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Christine de Pizan
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Perhaps what Christine de Pizan found most alluring in Jeanne d’Arc was her eagerness to go, not only where no woman had gone before, but where no man had worn the path down either; she was not only the first 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 have claim to great feats (herself included) in her”Reply to Lady Reason” from THE BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES.
Unlike Christine, Joan had faced adversity early on in the form of her parents who wished to force a husband upon her. While (respectively) Christine’s father was encouraging her classical education, which would later help support her own children, Joan was on trial 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 two seem to have nothing in common but that they are both French women.
At 25, however, Christine’s fortune 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 role in society into a man’s, 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 Christine’s life and works: women’s rights, political ethics, and religious devotion- also explain her draw to Jeanne d’Arc, whose first and last experiences with France’s judicial system, as well as her millitary experiences, encapsulate all of these themes.
