Summary
Lady Rectitude is next to speak with Christine as Christine continues constructing the City of Ladies.
Rectitude announces that her words will serve as the mortar that will help solidify the various structures within the city, including palaces, towers, and homes.
Lady Rectitude begins her own catalogue of women by informing Christine of women from history who accurately predicted the future.
These women, Rectitude argues, did not always listen to their own predictions, but nonetheless were able to visualize what was to come for themselves and for mankind.
Lady Rectitude switches her focus to the family, providing examples of women – mostly wives and daughters – who exhibited profound loyalty and sacrifice for their families.
These women, Rectitude argues, placed the needs of their families about all else, and should be celebrated for that.
She uses these examples to transition into her argument about education, noting that women have only contributed to the advancement of society. These contributions, Rectitude says, suggest that women should be able to receive an education in the same way that men do.
Analysis
Lady Rectitude is a symbol of righteousness and morally correct behavior. As such, she shares with Christine a catalogue of women who acted with superb morality.
It is significant that Lady Rectitude tells Christine that her words will be like a mortar – a paste used in construction to help bond different types of masonry – to the structures in the city. Whereas Reason helped create the "foundation" for the City in detailing women who acted with leadership and strength, Rectitude is what will ultimately hold the City together.
In the context of the overarching allegory of the text, Rectitude – moral righteousness – is figured as the force that both unites all women and protects them from harm. When Lady Rectitude begins her speech, she suggests that acting virtuously will be the key to defending women against the various physical, psychological, and emotional attacks of men that Christine experienced at the beginning of the book.
This section of the book is also dedicated to refutation of Mathéolus's argument that women are fundamentally selfish and incapable of loyalty. Lady Rectitude uses the important example of the family to illustrate how women are not only devout in their dedication to their families, but are often more committed to maintaining the health of their families than their male counterparts. She alludes to one woman, a new mother, who breastfed her own mother while she was imprisoned in order to keep her alive until she was released. While some of these examples may be shocking (or entirely made up), Lady Rectitude uses her catalogue to showcase how women are loyal to their children, their husbands, and their own parents.
In so doing, Lady Rectitude challenges the argument that women are self-involved or are threats to familial prosperity (as Mathéolus argues), demonstrating how women are often the very figures who keep families alive.
