Awakened Woman
e-magazine
goddessaltar.com
The First Feminist?
by Diane Rae Schulz
While modern women encounter and attempt to change traditional gender stereotypes, our patriarchal legacy from Western civilization, one remarkable woman actually identified and wrote about these same stereotypes 600 years ago! This very early feminist, actually the only one whose work has survived intact, was Christine de Pizan.
Christine was born in 1365 in Venice, the daughter of Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano who assumed the position of court astrologer in Paris at the court of Charles V. He encouraged his daughter's education, extremely unusual at that time. She had access to translated manuscripts from Latin, Greek and Italian then available in France. At fifteen she married Estienne de Castel, a court notary ten years her elder, who, according to Christine, also encouraged her literary activity. He died in 1389, the victim of an epidemic. Christine was left with three young children and no income at the age of twenty five. Most women chose remarriage or the nunnery, but she turned to writing to support herself, becoming the official biographer of Charles V. As if this were not unusual enough…
"Perhaps what is more important is that Christine was a highly respected and widely disseminated voice on the status of women. A large number of Christine's works spring from her deep sense of commitment…Christine sought to demonstrate that women possessed natural affinities for all areas of cultural and social activity…Between 1390 and 1429 she produced a vast corpus of works in verse and prose, whose range shows a technical mastery of the various well--established literary genres of her day and demonstrates an astonishing poetic versatility.
"…Even the briefest survey of Christine's works reveals her intimate involvement with political events. Christine's repeated appeals for peace, not surprising in an age so wracked by civil strife as the late 14th and early 15th centuries in France, take their place beside her incessant plea for the recognition of women's contributions to culture and social life as the most remarkable features of her works. These two recurring themes show how Christine was deeply rooted in her own time and also strove for an historical synthesis of universal application,…which finds its best expression, perhaps, in The Book of the City of Ladies." (Earl Jeffrey Richards)
The Book of the City of Ladies is a discussion between Christine and three "ladies" who mysteriously visit her in her study while she is unhappily pondering the misogynist attitudes of all the male writers she has so far encountered in her studies. The women introduce themselves as Reason, Rectitude and Justice and announce their purpose. Christine has been selected to build a city wherein only women, and only women of virtue, will reside. The three ladies will help her by revealing to her the greatness of women. Their method is to refute, by their reinterpretations of history, the perverse attitudes of male writers of antiquity and currently. Lady Reason begins by saying, "for the foundation and completion of this City you will draw fresh waters from us as from clear fountains, and we will bring you sufficient building stone, stronger and more durable than any marble with cement could be. Thus your City will be extremely beautiful, without equal, and of perpetual duration in the world."
The process of "building the city" is actually a literary device used to review the entire history of women that was available to Christine at that time. Each of the three ladies in turn tell her the stories of great women, including Biblical, Greek, Roman and European, which illustrate their virtuous qualities. In Part I Christine asks Reason "whether it has ever pleased this God, who has bestowed so many favors on women, to honor the feminine sex with the privilege of the virtue of high understanding and great learning." Christine asks why men say otherwise. Reason replies, "My daughter, since I told you before, you know quite well that the opposite of their opinion is true, and to show you this even more clearly, I will give you proof through examples. I tell you again ----; and don't doubt the contrary ---- if it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons." Lady Reason continues at length describing the accomplishments of women from the mythological age 'til the present.
"Certain basic points need to be reiterated: prior to Christine, no woman had spoken out in the vernacular on issues pertaining to women. Christine insisted that women must be educated. These two facts alone make Christine revolutionary. Her attitude was profoundly feminist in that it involved a complete dedication to the betterment of women's lives and to the alleviation of their suffering. ..there can be no getting around Christine's feminism. It is central to her works and thought…."
"Christine's arguments on behalf of women repeatedly invoke historical tradition and Christianity. She cites tradition in order to remold the same tradition to meet her own needs in writing a history from the point of view of women, a radical break with all previous historiography. Christine persistently defends Christian marriage in order to use the ideals of personal conducts implicit in the Church's concept of marriage as a standard. Christine lived in an age when the Church was seen as the Bride of Christ, and therefore, Christian marriage based on the model of Christ's caring for His church represented the supreme form of ethical responsibility. Her defense of Christian marriage was a call for the highest form of moral commitment between a man and a woman and not an endorsement of institutionalized domination. This strong religious element may not appeal to some modern critics, but it is an historical fact that Christine saw in Christianity a means of overcoming oppression,…[the] title for The Book of the City of Ladies alludes directly to Augustine's City of God. "
"In The Book of the City of Ladies Christine expands her defense of women to the past and future so that she can expose the utter falseness of 'masculine myths' once and for all. Christine sought a more perfect realization of the ideals transmitted by the tradition which she had inherited, which she had cultivated, and which she hoped to transform. Christine's unmistakable clarity on the continuity of women's suffering throughout history is an appeal for change, not for the return to some nostalgically idealized past." (Earl Jeffrey Richards)
In Part III, Lady Justice "populates" the city by first escorting The Virgin into its gates, and following her all the female saints and noble women. Because Mary is above reproach and, as she states, "I am and will always be the head of the feminine sex," this City of Ladies shall be protected by her forever and be a place of refuge for all women.
Amen Christine! We have to respect the "building" she imagined and continue to add more building blocks ---- our own stories ----; as we re--structure society, constructing cities, states and, why not, world civilization on the foundation of a woman--centered reality that respects life rather than destroys it.
"Her major point was to urge 'men to live up to their own standards', Douglas Kelly pointed out in his important re--evaluation of Christine as a feminist writer. Her view of women is not antithetically constructed; that is, her idealization of women does not represent an automatic antithesis to the demonization of women found in misogynist writes…She offers no counter cliches in her refutation but succeeds in showing through her mastery of the available examples that her opponents' arguments are specious. Perhaps, thanks to this clear--sightedness, …Christine's arguments still sound fresh even 575 years after they were first advanced." Subjects such as the fitness of women to govern, the affinity of women for learning, the criminality of rape are but a few of the themes which Christine treats and which could have been taken from current feminist discussions.
"The Book of the City of Ladies constitutes at once a moving document and a literary landmark. It represents the first work by a woman in praise of women."
(Quotes are from the Introduction to her work pp. xix--li, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards, Persea Books, New York 1982)
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