“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”
― Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc

I am currently working on Christine de Pizan for my final Rhetoric seminar paper and I absolutely love what she represented. She was a woman, during an era where women were second class, who fought for the rights of all women–a feminist. They place her during the medieval era, although I wish she were considered a Renaissance woman, but I will say that she risked a lot by writing the way she did. She wrote with skill and so beautiful. She is not considered a “feminist” in the sense that she did not push for equal rights, as feminists often do, but she simply pushed for an open mind about women seeking education. She defended women and pushed against the notion that knowledge was going to be used for “evil” or a form of manipulation. She also pushed against the thought that women were simple minded and easily manipulated.