Dear The Renaissance,
In response to the article written against Christine de Pizan’s thoughts on women’s rights, education, and equality, I think that her views are on point. I believe that women are just as capable as men, and deserve the same amount of education. Many argue that women were incompetent because they were uneducated, but the reason for this was because men didn’t allow women to be educated. In Pizan’s The Letter of the God of Love she states, “Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already captured.” She believed that if women could attend the same schools as men they would be as skilled as men. Christine de Pizan was able to write unlike the many of the other women of her time. She was one of the first women to make a career out of writing. Along with writing she was responsible for taking care of her household and family. As her career progressed she began writing about her views on women. She wrote responses to the negative opinions that scholars had on women. Her writing suggests that she was as well read and educated as most scholars. She was able to obtain the two things women could never dream of having—independence and a voiced opinion. She contradicted all of the bad scholarly views on women during the Renaissance, and taught the women after her to stand up in a male dominated society.
-Alyssa Akamine