In the Barbie movie (2023), America Ferrera’s character Gloria gives an iconic speech about how “it is literally impossible to be a woman.” The speech is an excellent example of internalized misogyny, that is, when women have learned to hate themselves for being women. Gloria vocalizes the internal monologue many women hear, in which “it turns out that in fact not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.” Gloria concludes, “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”1 Gloria’s speech resonated for many women watching the movie, so much so that many women reported crying when they watched the scene. Barbie director Greta Gerwig has received accolades for writing such a powerful expression of women’s experiences in the world.
Since this is Women’s History Month, I wanted to write about another woman, Christine de Pisan (1364–c. 1430), who, like Greta Gerwig, wrote a popular and highly regarded defense of women; in fact, Christine is widely regarded as the first defender of women’s moral, spiritual, and intellectual equality with men. Her most famous work, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405),2 is considered the first ever written defense of women against the rampant misogyny of highly patriarchal medieval and Renaissance France.
In Christine’s era, it was common for male poets, writers, and scholars to insult the character and nature of women, not only in writing, but also in speeches and in social settings. Many of these misogynistic attacks were based on some of the early church fathers’ interpretations of the Fall in the book of Genesis. In this view, Eve was weak-minded, easily deceived, ambitious, vain, corrupt, fleshly, treacherous, and devious, wanting to usurp Adam’s authority. Ultimately, these men argued, Eve was the tool of the devil, responsible for fall of mankind and causing the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Because of Eve, all women were like her, and equally cursed by God; worthy only of contempt, they needed to be ruled by men, and punished by pain in childbirth.
Women felt oppressed and discouraged, surrounded daily by such lies, authorized by the spokesmen of God and by the scholars and poets of France. The danger then, as now, was that women would hear these misogynistic insults so often that they would internalize them, that is, begin to hate themselves for being women. Christine de Pisan was no stranger to this oppression, and she wrote The Book of the City of Ladies specifically to combat internalized misogyny. In that sense, Christine’s City of Ladies is like Gerwig’s Barbieland: an allegorical place of safety full of women who are happy, successful, and able to be anything they want.
As the story begins, the narrator (Christine) presents herself as an earnest and educated woman who plaintively asks why so many learned men speak and write “so many wicked insults about women and their behavior” (I.1.2). When she examines her own life and the lives of women she knows, she cannot see how the men’s claims could be true, yet surely, “it would be impossible that so many famous men” could be wrong (I.1.2). Doubting herself and her own experiences, she concludes:
God formed a vile creature when he made woman, and I wondered how such a worthy artisan could have deigned to make such an abominable vessel . . . the refuge and abode of every evil and vice. . . I detested myself and the entire feminine sex. . . Alas, God, why did you not let me be born in the world as a man, so that all my inclinations would be to serve you better, and so that I would not stray in anything and would be as perfect as a man is said to be?. . . I considered myself most unfortunate because God made me inhabit a female body in this world. (I.1.2)
As a counter to this internalized misogyny, the narrator relates a vision in which three celestial beings appear to her, allegorically named Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. They inform her that they have been sent by God to help her construct an allegorical City of Ladies, filled with stories of virtuous and noble women from classical literature, the Bible, and French history, “so that from now on, ladies and all valiant women may have a refuge and defense against the various assailants” who insult them (I.3.3).
The process of building this metaphorical city follows a logical progression.
First, in Book One, Reason clears the intellectual ground: the narrator lists various misogynistic works and the slanders they contain, and Reason refutes each one. Then the metaphorical edifice is constructed: in this section, Reason gives many, many examples of women who demonstrate the same leadership and intellectual capabilities as men. She argues that women are the equal of men in every respect, created of the same flesh as men, in the image of God: “God created the soul and placed wholly similar souls, equally good and noble in the feminine and in the masculine bodies” (I.9.2). Consequently, women are as capable of bravery, nobility, and political acumen as men; as capable of intellectual achievement, scientific invention, and artistic ability, so long as they are given the same educational opportunities. Reason concludes, “God has never held, nor now holds, the feminine sex—nor that of men—in reproach” (I.48.1).
In Book Two, Rectitude (which means moral behavior and thinking) describes many examples of women of great wisdom and religious insight, both before and during the Christian era, who were able to prophesy and exercise spiritual authority because of their purity and knowledge of God. Then she tells the stories of many women who were capable and loving parents and spouses. She argues for the education of women. She refutes the lies that beautiful women are not chaste, that women want to be raped(!), and that they are innately unfaithful, telling many more stories of women who were faithful and chaste even under threats and violence, preferring to die rather than lose their chastity or be unfaithful to their husbands. She discusses several examples of powerful men who were famously unfaithful and concludes that men are hypocritical if they demand virtue from women that they do not show themselves (II.53.2).
In Book Three, Justice tells the stories of many women, mainly Christian saints, who were unjustly accused and martyred for their piety and purity. Justice concludes that men should respect women, since Mary the mother of Jesus was a woman, and that there have been “countless ladies of different social backgrounds, maidens, married women, and widows, in whom God manifested His virtues with amazing force and constancy” (III.19.9).
Ultimately, the Barbie movie and The Book of the City of Ladies perform the same function for women oppressed by patriarchy: they remind women of their worth and value as equal members of society, in which the stories and experiences of women are told and retold. In Barbie, it is Gloria’s speech that restores the Barbies to their true, powerful selves and Barbieland to its hopefully more egalitarian future. Similarly, in The Book of the City of Ladies, it is the stories of the many, many intelligent, powerful, capable, spiritual, loving, and faithful women that form the bulwark against internalizing the misogyny of the surrounding culture.
Women’s History Month is another such opportunity. Women, let’s continue to tell each other’s stories, for encouragement now and hope for the future.
Photo by Wikimedia Commons.
[1] Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023).
[2] The Book of the City of Ladies. Christine de Pizan (1405). Trans. Earl Jeffery Richards. New York: Persea Books, 1982.
Related Resources
A Medieval Makeover: Women’s Roles before and after the Reformation
The “Woman” of Augustine of Hippo
The Golden Child and the Scapegoat