By 1402, Christine had produced Dit de la Rose, a critique of the Roman de la Rose that made her a major voice in literary debate.
By 1402, Christine de Pizan had written Dit de la Rose (The Tale of the Rose), a pointed literary and moral critique of the enormously popular medieval allegorical poem Roman de la Rose, particularly its continuation by Jean de Meun.
Christine objected to the poem's treatment of women as objects of seduction and its cynical view of love, arguing that such depictions normalized the degradation of women in courtly society. Her critique was part of a broader exchange of letters and treatises — now known as the Querelle de la Rose — that involved prominent theologians, royal secretaries, and scholars of the day.
What made Christine's participation remarkable was that she engaged as an intellectual equal with some of the most educated men in France, including Jean de Montreuil and the Col brothers, defending her position with rhetorical skill and moral conviction. She organized her own contributions into a dossier that she presented to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, ensuring her arguments reached the highest levels of the French court.
This episode is historically significant as one of the earliest documented instances of a woman publicly and successfully contesting a canonical literary work on the grounds of its treatment of women, establishing Christine as a foundational voice in the tradition of literary feminism.