Document Type
Creative Work
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
This essay seeks to understand the implications of a “before” distinction in the feminist canon— i.e., why is there “proto-feminism”, and not just “feminism”? This essay will explore the works of “proto-feminist” writers, Christine de Pizan and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and examine how the feminist themes and issues prevalent throughout their respective works are in response to the respective and collective inequities and injustices they experienced. Their oeuvres provide insight into what advocacy for women and other marginalized peoples looked like outside of the modern understanding of the historical “waves” of feminism. This essay seeks to examine how, through the craft of writing, these women utilized their precariously privileged positions to criticize conventions of love and courtship, power imbalance and abuse, and what it means to be a woman. If the works of these early women’s advocates are responses to the systems of oppression and abuse they experienced and witnessed…how different are they really from modern-day feminists? This essay seeks to ask: is there truly a need to divide our understanding—and therefore our history—of feminism into "before” and “after”?
Recommended Citation
Coleman, Madison, "Avant et après : Examen du proto-féminisme à travers la résistance littéraire en France au XVe siècle et au Mexique au XVIIe siècle" (2025). World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones. 32.
https://kb.gcsu.edu/wlc_capstone/32
Included in
European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist Philosophy Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Spanish Literature Commons, Women's Studies Commons
