Christine de Pizan is an author whose best known work, The Book of the City of Ladies, attempts to destroy the argument that women are weak and useless creatures by building an entire city on the exploits of great women who came before her. She uses an argumentative strategy where she highlights in these women the very qualities they were reputed not to have. One such woman is Queen Dido, who is depicted by great male writers such as Virgil in the Aeneid as a great force of nature who loses herself in her passions, particularly in her love for Aeneas. Pizan chooses to attack the traditional image of Dido by emphasizing her unmatched ability to outwit her perceived enemies.
Pizan’s Dido is a master in various forms of cleverness. In her main example of Dido’s ability to plan and act out feats of great cunning, Pizan explains how Dido maneuvers to prevent Dido’s brother, Pygmalion the king, from stealing the great wealth of her husband, whom the king has murdered. Dido always anticipates Pygmalion’s actions and reacts in such thoughtful and clever ways that she thwarts his efforts at every turn. It is as if he can read into the heart of this horrible person. When she decides to leave her native town and go somewhere else, she realizes that the king will have her chased down and she schemes accordingly to remain alive and to keep her husband’s fortune.
Later, when she has arrived in Africa and managed to win a vast parcel of land for her people with the great cowhide trick, Dido learns that Pygmalion is chasing her again. She doesn’t defeat him again with her superior army but with great planning and strategy. She knows she needs people by her side, so she gathers her people and tells them her plan. Everyone agrees to stay by her side because she is loyal and persuasive. She acts very cleverly and wins over her brother. This description of Dido as a clever, level-headed is a wonderful opposition to the depictions by Virgil, Dante, and others.
I totally agree with your argument Aye. After reading the Aeneid (written by a male author), my thoughts about Dido were that she loved too intensively which ended up driving her mad. She was mostly depicted as a “crazy” and “Jealous” woman who could not bear another man leaving her side. But after reading Pizan’s depiction of Dido and how she cleverly acquired land and founded her own city my image of her was different: She was truly a powerful woman who used everything in her power to succeed and accomplished it. She was a woman whom life did not treat fairly, and even then, she was still strong.
Hi Aye, I agree with your point. Some male author depicted Queen Dido with lots of prejudice. They highlighted the sensibility and weakened the rationality of women. Pizan’s great work reminded people of the virtues of women which were not accepted by most of the males at that time. But from a modern point of view, Pizan deified Dido a little too much. She described a perfect women to the readers and did not mention some of the character weakness about Dido. More or less, it made the figures look unreal.