How It All Goes Down
One day, Christine de Pizan sits down in her library and decides that she'd like to do some light reading. So she picks up a book by a guy named Mathéolus and is saddened to find that the entire book is just one long rant against how horrible women are. She puts the book away and tries to get on with her life. But it's no use; she can't stop thinking about the book, and she begins to think that she's been cursed by being born a woman.
While she's feeling bad, Christine is visited by three magical sisters whose names are Lady Reason, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Justice. Lady Reason tells Christine that she's wrong for thinking that women are bad. In fact, Lady Reason is so convinced of this that she tells Christine de Pizan to build a great city for all the best women in the world to live in. Feeling rejuvenated, Christine gets to work. Along the way, she chats with all three ladies and learns some valuable lessons from history about just how great women can be.
For the most part, The Book of the City of Ladies follows the same pattern over and over. First, Christine will bring up a common female stereotype. Second, one of the three magical ladies will say that it's not true. And last but not least, the magical lady will then provide a laundry list of examples of women who prove that the exact opposite is true, thus showing Christine (and all of us readers) that women are really great. By the end of this book, this pattern might get a little repetitive. But many of these anecdotes are chock full of action, torture, and deception: you know, the juicy stuff.
By the end of the book, Christine de Pizan has finished constructing the City of Ladies and has populated it with the greatest women from history and literature. She also feels confident that she has shown once and for all that women are just as good as men. And then at the last second, she tells her female readers to be obedient to their husbands. It's a pretty lame way to end the book, but then again, Christine was probably worried about the trouble she'd get into if she said anything more radical. She was writing in 1400 after all.