In seven pages this Medieval feminist author is considered in terms of her life and this literary work in which she educates her female contemporaries on exhibiting socially useful qualities. There are no other sources listed.
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their world outlook and place in society. That is, one typically thinks of medieval women as accepting their socially prescribed roles as inferior to men, just as they acknowledged
themselves inferior before God. This is why the image of Joan of Arc at the head of French army is so startling. However, the historical fact of Joan of
Arc becomes more understandable when one realizes that there was a female French author telling French women twenty-five years earlier that a woman should possess a "mans heart," that
she should be cognizant of the laws of warfare, as well as how to command men, in preparation for those times when her husband may be absent. Granted
Joan of Arc may not have heard of Christine de Pizan, but that fact that De Pizan existed and wrote such things does imply a subtle change in the overall
social context in which Joan arose. Christine de Pizan was a learned and scholarly author during an age (e.g. the fifteenth century) when the vast majority of women,
including aristocratic women, were denied formal education, and were generally expected to passively follow a mans lead, resigned to whatever fate may hand them. In protest to this position
of women in medieval society, De Pizan wrote two of her most significant works, The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues (which is
also known as The Treasury of the City of Ladies). In the first of these works, De Pizan endeavored to demonstrate the significance of womens contributions to society in the
past. In the second, she set herself the goal of teaching women, in all walks of society, how to go about cultivating useful qualities in society, and in the process,