April 6, 2020 | By Su Karagoz (A20)

Grace Villmow is from Chicago, Illinois. Her senior essay is entitled “Judged, Sentenced, and Condemned: An Exploration of the Truth Behind Misogyny in Christine de Pizan’s the Book of the City of Ladies”

What was at the heart of your argument?

Men have insulted women for centuries, but to refute them on the basis of fact is to miss their point—what we really must address when discussing misogyny is what motivates it. In doing so, I was able to explore how we set up power dynamics, how we come to terms with our own sin, and how we see ourselves in others.

How did your essay connect to different aspects of the Program from throughout your four years?

Christine de Pizan was an educated woman, reading many of the texts that we read during our first two years at St. John’s. She comes to an ugly conclusion at the beginning of her book that faces every Johnnie. In her words, “given that I could scarcely find a moral work by any author which didn’t devote some chapter or paragraph to attacking the female sex, I had to accept their unfavorable opinion of women since it was unlikely that so many learned men, who seemed to be endowed with such great intelligence and insight into all things, could possibly have lied on so many different occasions.” This is a college where we take authors at their word, and sometimes it’s easy to separate ourselves from our beliefs, but women at our school frequently find themselves having to continually step outside of womanhood in order for us to think about what they’ve read, as though it were an other-ness that hinders our comprehension of Man. It was nice, for a change, to step back inside myself and think about a man as someone who doesn’t understand, and it was even nicer to get to do so in the context of a woman who wasn’t thinking about politics. Human rights are of no consequence to Christine de Pizan. I truly got to think about women and men from a Johnnie perspective: the question wasn’t “who should get to do what,” as it seems to be today, but “who is who?”

What was the writing process like for you?

Like a cat nudging a glass full of water off a table. A little. Then a little more. Then all at once. And I keep finding little shards of glass I didn’t pick up whenever I go back to think about it.

What is the most important lesson you learned during your time at St. John’s?

That my actions have an impact on others. It seems silly to say that it took St. John’s to understand that, but the class setting is such that if I’m ill-prepared, then I’m depriving the class of my insights or hindering conversation with half-baked conclusions. Doing the reading is one thing, but the real learning happens through the discussion, particularly through listening. It’s not just an opportunity for you to ask your burning questions, but a chance for you to hear those of others. There’s really nothing like it.