City of Ladies, P.1

At the beginning of the text, Christine concludes that women, including herself, must be wicked because that’s what great male scholars have claimed. She shows this naivety because through it, she is implicating the many women and men who have believed weak arguments that attack women, even against their better senses. One tool she uses is sarcasm, which seems evident when she asks God why she wasn’t born as a man so that she “would be as perfect as man is said to be.” Besides being sarcastic, this self-doubting tone also begs for somebody to contradict that women are resigned to inferiority. As Christine reasons, “God formed a vile creature when He made woman” but she doesn’t understand why the creator of humankind would make something that isn’t good. Readers sense that her questions, especially since they are asked of God, cannot be left unanswered. This sets the stage for the three ladies to come to Christine and dispel ignorant, flawed arguments about women. 

Christine uses the three ladies to argue on the behalf of women. Since these ladies came from God, it already seems that what they say will easily trump any flimsy human arguments. One of the ladies, Reason, provides several examples that contradict common arguments against women. One of these is that philosophers, though they are respected scholars, do not know truth, and often contradict each other. Also, later Lady Reason discusses that the men who insult women have done so because of their own internal problems like vice, insecurity, and jealousy. I think she uses these examples because she is trying to explain that though human beings prize reason and logic, claim to use it, they don’t always do that. This challenges the trust we place in the “authority” of educated and esteemed figures like classical philosophers (mostly men). Plus, it strengthens her argument because it emphasizes how many accepted arguments lack strong or factual evidence, and even seem ignorant or silly upon closer examination. In this way, she turns the argument that women are ignorant around and suggests that these men are instead.