discusses a variety of fears by exposing fear-related emotions among individuals. In his work, he described fear as individual doubt and avoidance of terror and situations which cause panic. According to his work fear has negative impacts on the life of men since it seizes, contracts and frozen hearts of gentlemen. By discussing different instances of fear such as fear encountered by Monsieur de Bourbon’s people, The German people and fear from heaven encountered by Greeks we understand the effects of fear in society. Because of fear, two close people can find themselves in the opposite direction fearing the fear. Fear drives us of a sense of honor and even duty. He openly discusses his fears and the methodologies he used to overcome the fear. He argues that in the whole world he is most afraid of fear because its impact is more than that of the other accidents.

Pizan is one of the first advocates for feminism and was the first female author to write books for females in her time. The works from her time were depicting male and female in completely different manners, and it shows the tensions and conflicts between both genders since these depictions are based on the statuses of the genders in the society during that time. In her work “The Book of the Cities of Ladies”, she stands up and defends women and criticizes how male authors have depict women in an unjustified and mocking way. She believes that their actions are ignorant, evil, and even disobeys the order of God. She lists the reasons why men are depicting women in that way, she believes that they defected and jealous, so they decided to attack women to make themselves feel better about themselves. She believes that they could only bring others down to feel superior in order to have confidence in themselves.

“The Book of the City of Ladies” embodies the awakening of feminism. In the book, Pizan criticizes the remarks and behaviors of men attacking and slandering women. Although the feminist movement did not happen during Pizan’s time, Pizan’s activism and courage to speak out for women is admirable. After reading this book, I started to think about the reasons that led up to the rise of feminism. In my opinion, the rise of feminism started with the social demand for female laborers. In the 19th century, European and American women began to re-examine their status in society, which was related to the surge in demand for female labor in factories after the industrial revolution. During this period, women’s pursuit of education, social status, and social rights advanced drastically and had many accomplishments. After two centuries, the development stages of feminism have changed from trying to liberating women’s rights to their bodies to fighting for equal labor rights and obtaining property to pursuing the promotion of political and social status.

Pizan points out that most of the male authors who depicted women as weakly, vulnerable, and accused women as evil is actually biased of their judgemental acts, personal failure, and fallacies that led them to generalize all women as inferior and harmful parts of the society. She particularly mentions the references like pagan and Christianity, they made in their work to depict women negatively and wrongfully. She asked readers to check the claims male authors made to figure out their biases about the nature of women, she mentions many brave and intelligent women as examples to highlight the true essence of women and to prove that how male authors have been falsifying the true nature of women in their work and she believes when readers can incorporate the real nature of women in their perception, they would be able to analyze many vague claims and demonstration of women have been made by the male authors.

In “the  City of ladies”, the “the City of ladies” is built, which has the most accomplished women to defend against the power of men’s blame, and represents the true power and nature of women. But can this really achieve equality between men and women? At that time, men seemed to think that women were just having children and spinning wool. Women were seen as a tool to have more children and become housewives. At that time, women lacked the ability to challenge male authority and were always damaged in society, while men had all power. This book is about changing the ideas of women at that time, but the society we live in today promotes equal opportunities, men and women have the same chance of success, and society judges everyone based on their ability rather than sex.

Towards the end of the book, Pizan contradicts herself when explaining building women and tearing down men. This is because in the first topic she believes that men and women belong to a similar sphere. In some sections, she purports women should tolerate their husbands while in other sections she encourages women to leave their wicked husbands. As a Christian, she should have tried to reconcile women with their husbands. 

The mythical all female warrior civilization, known as the Amazons, is utilized by Pizan as a model for the all female city that expects setting forth and creating. As Pizan states in the beginning of the book, the Amazons were able to convene together and lead their society successfully without any male presence and Pizan admires how they were able to build and maintain a society through their own rule and determination. Pizan also mentions how they were so commited that they were even willing to mutilate themselves to reach their goals. Amazon warriors burned off their left breast so they could carry a shield more effectively and their right breast removed so that they could shoot arrows more effectively. The removal of a single breast is a symbolic act of immense commitment. They were willing to sacrifice a piece of their own body in the defense of their way of life. The Amazons are symbolic of their dedication to a goal and their willingness to make very personal sacrifices even if it means being able to achieve an objective in the long run.

In The Book of the City of Ladies, there was definitely a strong defense for women against male authors’ depiction of women. Before this book or even after this book of Pizan, there was many books giving negative description of women, and tend to look down to women. At the very beginning of the book, it started out with criticism and defense to other male’s book or works with women. There was idea of powerless, dependent, not smart as men, etc., among society, this cause many books to have those weak, nonsense, and brainless women characters under the pen of male authors. Under Pizan’s work, in this book, she highlighted those brilliant women that were forgot by history and people. She give different definition to those works that we might have read, a more fair one, not the one that tent to be on the side of men. She wants all readers to know that women can be smart as men or even more. Having to seek a fair judgement between men and women.