Margery Kempe and the Critics: Disempowerment and Deconstruction

Abstract

This chapter presents an analysis of the writings of some twentieth-century literary critics of The Book of Margery Kempe and of episodes from the Book itself in which Kempe comes under criticism from various figures of authority. It focuses on the two aspects of Kempe’s lifestyle which most disarm her critics: her public role as a “wandering wife” and her remarkable gift of tears. The marginalization of female sexuality is central to The Book of Margery Kempe because Kempe’s monumental task, in the Book as in her life, is to prove that she is able to escape the contaminations of her sex. Kempe’s crossing of traditional role boundaries set up by Church and society for women frequently causes clerics and civil authorities alarm. Kempe’s autonomy and her efforts at self-definition are likewise the repressed but central term in several twentieth-century critics’ anxiety over her rejection of sexual categories.

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