•Both passages illustrate a high awareness of social class or rank. The author of The Goodman of Paris, for instance, takes note of the fact that his young wife came from a higher class than he; no doubt her family had fallen on hard times, and she was forced to marry him for financial support. Similarly, Christine de Pisan specifically addresses the wives of artisans, skilled workers who might be part of either the middle or the working class.
• These two writings appeared within a few years of one another, around the end of the 1300s and the beginning of the 1400s. Both suggest the changing economic climate of the times, as Western Europe began to prosper and new classes—primarily the middle class and the working class—began to divide the very rich from the very poor. The Goodman of Paris appears to have been a moderately wealthy merchant, and though the artisans' wives addressed by Christine de Pisan were certainly not rich, the fact that their husbands employed other workers implies that they were not poor either.
Fifteenth-century manuscript illustration from Christine de Pisan's The City of Ladies, a work that was followed by The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation.
• The Goodman's reference to his young bride as "sister" is simply a term of affection. As for her marriage at age fifteen to a man who was clearly many years older than she, this was nothing unusual during the Middle Ages.
World History
