Christine de Pizan :: Essays Papers

Christine de Pizan Perhaps what Christine de Pizan found approximately alluring in Jeanne dArc was her eagerness to go, not only where no fair sex had gone before, but where no man had worn the path squander either she was not only the first woman to lead France in War, but the first person under 19 to do so. She experience that which had hitherto not been discovered or known, a qualification Christine gives to women whom take for claim to great feats (herself included) in her Reply to Lady Reason from THE hand OF THE CITY OF LADIES. Unlike Christine, Joan had faced adversity early on in the form of her p bents who wished to force a husband upon her. While (respectively) Christines father was support her classical education, which would later help support her own children, Joan was on rivulet against her parents for refusing to marry. At 15, Christine married a court secretary, Etienne de Castel. At 17, Joan led France into battle. The cardinal seem to have nothi ng in common but that they are both French women. At 25, however, Christines hatful changed. She too had to fight for her rights in the French courts after her father, Tommaro di Benvenuto da Pizzano, died in 1380 (or 85, depending upon the source). Her husband died five or ten years later in 1390, leaving her estates along with those her father had left, both of which the French government would have liked to take from her in the lawsuits (lasting five years) following his death. Of this, she writes, in MUTATION OF FORTUNE, that by abandoning her with three children, fortune forced her to rely on her literary skills to support her family, thus transforming her economic consumption in society into a mans, allowing her to fight for her own rights as a woman. Moreover, in VISION, written in 1405, she argues that if her husband had lived, she sould never have had literary success. The three most apparent themes in Christines life and works womens rights, policy-making et hics, and religious devotion- also explain her draw to Jeanne dArc, whose first and last experiences with Frances discriminatory system, as well as her millitary experiences, encapsulate all of these themes.