A Privileged Equality: The Divisive Ideals of Christine de Pizan and White Feminists

Abstract

Christine de Pizan was one of the most prolific woman writers of the Middle Ages and her work serves as an early example of feminism. This paper aims at analyzing Christine’s feminism through the Epistre Au Dieu D’Amours, Christine’s letter to Jean de Montreuil, and her letter to Gontier Col. By comparing Christine’s ideas with some representative examples of “white feminism” from the “Second Wave,” I argue that despite Christine’s contributions in sparking feminist ideas, she created a proto-feminist work that excludes those who do not fit into her ideal of “good women.” Christine’s feminism, which operates at the expense of “bad women,” foreshadows the divisiveness that would later surface in “white feminism.” This fifteenth-century feminism is an important forerunner to the problems that second-wave feminism was to face in the twentieth century.