Medieval to Renaissance: Sometimes it's Hard to be a Woman

Hard to be a woman? Christine de Pizan might have said that it is hard to be a good woman. As we have discussed, whether it was in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, there were few options for women. [This Prezi from another AP student provides a good review of the issues women faced during this period].

That there were few pathways open to women during this period seemed to be of less concern to her than the manner in which women travelled those paths. To be faithful, to be chaste, to be honorable were all important virtues to Christine de Pizan; and she saw women as deserving vessels for these virtues.

While de Pizan may have worked within the accepted system of her period, she was still a trailblazer.  In a time when women were treated like property, her assertion that women could and did exhibit qualities that should be seen in all of humankind blazed the way for later feminist writers.

{For another brief discussion of women in the Renaissance, visit the UK's great Victoria & Albert Museum site here}.