The Spiritual Development of a Medieval Woman: The Book of Margery Kempe

Abstract

Living an ordinary life until her experience of childbirth, Margery Kempe turned into a female mystic who devotedly dedicated her life to God. Despite her illiteracy, she was able to tell her own life story by focusing on her experience as a female mystic in the medieval society. As an account of her visions of Christ, her autobiographical work, The Book of Margery Kempe, written by two male scribes, depicts Margery’s spiritual development tinged with various details about the life of a medieval woman in the patriarchal society. Making a spiritual career for herself, Margery resisted the restrictive norms of her society and empowered herself through her book. This paper aims to bring the figure of Margery Kempe into focus as an ordinary medieval woman, a female mystic and pilgrim in reference to her life story narrated in The Book of Margery Kempe.

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