The Book of the City of Ladies Essay

In The Book of the City of Ladies, women are depicted as people with agency and the ability to achieve goals without needing men. From the beginning Christine de Pizan portrays women as independent and self-sufficient. She starts with the three ladies, Lady Justice, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Reason, they are all there to guide humans, both men and women, thus placing them in a higher position than human men. Lady Justice carries a golden vessel that holds what every man and woman deserve, she based on facts hands out punishment or rewards and will not falter to any man’s complaints. This, right

The City of Ladies has been regarded as the first book to speak out for women. Around the time of the book being written women were being portrayed as objects that are not equal to men. Christine picked up a book by Matheolus, a 13th-century writer. In the book, Matheolus was writing about marriage. He said that women make men's lives miserable. Christine felt distraught at being a woman. After thinking that, three women appeared next to Christine. Each woman represents a virtue. The three virtues tell Christine that she must build a city for the best women. The book continues teaching Christine about feminism and why men slander women. The City of Ladies can compare very well to A Thousand and One Nights. In A Thousand and One Nights, Sultan Shahrayar finds out that his wife is unfaithful, he kills her he also swears that he will marry a different woman every night. When the sun rises he will kill her. One of his wives, Scheherazade, told him half a story each night so that he lets her live to the next night, so she can complete the story. A lot of these stories had feminist and feminism theme in them, similar to The City of Ladies. By the end of the one thousand and one nights, Sultan Shahrayar’s idea about women changed. He respected women and thought they were equal to men.

Christine de Pizan’s view also aligns with Augustine’s medieval view of leadership. Machiavelli’s view, however, strays the farthest from Plato and Augustine. In The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine presents an allegorical city made up of great ladies from history. Allegorical characters Reason, Rectitude, and Justice guide Christine

“Lanval” by Marie de France and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer are both medieval romances that put a knight on trial by a queen’s court for his treatment of a lady. Throughout the course of this paper, readers will get the opportunity to travel back in time to the Middle Ages and that during the twelfth-century women were superior to men, specifically in their relationships and marriages; however, today men dominant individuals, especially in working world.

In medieval literature, the role of women often represents many familiar traits and characteristics which present societies still preserve. Beauty, attractiveness, and grace almost completely exemplify the attributes of powerful women in both present and past narratives. European medieval prose often separates the characteristics of women into two distinct roles in society. Women can be portrayed as the greatest gift to mankind, revealing everything that is good, pure, and beautiful in a woman's life. On the other side of the coin, many women are compared to everything that is evil and harmful, creating a witch-like or temptress quality for the character. These two aspects of European culture and literature show that the power of

In Candide Voltaire discusses the exploitation of the female race in the eighteenth century through the women in the novel. Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman suffer through rape and sexual exploitation regardless of wealth or political connections. These characters possess very little complexity or importance in Candide. With his characterization of Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman Voltaire satirizes gender roles and highlights the impotence of women in the 1800s.

This investigation strives to compare and contrast of the role of women during the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. The inquiry is significant because in order to understand the culture and ethics of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages it is crucial to understand the importance of women. The issues that will be addressed include: the role of women in the Roman Empire, the role of women in the Middle Ages, and the similarities as well as the differences of the two major time periods. This investigation will focus on the time period of 27 BC to 1485 BC and the places investigated will include Europe, more specifically Rome. This will be accomplished through a detailed examination of the role of women in the

Her comments not only let the reader know that she is displeased with this piece of literature, but that she feels that reading it is neither elevating nor useful. Thus, she insinuates the futility of the work itself. Christine cleverly goes on to comment on the subject of the character of women by flattering her male contemporaries. She writes, "…it would be impossible that so many famous men--such solemn scholars, possessed of such deep and great understanding, so clear-sighted in all things, as it seemed--could have spoken falsely on so many occasions…" (4). Christine intelligently uses this "sugar coated" method to emphasize the point –- the point that these men were wrong. Although Christine was obviously outspoken, she knew her limitations. Her work would not be recognized, or even read, if she had openly attacked the male writers. Therefore, she instead chose to build them up the "solemn scholars" before opposing their positions. Christine’s ironic humility does not stop with the prominent male writers of her time. She addresses God with the same rhetorical question as she asks, "Oh, God, how can this be? For unless I stray from my faith, I must never doubt that Your infinite wisdom and most perfect goodness ever created anything which was not good" (Pizan 5). Again, Christine carefully opposed the male point of view this time using Biblical references.

In the late Middle Ages, women were forced under many disabilities. Society viewed women as “physically, intellectually, and morally inferior to men” (Bornstein 1). In the 1300’s when Dante wrote the Divine Comedy women did not play a key role in society outside the home. This was not solely excluding a certain sex because of who they were, but because of how society in history has viewed women. Many believed that women could not do a man’s job or fit to be in charge of a certain group. In the 1300’s, women were to be in charge of the household, take care of the children, make the food for the day, and be a loyal wife to their husbands. Through the 1300’s women had a desire to voice what they could achieve, so they started to speak out their

Women withstood a multitude of limitations in the medieval era. Due to the political, social, and religious restrictions women encountered, historians neglected to realize that they demonstrated agency. The female experience is something that has been overlooked until recently. Unfortunately, without the knowledge of how women found ways to exert their power, we are experiencing a deficit of knowledge in this period. Through the close examination of the primary sources: The Gospel of Mary, Dhouda’s Liber Manualis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the creative means of female force are displayed.

In the Middle Age literature, women are often presented or meant to come off as an unimportant character; which can also reflect on how the author wants the women character represent. Women are usually shunned, have no say or control in what they do; due to what men desire; like Ophelia and Gertrude did in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But these female characters that I will discuss are women with power, control, and a voice. Majority of the female character’s appearances are made to represent wickedness, evil, or a seducer who challenges a man belief; and does not symbolize perfect women.

A woman’s alternative would be becoming a nun, giving up all social freedoms and dedicating your life to serving the poor and God. Women who were subject to this life received a much more thorough education than other women, in order to properly learn religious concepts and theory. Otherwise, a woman’s education was limited to basic reading abilities paired with instruction on how to do homely activities. A woman of this time period had utterly no voice in politics. Law was man’s law. The life of these women were controlled by the men who surround them, their opinions meaning little to nothing. The life of a woman in medieval times was bleak and varied little. Romantic literature was on the rise, full of damsels in distress that only further perpetuated negative stereotypes of women during these times. These romances were full of helpless women in situations only a man could get them out of, or else they would be doomed. Despite this cultural oppression of women in this time period, some strong female characters were erected in medieval romances. A perfect example of an abnormally strong and independent female main character would be Enide from Erec and Enide written by Chrétien de

Literature from the medieval times, gives a stereotype that women are promiscuous, manipulative, wicked, and unfaithful. Treatment of women as promiscuous and untrustworthy goes against the nature of women and who God created them to be. Women are not promiscuous and manipulative as men claim them to be; they are good wives, strive to lead a life of holiness like the blessed mother, and are a helper of man.

From a plethora of many authors and compilations over many centuries comes the fourteenth century The Thousand and One Nights, a Middle Eastern frame story during which there are as many as four implanted stories. In the outermost frame of this tale, a king who is betray by his wife vows to take a new wife each night and kill her the next morning in order to prevent further unfaithfulness. The main inner frame are stories from one of his wives which she continues each night to keep the king interested and thus postpone her death. Through these stories, the reader can examine the role of men and women in this time, specifically how women function in conjunction to men in the text. The reader may assume the men are superior while the woman are inferior, but through close reading of the text, the reader will discover that women in the text are only treated subordinately by men in the story but are revealed to the reader as the more powerful of the sexes. Authors reveal the power of women by their prowess at trickery or “women’s cunning” (The Thousand 1181), and their ability to force the actions of male counterparts. The reader can examine men’s attempt to stifle this power, which further acknowledges the women’s merit, through the excessively frequent occurring instances of men treating the women as insignificant, as well as instances when women are turned to ungulate animals, such

The medieval church taught that women were inferior to men and that they should be compliant and obedient to their fathers and husbands. Men look down to women as their respect for their ladies are limited as in Canterbury Tales were these women start out as beneath men. These same men who feel the need to arrogate women of their dignity find their fate is later put into the women’s hands. Although a women is taciturn and does not speak out to the men and talk of their animadversion toward the men’s behavior, these same ladies have the power to then decide how these men should serve their punishment for their sacrileges and unruly decisions as in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, were after his life was saved by an old lady, in return this old women requested to him to “take me as your wife” (p.138). A women’s love and passion should be approached with appreciation and admiration otherwise being inconsiderate and impassionate will turn a women against a man.