Christine de Pizan :: Essays Papers

Christine de Pizan Perhaps what Christine de Pizan found to the highest degree alluring in Jeanne dArc was her eagerness to go, non only where no woman had gone before, scarcely where no man had worn the path down either she was not only the set-back woman to lead France in War, but the first person under 19 to do so. She experienced that which had hitherto not been discovered or known, a qualification Christine gives to women whom provoke claim to s healthy feats (herself included) in her Reply to Lady Reason from THE BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES. contrasted Christine, Joan had faced adversity early on in the form of her parents who wished to tear a husband upon her. While (respectively) Christines father was encouraging her classical education, which would later on help support her own children, Joan was on trial against her parents for refusing to marry. At 15, Christine unify a court secretary, Etienne de Castel. At 17, Joan led France into battle. The two see m to have nothing in common but that they are both French women. At 25, however, Christines fortune changed. She too had to fight for her rights in the French courts later on her father, Tommaro di Benvenuto da Pizzano, died in 1380 (or 85, depending upon the source). Her husband died five or ten days 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) pursual his death. Of this, she writes, in MUTATION OF FORTUNE, that by abandoning her with three children, fortune forced her to confide on her literary skills to support her family, thus transforming her role in association into a mans, allowing her to fight for her own rights as a woman. Moreover, in VISION, pen 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, political ethics, and religious devotion- overly explain her draw to Jeanne dArc, whose first and last experiences with Frances judicial system, as well as her millitary experiences, encapsulate all of these themes.