From Protestantism to witches, King peers into the lives of women everywhere. We see that religion played a hefty role in women's lives - regardless of what belief they followed.
The last section of the book, "Virgo et Virago," looks at the women of the elite class. While this is by no means the largest section of the book, it is the most hopeful and the most pleasurable to read. This final chapter focuses on how women have moved away from the patriarchal society. King lists Christine de Pizan and Gaspara Stampa. In comparison, the previous sections are not as informative or enlightening because the do not have the same attention to detail.
Poor women were not lucky enough to receive an education. However, middle and upper-class women were "initiated in a particular female culture, however, in which they were taught to perform household functions" (164). Women from the elite classes received more of a traditional education, which could include learning French, music lessons, math, and "might go on to organize a fashionable salon for the discussion of new ideas" (168). On the life of Christine de Pizan, King writes, the "first woman of the Western tradition to make a living by her pen" (219). De Pizan was well-educated at the age of 25, de Pizan was a widow at the age of 25 and "established for herself in an unprecedented career for women" (219). She was able to support herself by writing. In doing so, she became a "master and not a victim of circumstance" (220). King goes into great detail regarding de Pizan's book, the City of Ladies, which is momumental in its style and structure - especially the significance of...
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