Long before Mary Wollstonecraft, the grandmother of the 19th-century women's rights movement, there was Christine de Pizan, a Venetian-born writer whose book, The City of Ladies, is considered the first publication in Europe by a professional female writer. Pizan was born in 1365 in Venice, and married at age 15 to a court notary who was more than a decade older. He encouraged her to learn to read beyond the bare minimum required of a woman of her station, leading her to consume vast quantities of philosophical works available to her at court.
Pizan published her book in 1405, turning to writing as a way to support herself and her three children when she was widowed. The book tackles the issue of women's rights and man's depiction of her as the "weaker sex." In The City of Ladies Pizan goes head to head with popular male philosophers and turns their arguments against them, writing what is, in essence, the first feminist book.
Women's Rights and the Feminist History in 15th-Century Europe
Pizan's book must be read with an understanding of the context of the late 1300s and early 1400s in Western Europe. The plague had torn through Europe in the 1340s and early 1350s in the worst of the more than 100 waves that would rip throughout the content over the next three centuries. Killing anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent of the population in any given town or city, the Black Death left Europe with a demographic crisis, but simultaneously helped to launch what would become the Renaissance in Italy within a few decades, and the Northern Renaissance shortly after.
Pizan, the daughter of a physician and court astrologer, was educated by nuns and was a poet of distinction. She wrote hundreds of ballads for pay, gaining a reputation for exquisite wordsmithing in the realm of courtly love. Pizan took on male notions of female inferiority in her book The City of Ladies just decades before the Renaissance would challenge convention on a much broader scale. The City of Ladies is a rebuttal to Jean de Meun's Romance of the Rose, a 13th-century text that depicted women at court as vulgar seductresses. Pizan objected to this depiction, and wrote The City of Ladies to counteract his view.
The City of Ladies is written as a fanciful dream in which Pizan creates a Utopian city filled with famous women throughout history. Each woman is, within the construct of the plot, a physical part of the city. The foundation of women is used by Pizan to prove that women are inherently worthy of respect and education.
The City of Ladies and Women's History
Three virtues, manifest in physical form, visit Pizan in her dreamlike world: Reason, Rectitude and Justice. The virtues walk Pizan through a history of strong women: Reason discusses women of great political and intellectual power, Rectitude women of great vision, devotion and love for their families, and Justice completes the city of ladies with a summoning of holy women, pure and pious. The virtues become conduits for Pizan to tackle two significant themes in male-dominated 15th-century Europe: women as seducers and the target of blame for male lust, and women as allegedly stupid creatures.
Through the allegory of the city of ladies Pizan uses the virtues to express revulsion for rape and sexual violence, and further revulsion for society's attitude that women somehow bring such violence upon themselves.
Her central thesis – that women need access to education to grow and progress, and their lack of access makes them appear weak – is also Mary Wollstonecraft's thesis in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published nearly 400 years later. The same theme resonates in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963, though with a shift toward access to career opportunities. We may have come a long way, baby – but it took a long time.
To Get the Book The City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan
- de Pizan, Christine. The City of Ladies. Translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant. Penguin Classics, 1999. Available on Kindle.
Related Book Reviews on Women in History
To read more about women's history and women writers, please check out these articles and reviews:
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft kicked off first-wave feminism with this 1792 classic.
- A to Z of American Indian Women - a valuable biography compendium of major female figures among Native American women.
- For Glory and Bolivar: The Remarkable Life of Manuela Saenz - the "Liberator of the Liberator" finally gets her own well-researched, English-language biography.
- Book of Latina Women: 150 Vidas of Passion, Strength and Success - learn about Latina women in history, from 16th-century Spain to the modern U.S.
- Midwives, Witches and Nurses: A History of Woman Healers - long before she published Nickeled and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich focused her sharp wit and analytical mind on the role of women in the healing professions.
Melanie Zoltan - Melanie Zoltan is a former college professor and administrator who has written for About.com, PCWorld, Brain Child, Thomson Gale, and ...
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