The Book of the City of Ladies

‘Philosophers, poets and orators too numerous to mention all speak with one voice and are unanimous in their view that female nature is wholly given up to vice’.

It was this misogynist consensus that Christine de Pizan (c. 1364–1430), France’s first professional woman of letters, confronted head-on in the City of Ladies. Here, with the help of Reason, Rectitude and Justice, Christine constructs an allegorical city in which to defend womankind, using examples of female virtue and achievement both from the past and her own day as the stones with which to build the city’s walls and towers.

A key text in the history of feminism, the City of Ladies not only provides powerful positive images of women, ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints, but also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture. In her Introduction to this new translation for Penguin Classics, Rosalind Brown-Grant sets the work within its historical and intellectual context.