How the City of Ladies came to be...

One day Christine de Pizan was trying to read a book thought by many of her time to be of note. In previous states of mind, she herself might have considered him a worthy mentor. This day, as she perused the book, she was overcome with the knowledge that every male writer insisted upon adding demeaning passages about women to their texts no matter what the subject. Nowhere could she find a book that did not include at least snippets of slander toward women.

This depressed her because she herself was an example of the kind of female males persistently insisted could not exist. Right off the bat, she was better educated than most men, making their assertions that women did not have an affinity for learning a bit ludicrous. She felt confused that the works of the great minds she had devoted so many hours to studying could have so little respect for their mothers and sisters and daughters and nieces and everything female. In her despondency she cried out to her deity.

Three luminous ladies appeared in a vision to her saying, "We have come to bring you out of the ignorance which so blinds your own intellect that you shun what you know for a certainty and believe what you do not know or see or recognize except by virtue of many strange opinions." (1.2.2)

Christine, with the help of the three Virtues, excavates the edifice of words that dismisses the names of virtuous women and builds instead the City of Ladies to honor their deeds.

They instruct Christine to build the City of Ladies "on a field of letters". She does, and the result is The Book of the City of Ladies, published in 1405 when Christine was in her early fourties. This book is not only a history of women prior to her time, but Christine also formed a construction intended for all future generations of women. Six hundred years later, her words are relevant.