City Ladies: Declassified

     With Christine de Pizan's Treasure of the City Ladies, we are officially hurled from classical or medieval rhetoric.  Augustine's piece introduced a religious lens for us to deliberate with, but Pizan really applied it to a lifestyle and provided insight into a number of situations still prevalent in today's society.  While there were several of these instances, there were also certain aspects I contested with.  Perhaps this is a sign of the times and the fact I am not a woman in medieval Europe, but I still believe a lot can be learned from this piece.
     Pizan started out with examples of how one should have a charitable attitude towards other members of their community.  In lies the Golden Rule and has been consistently relevant for generations and generations to come.  Pizan cites biblical references, making her suggestions under religious pretenses, but never becomes overbearing and sticks to the general principles of those scriptures she is devoted to.  Her mention of charity was particularly striking to me, not because I hadn't heard or thought of it before, but because it was what I could most closely relate with given the gap in the timeline.  She advises her audience to see charity as continuous action and not a one-time transfer of funds.  So often anymore, people's idea of charity is donating money to a cause and not getting their hands dirty.  I'm a perpetrator of this exercise and would probably hand out a stack of cash before ever committing to any time-consuming action.  I know I'm not the only one.  I think people can agree there has always been this preference toward throwing money at the problem, minus the few anomalies who remain.  Pizan's simple supposition people ought to pitch in physically has resonated throughout time, but still has trouble finding its legs in society.  Sure there are people who actually work for a cause, but they are distinctly within the minority.  Anymore, our "charitable donations" are funding a staff of people who are doing the heavy lifting.  In essence, their charity often takes the form of a normal paying job, possibly even losing its value and finding itself promoting the same financial agendas it has been trying to work against.  That may have been a pretty big tangent, but this is where my mind goes.  When a charitable organization starts trending, a fine line is drawn between actually helping those less fortunate and claiming to be a member of a cause based on a bumper sticker and a monthly membership.
     I took issue with Pizan's peek into a woman's role at court.  Yes, this may have been the way it was back then.  Yes, women were provided with more important duties than ever before.  My problem comes with Pizan's approval of the guidelines she expects these women to follow, her acceptance of this system.  Women are given this new voice, but remain supplemental to men.  There is no freedom her, no development of feminine values.  I understand this was probably a necessary step to what would eventually become equal rights among the genders, but its bothersome it had to happen this way.  Women are to act in a certain way, present themselves as such, under a not so subtle idea that men will always be better.  The whole part about mistresses was sickening.  Perhaps I'm taking this too much to heart, but this is one piece of our history as a species that could be forgotten.  To this day, women are marginalized and required to live under the hierarchy of these male-centered ideals.  Pizan is an important voice into this past, I'm just not sure I could ever believe a woman's life at court was ever truly a positive experience.