Princess Pizan

I thought the most interesting part of this reading was how much of it seemed wrapped up in class.  The reading comes from The Treasure of the City of Ladies, not The Treasure of the City of Women, she refers in the first line to a "princess", and ends by making a distinction between "ladies, maidens, and women of the court."  While Christine de Pizan was clearly very concerned with class, it seems like an almost-unthinking concern.  It doesn't read to me like she was deliberately distinguishing between "ladies, maidens, and women of the court" to put any of them down or make herself feel better about being a princess; it felt like she simply had all women in her mind divided into several different categories based on class and never thought to question those divisions. A similar division that came to mind was during segregation, when a rhetor may have said something like "...all men and women and blacks..." or similar, thus implying blacks were neither men nor women, without really thinking about what they were saying or intending any harm (it is not hard to imagine someone stumping for equality saying a similar phrase).

This struck me as interesting because it shows how easy it is for our innermost concerns and thoughts to pop up in writing, even unintentionally.  It also shows why the author is frequently usually almost never the best judge of what their work "means".

I also find this interesting because of how often, historically, the various equal-rights campaigns have left each other behind.  Christine seems to be asking for more credit for women for the jobs they do, not asking for the jobs women do to change, but that seems like a small step to me.  I have always found it strange that people asking for/demanding equality at various historical points did not see fit to ask for/demand equality for everyone, only themselves.  Women marching to get the right to vote were not demanding schools be desegregated, a favor returned decades later when the black rights movement became famous for being horrifyingly misogynistic at times.

Not entirely on the text, today, but that was my train of thought as I read Pizan.