Christine de Pizan
vers 1364-vers 1430 14th century
Holding up a whole household with the only work one knows how to do.
Who was Christine de Pizan?
Widowed at twenty-five with three children, a mother and a niece to support, she decided to live by her pen in a world where no woman did. She wrote ballades, political treatises, an allegorical city built by women, and ended her days in an abbey. Her last known text is a song written after eleven years of silence, when she heard that a young girl had lifted the siege of Orleans.
In their own words
Alone I am, and alone I wish to be.
Why did You not let me be born into this world a man?
I, Christine, who have wept eleven years in a closed abbey.