Czekając na „własny pokój”. Skarga Krystyny de Pizan w Wizji Krystyny jako głos w historii kobiet

Abstract

L’Avision de Christine, a 15-century text by the medieval 15th-century writer Christine de Pizan, communicates a didactic and political message. One of its parts, which serves the purpose of building the position and authority of the writer, is Christine’s personal complaint, presented from the perspective of a widow and writer struggling with everyday adversities and limitations of being a woman. A departure point for this article is Virginia Woolf ’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own, in which conditions indispensable for a successful writer are described: the titular room with a lock, income, access to privileges normally enjoyed by men, such as being able to travel, to make observations, to live a vagabond life, and to have independent social life. 524 years prior to the publication of Woolf ’s essay, Christine de Pizan makes a similar point. For years she had been struggling for financial stability, having to support her mother, children and niece. She provides a detailed account of her ordeal with courts in law, but also emphasizes that her role of a daughter, wife and mother has impeded her ambition to be a writer: first, full education was not accessible to her, then raising her children and household duties became her primary commitment, and finally providing for her family takes all her energy. Her path to her own room is not only full of obstacles, but it also requires a lot of determination. When she finally locks herself in her study, Christine can do what she has longed for so long: reading and writing. The construal of her persona in the text of the speculum principis genre legitimizes her presence in the public discourse. Her complaint manifests not only unprecedented sincerity of a woman, but also surprizingly mature reflection of a writer, affirming her otherness and desire to produce novel ideas and words. In this way, Chistine de Pizan fits in a gap in the history of woman writers created by Virginia Woolf.