Christine de Pizan was the most famous female author of the middle ages. She was Italian and wrote in France in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries about politics, women’s lives and history. One of the manuscripts of her work is in the British Library, which has a picture of Christine working in her study. This text is from an early translation into English of Christine’s most famous work, The Book of the City of Ladies (Tempe, Arizona; 2004) I.27.
Extract:
Transcript:
‘If it were the custom to put the little maidens [girls] to the school and they were made to learn the sciences as they do to the man children, it follows that they should learn as perfectly and they should be as well entered into the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as they [the boys] be… by so much they have the understanding more sharply there as they apply it’.
Original French:
‘que se coustume estoit de mettre les petites filles a l’escole, et que suivantment on leur fait apprendre sciences comme on fait aux filx, que ells apprendroient aussi parfaictement et etendroient les subtillettes de toutes les ars et sciences comme ilz font… de tant ont ells l’entendement plus agu ou ells s’appliquent’.
Task 6 – Women and education
- Does the law concerning education of girls and boys in Source 6a surprise you? Give your reasons.
- Can you explain why the education of girls and boys would be different at that time?
- What does the poem in source 6b infer about the education that girls received?
- What does source 6c suggest about education for girls?
- What does source 6d say about what kinds of education were available for girls?
- Looking at all the sources together, what do you think girls’ educations were like at this time?
- How different is education for girls and boys today?