While studying the life of Christine de Pizan for this week’s outline, shades of Margret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale came to mind while I considered the time in which Christine lived and the types of concerns she voiced with regard to women’s rights. During the Renaissance, a woman’s place in society was so limited and seemed to revolve almost entirely around subservience to her husband. As the most well-known female writer of her time, Christine was not afraid to question some of the stereotypes about and injustices against women in society. The Handmaid’s Tale is a painful glimpse into a not so distant totalitarian dystopia where women have been stripped of their rights and are being forced into servitude for men. Oddly enough, I see similarities in both the …show more content…
In the book, Christine, herself, serves as the lead character and, after disapproving of a male writer’s thoughts on women, and experiencing a form of divine intervention, she determines to create a city of women of noble character, with the intent of disproving the accusations of men (210). Christine felt that men intentionally kept women ignorant through lack of education and she used her writing skills and respected position in society to become a voice for women who, until then had been voiceless. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, we see the full effects of a society that has become ruled entirely by men. We see it in the form of Gilead, a place where a woman is, at best, a housewife and at worst, a handmaid, both of whom are to be subservient to men. Women who were once professionals have been forced to abandon their careers and young girls are no longer receiving the same education as boys. They are, instead, being taught to be obedient wives who do not question their roles in society. I imagine that life for Renaissance women was very