- After Lady Rectitude is done speaking, the third and final lady steps up to Christine and introduces herself as Lady Justice. She says she is totally unmoved by pity, because Justice must be as objective as possible and judge people and their crimes according to the facts.
- Lady Justice carries a golden container in her right hand that is supposed to hold exactly what each person in the world deserves. In a fair world, everyone will always get what they deserve.
- Lady Justice promises to help Christine construct the roofs and towers of the City of Ladies and help populate the city with worthy women and a mighty Queen to rule over it.
- Now that she's had a chance to listen to the three magical ladies tell her about the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan feels better about herself as a woman. She throws herself at the ladies' feet and says prayers to them. She knows it'll be really hard to build the City of Ladies; but with God's help, she knows that nothing is impossible.
- Once Christine has finished her prayers, Lady Reason helps her up and says it's time to go to the site where they'll build the City of Ladies.
- So Christine gets up, feeling stronger and lighter than before, and she follows Lady Reason to a nearby field and starts digging holes for the buildings' foundations.
- While she's working, Christine asks Lady Reason why men have always written such terrible things about women.
- Lady Reason answers that men's hatred of women goes totally against Nature, since God intends for men and women to love one another and that's why he created marriage.
- Basically, there are lots of different reasons why men say such harsh things about women. For starters, many of them might have good intentions in criticizing women because they hate sinfulness and may feel from personal experience that all women are sinful.
- But the truth is that they're making a dangerous mistake in forming such a crazy generalization. The truth is that it's never a good idea to say, "All of X people are like this" just because you know a half dozen from personal experience.
- Lady Reason admits that there is nothing worse than a terrible woman. But the truth is that men have made wrong generalizations about women simply because women haven't been given enough of a voice to disagree. Let's not forget that Christine de Pizan is the first known woman in western history to speak out about discrimination against women. Which means that men had been having their say with no opposition for thousands of years.
- Some men might attack women because they (the men) slept with lots of women when they were younger and now feel guilty about it; but they don't know how to express guilt except by blaming it on other people.
- Some men criticize women in general because no pretty woman will ever go out with them. That's one that is definitely still relevant today. Nice guys, anyone?
- Some men simply hate women because deep down, they know that women are smarter than them. Others are just angry because they're impotent. In truth, there are many reasons why men would hate women, but almost all of these reasons have more to do with the men's personal baggage than they do with women's problems.
- As Christine continues digging the foundation for the City of Ladies, she decides that she wants to ask some questions to Lady Reason. She starts by asking why Ovid, a famous Roman poet, would so often write about the terrible qualities of women.
- Lady Reason answers that Ovid might have known a lot about poetry, but his knowledge of human nature was deeply flawed. Ovid, you see, was a dude who liked to sleep around with a lot of women and booze it up whenever he could. He was so promiscuous that the Roman authorities castrated him and chopped him up. Yeah, the Romans. The people who invented toga parties thought Ovid was too boozy and promiscuous.
- In other words, he's hardly a reliable source on whether certain people are morally good or bad.
- Christine and Lady Reason talk about several other authors who say bad things about women. But one by one, Lady Reason shows that this hatred always begins with problems in the men themselves, not the women they criticize.
- Basically, Lady Reason insists that men and women are good or bad depending on their inner character, not what kind of body they've been born into.
- Oh yeah, and let's not forget that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, who ended up sacrificing himself for the sins of humanity. This, according to Lady Reason, is reason enough to say that women can be good.
- Christine quotes the philosopher Cato, who claims that women are like roses. They might seem pretty at first, but there are terrible thorns beneath the surface. Now usually a metaphor wouldn't count as a convincing argument.
- But Lady Reason decides to respond anyway, saying that the "thorns" in Cato's argument might actually symbolize women's desire to live good lives.
- Christine mentions how some writers have said that women are naturally lusty, meaning that all they want to do is have sex. Lady Reason answers that if this were true, women would be walking up to men all the time and asking to have sex. And this isn't what happens in the 1400s.
- On the subject of drinking, Lady Reason also says that women tend to drink far less than men, and not only because the broader culture says so. It's because the women have self-control.
- Next, Christine mentions the men who accuse women of being teases—dressing themselves up as prettily as possible in order to attach men's gazes.
- It's fairly common for men to make fun of women for being cry-babies, but Lady Reason reminds Christine that even Jesus Christ cried sometimes. Others say that women talk too much, but Lady Reason says God would never agree with this, since it was He who decided to have a woman—Mary Magdalene—announce that Christ had disappeared from his tomb after being crucified.