S The Courtier And Christine De Pizan's How To Be A Proper Woman

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How to be a Proper Woman
Both Castiglione’s The Courtier and Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies advise women in the proper way to behave and conduct their lives, but do so aimed towards both a different audience and in different ways. The Treasure of the City of Ladies takes the approach of appealing to a broader range of women and addressing a wider array of subjects. In contrast, The Courtier is aimed mainly towards men and occasionally towards women, and always those of high status. The reasons behind these differences trace back not just to the execution of the books but to the different genders of the authors and the motivating factors behind the writing of them. When comparing both works to one another, The Treasure …show more content…

Unlike The Treasure of the City of Ladies, this book is not interested in the women of lower birth or how they conduct their daily lives. It is focused more simply on the elite woman and how she should conduct herself in Court. From the start it is clear that only those of a nobler birth will be viewed with automatic respect, and therefore why even focus on those of a lower status. The fact that Castiglione’s text does not feature anything of value to women of a lower status contrasts greatly to The Treasure of the City of Ladies, which features a broad spectrum of advice for women on many social classes. The differences found when comparing and contrasting The Courtier and The Treasure of the City of Ladies can be seen as stemming from the different genders of the authors. Castiglione, a male, writes The Courtier and therefore it reads as the male ideal of the perfect elite woman. A woman, Christine de Pizan writes The Treasure of the City of the Ladies, and therefore it reads as a woman attempting to help all others of her gender to live up to the great expectations of womanhood. The different motivating factors behind the writing of the books also contributes to the differences in The Courtier and The Treasure of the City of

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