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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2017
In the opening passages of her 1405 Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (The Book of the City of Ladies), Christine de Pizan reports that she has been reading the misogynist writings of Matheolus, a late thirteenth-century French writer. She is overwhelmed by his negative opinion of women, which is echoed in the writings of many other male writers. Convinced by these negative portrayals of her sex, she laments her fate in being born a woman. At this moment of despair over her biological destiny, Reason, Justice, and Rectitude appear and announce that she is to be the champion for her sex. Specifically, she is to step in where “nobles hommes” have failed their task:
pour forclorre du monde la semblable erreur ou tu estoyes encheute, et que les dames et toutes vaillans femmes puissent d'ores en avant avoir aucun retrait et closture de deffence contre tant de divers assaillans … pour ce nous trois dames … te sommes venues adnoncier un certain ediffice fait en maniere de la closture d'une cité fort maçonnee et bien ediffiee, qui a toy a ffaire est predestinee et establie par nostre aide et conseil, en laquelle n'abitera fors toutes dames de renommee et femmes dignes de loz.
to keep the world from the same error into which you have fallen, and so that ladies and all valiant women might henceforth have from it a retreat and a place of defense against such various assailants … for this we three ladies … have come to you to herald a certain building made in the manner of an enclosure of a well-built and well-constructed city, which is predestined to be made by you and established with our assistance and advice, in which none will live save women of renown and worthy of praise.
This passage adroitly authorizes Christine's writing project: the personified virtues proclaim her “predestinee,” establishing her divinely sanctioned role to correct the written record. Their injunction plays on the project's figurative and literal registers: she is to construct, through her writing, a figurative city where women can shelter from misogynist slander, and where discussion of women's virtues can take place. This imaginary city will be a locus for articulating ideas with very real consequences: they will correct women's misrepresentation and increase women's honor.
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