The City of Ladies; Christine de Pisan the Forgotten Feminist Icon

I would argue that Christine de Pisan should be lorded as a feminist icon. A bold statement I’m aware, but in the 1390s she was the only professional author in mediaeval Europe who was a woman. Arguably this becomes even more impressive when you remember the majority of women at this point in history did not acquire an education beyond embroidery and the odd bit of poetry. And to make matters even better, the focus of a lot of her work was the role of women, or more specifically the curtailment of women’s achievements by male authors.

In 1402, disgruntled by the presentation of women in Jean de Meun’s ‘Romance of the Rose’, Pisan joined a literary debate dubbed the ‘Querelle du Roman de la Rose’. In Meun’s work, he satirises courtly love and instead depicts women solely as seductresses who deceive men. Pisan, being a woman, was somewhat offended by this generalisation about her entire sex. However, Pisan’s involvement in this debate was not welcomed as she “a mere woman” had infiltrated the masculine sphere of literary criticism. As she put it herself (with only a smattering of irony); “And let it not be imputed to me a folly, or arrogance, or presumption for me to dare, a mere woman, to reprehend and to criticise an author of such subtlety, whose work is acclaimed by praise, when he, a single man, dared to undertake to defame and blame without exception an entire sex.” Pisan herself knew she could not explicitly state that Meun was a sexist pig (I have not got the same restraint) given contextually women were still considered inherently lesser than men given the whole Eve-Apple business in the Bible. However, she was willing to state that if men were to govern women, as was the status quo, then they should do so without the tyranny clear in Meun’s writing. Essentially, she publicly called him a massive hypocrite which wasn’t really something the average woman could get away with. Certified feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir herself wrote in 1949 that Pisan’s writing was “The first time we see a woman take up her pen in defence of her sex” thus indicating the proto-feminist ideology in which we must place Christine de Pisan. 

Pisan’s feminist writing did not stop there however, her most famous work came in 1405 with ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames) in which she literally creates a city in which the achievements of women are celebrated. The ‘City of Ladies’ is written as a dialogue in three sections with personifications of Reason, Justice and Rectitude who help her build a city in which women are revered whilst also telling the tales of women both past and present who are often overlooked. Pisan stated that she was inspired by the writings of male historians who frequently villainized women or outright ignored them; “My mind dwelt at length on the opinions of various authors whom I had studied... it made me wonder how it happened that so many different men - and learned men among them - have been and are so inclined to express... so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour... it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth…” 

The first book of the ‘City of Ladies’ features women from secular spaces to highlight their tactical wisdom. The aim of her writing in this section seems to be a direct counter to the argument that women are inherently baser than men (Eve-Apple business again), instead Pisan says women are able to play a critical part in society. This idea is also supported by the recurring imagery that semantically ties together construction and writing; “mix the mortar in your ink pot”. I like to think that with her writing, Pisan goes further than the idiom ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ and instead goes in the direction that the pen is mightier than anything else. Her ability to write women into common history overwhelms the idea that women are inherently duplicitous (referring back to Meun’s delightful writing) but instead women’s achievements should be praised equally to men.  

In the second book, Pisan moves to focus on the moral conduct of women. The morality of women had been in question since basically forever (Eve-Apple. Need I say more.) and Pisan questions Lady Rectitude about male attitudes towards the bad qualities of women. However, she is refuted with many examples of women’s virtues, for example comparing Nero’s tempestuous nature (‘there was no restraint to his lust, rapacity and cruelty’) versus Griselda’s faithfulness (‘her unstopped steadfastness, strength, and constancy’). Essentially, Pisan tore apart the stereotypes that surrounded the female persuasion by suggesting both men and women have the capacity for good and evil (unthinkable am I right).

In book 3 Pisan decided to take on the entirety of Christianity (which I respect but feels a bit full on when she could have been burnt as a heretic). In this section of her book, she fills the rest of her city with biblical women most famously the Virgin Mary. She implies that humanity gained more from the Virgin Mary than could ever have been lost by Eve and thus if Mary was able to bring Christ into the world the whole apple business should be less of a focal point. Interestingly, Pisan also focuses heavily on Saint Christine who was martyred by having her tongue cut out, interesting mainly because she considers her namesake being silenced whilst she gives voices to many forgotten women. 

The book is neatly finished with Lady Reason stating it is impossible to escape the stereotypes surrounding women if women are excluded from the conversation. Therefore, given all the work Pisan did to include women in the narrative I think it’s a little unfair that she is relatively unknown today. Furthermore, I think the running motif of construction in tandem with writing should be considered more closely especially in our current media-literacy drought. Her writing may have been conservative in places, yet she wholeheartedly advocated for women’s achievements both in the past and those of her contemporaries to be more widely recognised - thus I stand by my original statement that she should be considered a feminist icon and accepted into the present feminist psyche.