Failed sadism and masochistic martyrdom in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cité des dames

Abstract

This chapter examines power and violence in the Livre de la cité des dames (Book of the city of ladies), Book 3, by Christine de Pizan through the lens of sadism/masochism. The figures in this text notably include women of colour and proto-non-binary people. The Cité depicts a distinctive paradigm of martyrdom that maintains a gendered economy of violence where male-on-female seduction is inextricably linked with torture. However, Christine desexualises her authorial persona, the martyrdom, and the female body. This desexualisation seeks to remedy all misogynistic texts, including the Roman de la rose. This chapter examines an instance of Christine undoing sexual assault in the Rose. While Christine would not have consciously written the martyrial episodes from an S/M perspective, the way she deftly manages the problematic theme of sexuality nonetheless reveals failed attempts at sadism from the tyrants and a desexualised, masochistic martyrdom directed by the saints. In voiding the sadism and desexualising the masochism, Christine’s Cité offers a rare instance of S/M scenes that do not allow the reader a vicarious thrill. It further reconfigures the hagiographic body-as-text: the bodies of the martyr-masochists reject and overwrite any marks from the martyrdom, reflecting the saints’ inviolate body, like Mary’s.