In Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the two authors display differing views of women. Christine de Pizan shines a positive light on the role of women and shows their worth, while Geoffrey Chaucer's work reflects women in a much more negative manner and more as property and objects. These two works mirror the overarching views men and women had for women in the fifteenth century.
At the very beginning of The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine gives a brief description of the city she will be building, specifically for women. She states that the city is “where no one will reside except all ladies of fame and women worthy of praise, for the walls of the city will be closed to …show more content…
Christine says, “do not scorn being subject to your husbands, for sometimes it is not the best thing for a creature to be independent.”(255) It should as if she is going against everything she was preaching about but she really is just accepting her surroundings and realizing that at the time it is not necessarily safe to rebel against their husbands. Christine is not telling them to be slaves to their husbands but to not go against and fight them as many people still believe women to be unintelligent, childbearing possessions. One example of this is Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury …show more content…
Chaucer says, “then down his ladder tiptoes Nicholas, and down hers, Alison softly sped… they have gone to bed, and there, where the carpenter used to lie”(94). This image is especially influential in regard to women as it not only shows an affair but it shows how Alison lied and manipulated her loving husband so that she could sleep with Nicholas. She planned out an entire scenario to make her husband worry and leave so she could cheat on her husband. Not only did Alison manipulate her husband but she has slept with another man in her own bed where her husband sleeps. This shows how Chaucer is not supportive of women and instead shares them as negative women and that they were devious enough to cheat on their husbands in their own
At the very beginning of The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine gives a brief description of the city she will be building, specifically for women. She states that the city is “where no one will reside except all ladies of fame and women worthy of praise, for the walls of the city will be closed to …show more content…
Christine says, “do not scorn being subject to your husbands, for sometimes it is not the best thing for a creature to be independent.”(255) It should as if she is going against everything she was preaching about but she really is just accepting her surroundings and realizing that at the time it is not necessarily safe to rebel against their husbands. Christine is not telling them to be slaves to their husbands but to not go against and fight them as many people still believe women to be unintelligent, childbearing possessions. One example of this is Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury …show more content…
Chaucer says, “then down his ladder tiptoes Nicholas, and down hers, Alison softly sped… they have gone to bed, and there, where the carpenter used to lie”(94). This image is especially influential in regard to women as it not only shows an affair but it shows how Alison lied and manipulated her loving husband so that she could sleep with Nicholas. She planned out an entire scenario to make her husband worry and leave so she could cheat on her husband. Not only did Alison manipulate her husband but she has slept with another man in her own bed where her husband sleeps. This shows how Chaucer is not supportive of women and instead shares them as negative women and that they were devious enough to cheat on their husbands in their own