Note: This is an adaptation of a paper I presented at Brigham Young University's Women's Studies Capstone Conference on April 7, 2018.
At first, Christine de Pizan and Valerie Solanas could not seem like more different women. Pizan was a fourteenth century French writer, while Solanas was an American playwright who attempted to murder Andy Warhol in 1968 as the sole member of the Society for Cutting Up Men or S.C.U.M. Both women, however, penned important literary works on gender. In The Book of the City of Ladies, Pizan attacks negative female stereotypes in the arts by imagining an allegorical “city of ladies.” On a more literal level, Solanas proposes in The S.C.U.M. Manifesto that a society composed solely of women is the only way to eliminate male oppression. Both authors, regardless of their differences, are concerned with ameliorating the suppression of women.
Some scholars have questioned whether Pizan and Solanas should be considered feminists. Because Pizan argued that women belonged in the home, she is portrayed not as a guiding light but as a strand in the tapestry of harsh pre-feminist gloom. Feminists have been especially wary to embrace Solanas as one of their own due to her radical nature. Betty Friedan cited “the shooting of men in the balls [and] the elimination of men” as reasons why the S.C.U.M Manifesto could not be taken seriously (Friedan 109). The liberal feminism Friedan espoused, after all, is concerned with “equal individual rights and liberties for women and men and downplaying sexual difference” (Sample 333). Its end goal is the avoidance of conflict, not the explosive confrontation Solanas desires. While Pizan is seen as too conservative, Solanas is perceived as too immoderate.
It is fair to be cautious of championing some of Pizan’s more conservative attitudes or Solanas’ murderous proclivities. I argue, however, that these aspects do not disqualify them from the feminist conversation. Both writers share characteristics that tie them to moderate liberal feminism. One of these characteristics is their focus on the necessity of female-to-female relationships, whether social, sexual or both. Pizan argues the importance of strong homosocial female relationships outside of male control; therefore, Solanas’ concept of subversive lesbian relationships can be read as an expansion on Pizan’s ideas about female empowerment. The intertextuality of these works further suggests that feminism is not a linear progression of ideas but a complex web of interactions between women all united under the goal of female liberation.
At a glance, reading Pizan’s text as a progressive treatise on the power of female friendship seems absurd. Pizan, writing within a socially conservative environment, still upholds the primacy of domesticity. Alexandra Verini proposes, however, that a spirit of female comradery permeates the entirety of City of Ladies. This spirit is found in “the book’s grounding in the Ciceronian ideals of sameness and virtue” that define friendship (371). Ciceronian friendship occurs when someone sees their good qualities replicated by another person, usually a man. Pizan challenges this claim of exclusivity by suggesting that women who share Christian values can also experience Ciceronian friendship.
Verini’s article is vital for introducing the concept of female friendship into the discourse on Pizan. This analysis, however, is limited because it assumes female friendship in the text is implicit rather than explicit. Pizan repeatedly illustrates the necessity of women coming together to better society. Often this involves groups of wives organizing in times of crisis. For example, she discusses the story of the Amazon women, who form a completely female society when “in the course of a war, all the noblest male inhabitants of [their] country [are] killed” (37). By banding together, the women in this tale become a powerful independent political force.
Pizan’s women also band together in an effort to protect each other’s chastity. Pizan captures a cruel landscape where rape, murder and religious persecution are meted out to any woman who doesn’t conform to masculine norms. Friendship between women thus emerges as a bright, hopeful spot in such a dark world. One example is the Lady Anastasia, whose disciples are tormented for their Christian abstinence. Through their torture and eventual immolation, Anastasia cares for them, even “[taking] care of their bodies and [burying] them” (231). In this tale she is the sole nurturing figure, giving these women the dignity they should have had in life. While it may be tempting to read her relation to her acolytes as maternal, Pizan stresses that these women are “Anastasia’s intimate companions” (229). Anastasia maintains a horizontal rather than a vertical relationship with her followers, treating them as her equals.
Vignettes of female solidarity serve “to show that women actually have the same traits of power, intelligence and virtue as men” (Bashnipar 25). Women, like men, can be comrades united in the same righteous causes. They are capable of finding in each other a goodness that binds them together against the indignities of society. These bonds also grant “wom[e]n...a voice,” empowering them to challenge their mistreatment (Mirabella 11). Such liberated women can forge an empire or protect their persecuted sisters. Finally, Pizan’s theory of female friendship connects together disparate woman who hail from different cultures. Amazonian warriors, for instance, share a bond of solidarity with Christian virgins. This is the beauty of the City of Ladies, that it transcends dualistic categories.
Friendship between women as an act of resistance is more explicit in The S.C.U.M Manifesto. Solidarity between revolutionary women reveals itself as a prominent theme in The S.C.U.M Manifesto, through the motif of anti establishment lesbian relationships that are both homosocial and homosexual. These relationships take on a more sexual, militant dimension than their counterparts in Pizan, yet share the ideal of companionship as an alternative to unequal male partnerships.
Solanas claims the ideal society is one where the toxic presence of masculinity has been effaced. Man, a biological aberration that has “stripped the world of conversation, friendship and love,” has created a dead, suburban society that is boring for women who want more out of life. Solanas sees this as an adult iteration of boredom. She rails against “the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit” (Solanas 177). S.C.U.M promises excitement by recreating society in its own image. It is within this new society that true friendships founded on love can be formed. Solanas suggests that “love can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent, groovy female females” (Solanas 174). Warner notes that this view of lesbian relationships is reminiscent of childsplay. She traces this theory of love between women to “Solanas’ defiant desire to thwart maturation and adulthood” (Warner 85). As suggested by Cicero, friendship can only exist when there is an intersection of identical values. In the manifesto, men and women are far too different for friendship to exist. Because men are seeking for physical gratification to cloak their insecurities, they cannot hope to be on an equal plane with women who are assured of their place in the world. Only when love is between two women can it be egalitarian.
Situating female social power within these lesbian friendships additionally insulates women from the corrupting influence of masculine power. The male is the focal point of human suffering because he murders, rapes and controls everything in reach. This violent behavior stems from “being completely self-centered and unable to relate to anything outside himself” (172). When women associate with men, they are in danger of developing into what Solana refers to as “male females” and “Daddy’s girls” (173). She characterizes these traitors to feminine independence as “passive, adaptable, respectful of and in awe of the male, [allowing] him to impose his hideously dull chatter on her” (173). In short, such women toss aside the possibility of real friendship and sisterhood.
It is important to note here that ostensibly Solanas forswears all sexuality. For her, the physical act of heterosexual intercourse “is a solitary experience, non-creative, a gross waste of time” (176). On the other hand, Solanas expresses sympathy with “those females least embedded in the male ‘culture’” as “cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality” (177). Women that have sex with each other, while not reaching the full S.C.U.M. ideal, are closer to it than heterosexuals. The lesbian sexual encounter, to use Solanas’ unique diction, is less of a “solitary experience” and more of an act of “kooky, funky, females grooving on each other” (176). Lesbian activity is the closest women can get to the ideal of being liberated comrades in a male-free world.
Analyzing these books together helps connect them not only to each other but feminism in general. In an individual analysis, the theme of comradery between women is apparent in both City of Ladies and The S.C.U.M. Manifesto. When viewed together, however, the texts become part of a whole conversation.
On a general level, both authors are exploring the idea of female community. Everyone in the Pizan’s city, for example, is motivated by the fact that “all of [them] love virtue, glory and a fine reputation” (Pizan 217). These values, not masculine laws, hold communities together. Solanas likewise states that “a true community consists of [...] free spirits in free relation to each other to achieve common ends” (Solanas 169). That sentiment aligns with Pizan’s City of Ladies where women work together to bring each other and their families closer to societal harmony.
Both authors also resist the debasement of women to roles defined by sex. Solanas resists the idea being a passive “male female” and instead encourages “intense, bitchy, witty conversation” (Solanas 173). Although Pizan views domesticity as a key component in women’s roles, she too argues against submission as the defining trait of femininity. She “counter[s] her male opponent's attempt to eroticize her by answering him from the subject position that [...] excludes [...] both the sexually desiring female subject and the female object of desire” (Brownlee 8). This is reflected in her depiction of female relationships in The City of Ladies. The Amazons remove one of their breasts to enhance their efficiency as warriors, while the three virgin sisters take on an immaculate identity similar to S.C.U.M nature.
Often the source of this sexual definition of femininity stems from corrupt male authority. For Solanas, the source of oppression and the central obstacle to relationships between women, is the overbearing father figure known as “Daddy.” “Daddy,” attempts to deal with his own insecurity by “reducing the female to an animal” (Solanas 167). Pizan’s world just as grim as the moral wasteland of Solanas. In the story of Anastasia, the prefect Dulcitius is so possessed by the desire to rape three virgins that he “[gives] himself up completely to his pleasures” by having sex with a kitchen pot (Pizan 231). The men in these tales are machines of destruction, uprooting Christian ideals on their path to hell. Female friendship disrupts these patterns of dominance and helps women subvert male tyrants.
Lastly, Pizan and Solanas assert that women are human beings capable of meaningful connections. Both works are responses to patriarchal misconceptions of the emotional inferiority of women. Pizan attacks the misogyny of poets like Ovid, who “assert that [...] fickleness in women comes from their lack of moral character” (Pizan 171). The immorality of women is predicated in an inherent instability that medieval male poets believed was an insurmountable obstacle to forming faithful marriages, let alone friendships. Solanas meanwhile notes that a prevailing trend in “great art” is “constructing a highly artificial world in which [...] the female is reduced to [...] limited, insipid, subordinate roles” (Solanas 174). In her dystopian vision, male writing is a tool of oppression that dismisses any claim of women being capable of engagement with the Other, in this case their fellow women. Ovid and his cohorts here belong to a class of condescending male writers who deem women weak and unstable. Pizan and Solanas strike at the fallaciousness of these claims, proving women are fully capable of acting as moral beings.
In summation, these works that deal with female friendship are grounded in modern feminism in that they situate women in a broader sense of community, resisting their subordination and validating their inherent humanity. An intertextual analysis reveals common threads that might go unnoticed in a study of just one of the works. Pizan’s portrayals of defiant housewives and stubborn virgins connects her to 1960s counterculture. Solanas’ distrust of heterosexuality, meanwhile, resembles Pizan’s emphasis on individuality and virtue. Further comparative studies of feminist authors from different contexts will allow for a more holistic, complete vision of the development of feminism that gives more credit to radical thinkers. It is only then that these revolutionary voices can be brought into the mainstream conversation.
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