aves.)
Prior to the Enlightenment, we may argue, feminism as such was not possible. A medieval writer like Christine de Pisan might foreshadow many feminist attitudes, but she lived in and accepted a world of pervasive inequality. This inequality, moreover, was regarded not simply a fact of life, and still less a holdover from the past, but as integral to the nature of the world. Every human being, male or female, occupied some rung on the Great Chain of Being.
Peasant women were not equal to noblewomen, and since women were not equal to one another, de Pisan could not argue that women as a whole were equal to men as a whole. These "wholes" did not exist in her world view, or rather the wholes were inherently hierarchical in nature. De Pisan's noblewoman might rightfully ask better treatmen from the men around her, as she could rightfully and ably defend her castle if attacked (de Pisan wrote a respected treatise on war), but this did not make her "equal" to her husband, because there was no such concept.
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