Month: April 2020

The Book of the City of Ladies strikes me as the oldest feminist piece I’ve ever encountered. It’s interesting to note that Pizan starts off by describing the social status of women as the lowest of all except for that of childbearing. She subsequently brings up several mythologies to showcase women’s abilities. Women are as strong and clever as men. In the latter part of the Book, the Amazonian nation was so strong and dominant that even the male presence was not necessary for women’s existence and success.

Christine de Pizan’s The City of Ladies starts with the heroine reading a cleric’s Matheolus’ attack on women and falling into despair. She comes to the realization that all men – writers, philosophers, orators, and poets – speak ill of female nature, and being a woman herself she knows that they are wrong and full of lies. Christine reflected on herself as well as other women in her life and concluded that her experience, knowledge, and observations contradict all the misogynistic accusations from male authors. First, says Pizan, just because so many men are spreading lies and misconceptions about women doesn’t mean you have to rely on their opinions. In fact, you should probably do the opposite since the male philosophers are constantly contradicting each other and “correcting each other’s opinions”. For example, Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of forms, while later Doctors of the Church and St. Augustine criticized Aristotle’s teachings on certain matters. In response to male authors’ depiction of women, Christine de Pizan describes female merits and virtues. She reasonably values the good female nature, and to support her argument she gathers and presents numerous examples of great, brave, noble, and strong women in history.

 The image of the wife described by Pizan in “Book of the City of Ladies” and the virtues possessed by these women are precisely the social positioning and requirements of women as wives at that time. In terms of family responsibilities, wife was mainly responsible for housework, which also represented the general form of family division of labor at that time. With regard to the relationship between husband and wife, the wife is still in a dependent position in the marriage and family, and the wife must be subordinate to her husband. In terms of family economic relations, the wife is completely dependent on her husband. After marriage, the wife is forbidden to show her head outside, and has no opportunity to go out to work. Although there will be opportunities to help manage the husband ’s territory and become familiar with and grasp the financial situation of the family, it only occurs when the husband goes out to fight or do business outside, these powers will soon be deprived.

First of all, I feel that the author is based on feminism. Analyzing it from the female point of view, I feel it was risky, since it is about the education that women receive about the violation of their rights. In the book, the creation of a city without men is conceived, that is, the male presence is completely nullified. Practically predicting what seems to be possible in the 21st century, procreation without the need for human participation. Furthermore, I feel that her intention was to defend unwarranted attacks against women’s characters and to provide examples of the unquestionable virtue of their sex.

As a child, Augustine viewed schooling as something that was forced upon him by the adults who he was taught to obey. “Short of being driven to it, I certainly would not have learned.” While he did not enjoy it, it was something that he had to do, and he did it well. During his adolescence, he became a leading scholar in the School of Rhetoric and was arrogant with his achievements, and in his adulthood, he became a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage and then Rome. “I was studying the books of eloquence; for in eloquence it was my ambition to shine… for the satisfaction of human vanity.” As he grew older, he recognized education as a tool for gaining honor and glory amongst men. Although he claims that good was done to him, by God, by being forced to learn to read and write so that he could express himself, his “earthly intentions” were not as pure and grand.

Pizan’s “The Book of the City of Ladies” is definitely way ahead of its time, and can potentially be viewed as one of the earliest forms of feminism. Pizan was deterred by the way in which women were slandered in other pieces of literature, which motivated her to give a different perspective through her literature. It is significant that Pizan does not dispute the claims of the works of men but instead uses her literature to empower women and to demonstrate why women are not like those claims. She uses Lady Reason, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Justice to give examples of powerful women in society such as the Amazons, the virgin Mary and many other examples to further the narrative. Pizan’s book definitely pushed the envelope on the morals and view of society considering it was written in the 14th century, in which these points of view were not very popular in a patriarchal society. No matter the target audience, Pizan was trying to empower women who read her work, determined to show men that the negative stigmatization of women was false and dedicated to change the overall perception of women in society.

Christine de Pizan lived in historical social and cultural times. Her life took place at the French Court between 1363 throughout 1431. Her new life as a child began in the French court of Charles V when her parents moved from Venice to France. Her father, Tommaso de Pizano, was a Doctor of Medicine who, at that time, served in the royal court of Charles V. Christine at the age of 25, married, and lived a good life until her husband died. After his death, she did not have anyone to support her and lived in poverty. Soon she realized that to help her family, she must do something, and that’s when she started writing catching the attention of wealthy people. Among her books, she wrote “The City of Ladies” about women’s heroism. Christine became very successful in being the first female to defend women’s rights. In her book, she had the courage to break with the gender stereotypes prevalent at that time. Her ideas were compelling and are considered to be the first feminist in the Western world.

My first impression of Louise Labe’s poetry was that it was purely aesthetic: that is, she writes about longing and unrequited love in a very particular style as a way to play with words and display her cleverness. The singularity and repetitiveness of the theme suggests someone who is in love with the idea of love rather than looking for an actual relationship: clearly in line with the style of romantic poetry of Labe’s time, but not particularly deep. As I went through the sonnets, however, I found some that were quite erotic and passionate, which suggested that her experience and interest in romance was perhaps more genuine that it appears at the first glance.

My favorite was  of all #21 because it shows real insight into love and passion. While most romantic poetry of that era (written by men) extols physical beauty and its power on the beholder, Labe has a very different idea. She points out that love is irrational and unpredictable: you love someone simply because, and it’s not the person’s looks, personality, popularity, talents, or any other trait that makes you lose your mind, but simply being that particular person has that effect on you. Nowadays, we call it “chemistry”, “connection”, “soul-linking”, etc, and Labe has no definition for this phenomenon, but she explains it beautifully.

Christine de Pizan wrote the City of Ladies to try to change the perception of women during the Middle Ages. During those times man and women both had a very demeaning view about the role of women in society. Her argument was that because of the way the current world functions, men have more opportunities to learn so they have a bigger array of skills and experiences. She wrote the book to argue her points that women can think for themselves and could be equal to men given the opportunity.

 

Throughout the story, Pizan tries to argue each point the male authors made.  Those male authors said females aren’t faithful and are mean by nature. Pizan uses Lady Rectitude, who find females who are faithful and love their husbands. This in Pizan’s eyes wouldn’t make sense since female who loves their husbands wouldn’t ever hurt their husbands. Pizan literally built a place ruled by females proving what those male authors said was wrong.