Christine de Pizan was skilled at provoking argument. As discussed on the workshop day, she crafted an argument that automatically twisted all rebuttals into further examples for her own case; any assaults on her or her writing became immediate fodder for her arguments. Her writing drew attention, and she became well-known and garnered rich patrons. However, we also know that both her husband and her father had died, leaving her with “three small children and a large household” at the age of 25 and with no one to support them but herself. Although the disparagement of womankind was a noble pursuit, I think we may have neglected another strong motivator for de Pizan: she was a single mom. She had to write for a living, and so having a strong argument that would allow her to rebut all counterarguments was important; she provoked argument to gain more attention to her writing not only to push the treatises, but also to gain more patronage and thus feed her family. By encouraging argumentation on the subject, she was ensuring her job-safety. That’s not to say that she wasn’t concerned with the roles and portrayal of women, merely that these other factors should also be considered.
Further, de Pizan has been much discussed for her view of women’s proper nature (“timid, meek and pure” [214]) as well as her advocating of female education (214-215). However, as also discussed, de Pizan is using that education to step out of bounds of the “timid, meek” stricture she herself assigns to women. Although this topic was viewed in the “virgin martyr” perspective, it also applies to the “single mom” perspective already brought up in this post. The “sacrifice” de Pizan is making may not be so much for womankind as her own children (again, not mutually exclusive ideas). She takes on a masculine role—bread winner—as well as an aggressive stance in her writing, going against her portrayed role for women and, thus, going against her “own nature” (214). I cannot help but wonder how she reconciled her view of the proper female with her own situation—deprived of a male figure to help her care for her children, she herself must step up to survive and keep her children fed. She may have accepted it as a sacrifice for the greater good (womankind and her own family), or perhaps she was not as conservative as she let on in her writings. After all, a radical feminist would probably not have been published or patronized, and thus her children and herself would have starved. So her “meek” image of the female may have been a ploy to a) get her works into the world and known and b) get her the rich patronage she needed to survive.
Pax,
ReplyDeleteI don't think she was as conservative as she appeared. I do think that she knew and understood her limits of her own prose--she knew that if she wrote as she pleased, it would never be read or taken seriously.
I think that I have to say that de Pizan's "timid, meek and pure" stance is all an act to ensure patronage, as you say at the end (214). Like you stated, she was a single mom working for the money, and she knew that making the radical jump from "women are evil" to "women are equal" would have gotten her nowhere. So I somewhat disagree with your idea that she is "going against her portrayed role for women," but rather she is almost mocking her portrayed role by saying "okay, I know you want women to be sweet and silent, so I'll say they should be, but even me just saying that is an irony because I am saying it and I'm not being meek about it." Basically, I think she's poking holes in her own argument on purpose, but doing it in a clever way so she still looks like she's in support of a docile domestic creature. Therefore, I'm going to have to argue with your idea that de Pizan's arguments are her way of courting patronage, but rather her "meek" statement is the one that really gets her her paycheck. Provoking an argument just doesn't seem like the safest thing for a medieval woman to do, especially when she was banking on her writings to feed her family. I think de Pizan's argumentative side is more of her true personality, and her radical (or semi-radical, however you want to judge her notions of women within the context of her time) ideas are what she actually believes, but she knows she couldn't support herself on such writings. Not too long after de Pizan, female figures such as Laura Cereta and Margaret Cavendish would dare to write on more radical views of women than de Pizan, and these female writers had to self-publish, which de Pizan couldn't afford to do. I think that de Pizan's suggestion that the more women are attacked, the more it proves their argument is simply a way of justifying herself and what's she's saying. I would think it's more of a defensive measure than an offensive way of courting money and fame.
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