Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading Beyond Gender

Church History, March, 2002 by Amy Hollywood

Blamires also offers one possible reason for the limitations that haunt "the case for women," for despite Christine's intense "critical engagement with the dominant ideology of her own day" (219), she only challenges claims to women's ethical inequality. She offers her own experience as an exemplum for male political leaders, yet never directly challenges women's political or social subordination.

Blamires suggests that by remaining caught within the terms of a judicial logic of defense, in which one responds to misogynistic charges made against women, Christine and others may have hindered their ability to think about "what roles women might play in society" (Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 64). Yet Christine's catalogue of women's past achievements in The Book of the City of Ladies offers glimpses of alternative social structures. There is no indication that Christine intended these stories to challenge contemporary societal norms--a fact historians must remember--yet her texts provide a space for readers to envision forms of social life Christine herself might not have been able consciously to embrace.

Amy Hollywood
Dartmouth College