Liz Herbert McAvoy

Authority and the Female Body in
the Writings of Julian of Norwich

and Margery Kempe
Liz Herbert McAvoy
Studies in Medieval Mysticism

SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page i
Volume 5
AUTHORITY AND THE FEMALE BODY

IN THE WRITINGS OF JULIAN OF NORWICH
AND MARGERY KEMPE
The writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe show an

awareness of traditional and contemporary attitudes towards women,
in particular medieval attitudes towards the female body. This study
examines the extent to which they make use of such attitudes in their
writing, and investigates the importance of the female body as a means
of explaining their mystical experiences and the insight gained from
them; in both writers, the female body is central to their writing,
leading to a feminised language through which they achieve authority
and create a space in which they can be heard, particularly in
the context of their religious and mystical experiences. The three
archetypal representations of woman in the middle ages, as mother,
as whore and as ‘wise woman’, are all clearly present in the writings
of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; in examining the ways in
which both writers make use of these female categories, Dr McAvoy
establishes the extent of their success in resolving the tension between
society’s expectations of them and their own lived experiences as
women and writers.
LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Lecturer in Medieval Language and

Literature, University of Leicester.
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page ii
ISSN 1465–5683
GENERAL EDITORS
Anne Clark Bartlett
Rosalynn Voaden
Volume 1: St Birgitta of Sweden

Bridget Morris
Volume 2: Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology

Christopher Abbott
Volume 3: Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy

Claire L. Sahlin
Volume 4: English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle

Claire Elizabeth McIlroy
Studies in Medieval Mysticism offers a forum for works exploring the textures and
traditions of western European mystical and visionary literature, from late Antiquity
to the Reformation, aiming to cover both well- and lesser-known mystics and their
texts. The series particularly welcomes publications which combine textual and
manuscript study with current critical theories, to offer innovative approaches to
medieval mystical literature.
Proposals or queries may be sent directly to the editors or publisher at
the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed
consideration.
Professor Anne Clark Bartlett, Department of English, DePaul University, 802
West Belden Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614-3214, USA
Professor Rosalynn Voaden, Department of English, Arizona State University,
PO Box 870302, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA
Caroline Palmer, Boydell & Brewer Limited, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12
3DF, UK
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page iii
AUTHORITY AND THE FEMALE

BODY IN THE WRITINGS OF
JULIAN OF NORWICH AND
MARGERY KEMPE
Liz Herbert McAvoy
D. S. BREWER
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page iv
© Liz Herbert McAvoy 2004
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 2004

D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 1 84384 008 1
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A catalogue record of this publication is available

from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Herbert McAvoy, Liz.
Authority and the female body in the writings of Julian of Norwich and
Margery Kempe / Liz Herbert McAvoy.
p. cm. – (Studies in medieval mysticism, ISSN 1465–5683 ; v. 5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–84384–008–1 (alk. paper)
1. English literature – Middle English, 1100–1500 – History and
criticism. 2. Mysticism in literature. 3. Julian, of Norwich,
b. 1343. – Knowledge – Human anatomy. 4. Christian literature, English
(Middle) – History and criticism. 5. English literature – Women
authors – History and criticism. 6. Mysticism – England – History – Middle
Ages, 600–1500. 7. Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373. Book of Margery Kempe.
8. Women and literature – England – History – To 1500. 9. Body, Human,
in literature. 10. Authority in literature. 11. Women in literature.
I. Title. II. Series.
PR275.M9H47 2004
820.9’3824822–dc22 2003023451
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by

St Edmundsbury Press Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1. Motherhood and Margery Kempe 28
2. The Motherhood Matrix in the Writing of Julian of Norwich 64
3. Discourses of Prostitution and The Book of Margery Kempe 96
4. ‘Hyf thowe be payede,’ quod oure lorde, ‘I am payede’: 131
Hermeneutics of the Holy Whore in Julian of Norwich
5. Margery Kempe: Wisdom, Authority and the Female Utterance 170
6. Julian of Norwich: Voice of the Wise Woman 205
Afterword 235
Bibliography 238
Index 263
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page vi
For my children: Siriol, Anona and Ioan

who continue to make all things well.
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book originates in a doctoral thesis undertaken in the Department of

English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1996 and submitted in the
autumn of 1999. I am, therefore, greatly endebted to my former supervisor,
Diane Watt, for her solicitous overseeing of the thesis, for her enthusiasm
towards my ideas and her firm but sympathetic handling of my shortcom-
ings. My thanks also extend to Jacqueline Tasioulas and Claire Jowitt for
examining it with such care and precision and for awarding me my doctorate
accordingly. I am also grateful to Lyn Pykett, my former Head of Department,
for continuing to offer me work, valuable office space, library and computer
facilities even after the budget rendered it increasingly difficult.
Thanks must also be directed towards Caroline Palmer of Boydell and
Brewer for having such strong faith in my abilities to transform thesis into
book and for her patience during the course of the revision process. I also
remain intensely grateful to the series editors, Rosalynn Voaden and Anne
Clark Bartlett for the same reasons, as well as for the enthusiasm they
expressed for the project upon reading an early version of the manuscript.
Such enthusiasm, support and kindnesses have sustained me during the
inevitable bouts of tiredness, overwork, anxiety and self-doubt.
More recently, my work on this book has benefited enormously from the
scrupulous attentions of Sarah Salih from the School of English and American
Studies at the University of East Anglia. Sarah has proved to be a most
insightful and incisive reader whose detailed and constructive suggestions,
criticisms, comments and references were offered with tact and consideration.
I remain in her debt.
Thanks are also due to Elaine Treharne, Head of the English Department at
the University of Leicester, for having enough faith in me to employ me and
to offer further support for this project. Gratitude must also be extended to
my other colleagues at Leicester for the warm welcome and friendship they
provided on my arrival – all of which has contributed to the timely comple-
tion of this book. I am particularly grateful for the generous subvention
offered by the English Department at the University of Leicester to support
publication.
Finally, my special debt of gratitude is, of course, to my family: to my
parents, John and Sidonie Herbert, who gave up much of their precious retire-
ment time to hold the domestic fort whilst my children were young, enabling
me to complete chapters, meet deadlines and minimise delay; to my friend
and partner, Tony, whose long-suffering patience has known no bounds, espe-
cially over the past seven years when he has had to take on far more than his
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page viii
fair share of domestic responsibility. Finally, to my children, for having to

endure regular periods of my absence, both physical and psychological, during
most of the years of their growing up, but most of all for anchoring me firmly
in their irrepressible humour, enthusiasms and teenage angst, and for persuad-
ing me to love their very, very loud music. Above all, this book is for them.
Parts of this book first appeared in earlier publications, although they have
since been revised and developed. Aspects of Chapter 1 were published as
‘From Honorary Virgin to Virgin Mother: The Confessions of Margery Kempe’,
Parergon 17, 1 (1999), pp. 9–44, and, along with parts of Chapter 3, as part of
the interpretive essay included in The Book of Margery Kempe: An Abridged
Translation (Woodbridge, 2003) and ‘Virgin, Mother, Whore: The Spiritual
Sexuality of Margery Kempe’, in Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in
Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh, ed. Susannah Mary Chewning (London,
2004), pp. 119–36. Parts of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘ “. . . aftyr hyr owyn tunge”:
Body, Voice and Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Women’s Writing 9, 1
(2002), pp. 159–76. Parts of Chapter 2 were published as ‘ “The Modyrs
Service”: Motherhood as Matrix in Julian of Norwich’, Mystics Quarterly 24, 4
(1998), pp. 181–97, and a section from Chapter 4 appeared as ‘ “A purse fulle
feyer”: Feminising the Body in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love’,
Leeds Studies in English n.s. 33 (2002), pp. 99–113. All of this material is used here
with the publishers’ permission.
viii
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page ix
ABBREVIATIONS
EETS Early English Text Society

e.s. Extra Series
o.s. Original Series
s.s. Supplementary Series
LT The Long Text Version of Julian’s Revelations
MED The Middle English Dictionary, ed. H. Kurath and S. M. Kuhn
(Ann Arbor, 1956–)
n.s. New Series
ST The Short Text Version of Julian’s Revelations
TEAMS The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages
Unless otherwise stated, all biblical quotations in English are from the Douay/
Rheims version of the Bible (reprint, London, 1956).
SMM5-Prelims.qxd 4/27/04 5:11 PM Page x
SMM5-Introduction.qxd 4/27/04 5:10 PM Page 1
Introduction
With fele frutys be we fayr fad,

Woundyr dowcet and neuyr on ill.
Every tre with frute is sprad,
Of them to take as plesyth us tyll.
In þis gardeyn I wyl go se
All þe flourys of fayr bewté
And tastyn þe frutys of gret plenté
Þat be in paradyse.1
These words, attributed to Eve by the playwright of the N-Town play

entitled The Creation of the World: The Fall of Man, serve to identify in her a rest-
lessly transgressive desire to move out of her allocated space at the side of
Adam and access the more marginal realms beyond. Instead of being com-
pliant to her ontological role as Adam’s helpmate and companion, the
N-Town Eve displays a wanderlust which draws her away from Adam to
enjoy the delights of the garden independently of her partner. In contrast, in
the same play Adam is depicted as ‘a good gardenere’ and one who dutifully
gathers the product of his labours with ‘gle and game’.2 It is such a flirtation
with the veiled dangers of the unstructured marginal regions of her envir-
onment, brought about by an excessive appetite for consumption, which
leads to Eve’s seduction by the serpent and the resultant downfall of
humankind and loss of Eden. In other popular medieval depictions of Eve
too – such as that of the second play of the Chester Mystery Cycle – it is a
similarly socially and morally transgressive Eve who brings about human
downfall and effects permanent alienation from the paradisiac space
allocated to Adam and herself by God.3 This time, in keeping with the atti-
tudes perpetrated by the early Church Fathers which percolated down
through the centuries to lay claim upon prevalent attitudes towards women,
Eve’s transgression is even more explicitly associated with uncontainable
monstrous appetite – primarily for food, for knowledge and for sex. This is
1
The Creation of the World: The Fall of Man in The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8,
ed. Stephen Spector, EETS s.s. 11 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 24–34 (p. 26).
2
N-Town Play, p. 26.
3
The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS s.s. 3, 2 vols
(London, New York and Toronto, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 13–41.
1
established even before Satan’s temptation of her, when he announces her

susceptibility:
for wemen they be full licourouse,

that will shee not forsake.4
Later, too, Adam will lament:
My licourouse wyfe hath bynne my foe;

the devylls envye shente mee alsoe.
These too together well may goe,
the suster and the brother.5
The alliance between Satan and Eve established here in Adam’s despairing
words reflects the common belief in the Middle Ages, which manifests itself
in much of its literature, that woman was ‘the devil’s gateway’,6 in effect, the
portal to an anarchic and degenerate location of lust and uncontrolled appetite.
Again in the words of the Chester Cycle’s Adam:
Whoe trusteth them in any intente,

truly hee is disceaved.7
Such a remythologising of the Genesis narrative and its appearance in a multi-

plicity of versions during the late Middle Ages had rendered it, in the words
of Allen J. Franzen, ‘a master narrative’ which provided a ‘context, a pretext
and a metatext’ for patriarchal ideology.8 This ideology found a convenient
symbol in its own construction of Eve as transgressor of the ‘natural’ female
role and violator of her allotted space alongside Adam as his helpmate.
This book will concern itself with some of the ways in which the late
medieval writers, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, each contravened
her own allocated spaces and reached out through the boundaries with her
body and voice to enter the proscribed spaces beyond.9 It will also examine
4
Chester Cycle, p. 21.
5
6
Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, I: i. Much of Tertullian’s teaching on women was to enter
mainstream Christian polemic in the Middle Ages. For a selection of his more misogyn-
istic utterances see Alcuin Blamires (ed.), Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An
Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1992), pp. 50–8.
7
8
Allen J. Frantzen (ed.), Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary
Theory in Medieval Studies (New York, 1991), p. 40.
9
The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sandford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS o.s.
212 (London, New York and Toronto: 1940, repr. 1997). All references will be to this edi-
tion and page numbers will appear parenthetically in the text. All references to the Short
Text (ST) of Julian of Norwich are taken from Frances Beer (ed.), Julian of Norwich’s
Revelations of Divine Love (Heidelberg, 1978). References to the longer version are taken
from Marion Glasscoe (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love (Exeter, 1993), unless
otherwise stated, and are referred to as the Long Text (LT). Again, all page references will
appear parenthetically in the main body of the text.
2
INTRODUCTION
how the texts produced by these women testify to the contravention of such
boundaries and serve to redefine acceptable female spaces by means of a
redrawing of the maps of female bodies, voices and agency. Finally, it will
investigate the ways in which such a contravention enabled each writer to
attain a level of personal and textual authority – an authority which I argue
was dependent upon a reconstruction within their texts of what were consid-
ered to be some of the ‘specificities’ of female bodily experience.10
Proscribed Spaces and Marginalities
The concept of a woman attempting to exceed the space allocated to her is a

central one to any study of women writers of the Middle Ages. As Barbara
Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka have observed: ‘Medieval people divided
space by gender . . . Women occupied rooms, houses, quarters in the cities
and villages, while men’s activities took them farther abroad to streets, high-
ways, fields, cities, oceans, battles and council tables.’11 Elsewhere, Hanawalt
suggests that in medieval culture a laywoman’s space was primarily that of
the domestic sphere, and as such constituted the location within which she
would carry out the necessary – and traditionally female – social activities of
child-bearing, child-rearing and nurture; any independent movement outside
this sphere of activity would often be suspect and open to accusations of
transgressive behaviour.12 Whilst in a general sense this remained the case, in
many ways the use of such a binary invites the danger of misrepresentation
and lack of nuance. Many medieval women worked alongside their hus-
bands in the fields or the cities, set up urban businesses independently of
10
For an overview of the problems of authority in mystical texts, see A. J. Minnis, Medieval
Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Aldershot,
1988). Nicholas Watson also addresses this briefly in the context of the female mystics in
Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 1–27, especially
pp. 22–4. For detailed analyses of the relationship between authority and the female body,
see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Significance of Food to Medieval
Women (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1987) and Fragmentation and Redemption:
Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992). For a specific
examination of the relationship between Margery Kempe and authority see Karma
Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, 1991), especially
pp. 63–4, pp. 79–80, p. 83, pp. 86–87, pp. 97–8, p. 105; Sarah Beckwith, ‘Problems of
Authority in Late Medieval English Mysticism: Language, Agency, and Authority in The
Book of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 4, 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 172–99; David Lawton, ‘Voice,
Authority and Blasphemy in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.),
Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York, 1992), pp. 93–115; Lynn Staley Johnson, ‘The
Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of
Norwich and Margery Kempe’, Speculum 66, 4 (1991), pp. 820–38.
11
Barbara Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis
and London: 2000), p. x.
12
Barbara Hanawalt, ‘At the Margin of Women’s Space in Medieval Europe’, in Robert
R. Edwards and Vickie Ziegler (eds), Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society
(Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 1–17.
3
their husbands or continued a husband’s trade upon widowhood. There are

even records of some urban women entering into negotiations abroad with
foreign traders,13 and certainly in many European cities those groups of non-
enclosed religious women known as the beguines were accepted and toler-
ated – albeit somewhat reluctantly – by the authorities.14 Many women, then,
fell into the grey area which lay between the domestic and the religious loca-
tions and, although never fully integrated into the male sphere of activity, the
marginal status this occupancy could afford them could allow for a level of
participation and acceptance in both spheres, tenuous though it might be.
In this context, Terence N. Bowers has examined the figure of the female
pilgrim as transgressive figure, suggesting that women like Margery Kempe
or Chaucer’s fictional Wife of Bath, who were presumptuous enough to
undertake extensive travel alone without a male companion, were also occu-
pants of this type of tenuous position by means of their continual movement
through public spaces.15 Bower’s findings build upon an earlier study of pil-
grimage undertaken by Victor and Edith Turner, who envisage the pilgrim
(and for them, the pilgrim is paradigmatically male) as taking on a marginal
or liminal status which ‘liberates [him] from conformity to general norms’.16
More recently, however, in the context of the woman pilgrim, Susan Signe
Morrison has taken issue with this stance in her detailed examination of
female pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.17 Here Morrison demonstrates how
male-authored literary representations of the female pilgrim frequently
tended to transform her into a symbol of transgression or aberrance and actu-
ally reinforced societal ‘general norms’.18 However, Morrison also suggests
that pilgrimage could simulataneously serve to confound the traditional bin-
aries attached to notions of gender and space by offering up to the female
pilgrim a type of liminal and unfixed location within which to carry out
a female performance of piety which could be potentially liberating or empower-
ing. If, as Morrison asserts, pilgrimage enabled the woman to participate in
13
Shualmith Shahar discusses the nature of women’s work in the towns in The Fourth
Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages (London, 1990), pp. 189–205. Here she also
presents evidence that a handful of women did carry out lone mercantile activites fol-
lowing the death of their husbands, pp. 194–5.
14
The role of the beguine ‘sisterhood’ in European cities is examined by Shahar, The Fourth
Estate, pp. 52–5.
15
Terence N. Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, Studies in Philology 97, 1 (2000),
pp. 1–28.
16
Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (Oxford,
1978), p. 35.
17
Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public
Performance (London and New York, 2000), p. 137. See pp. 128–41 for a specific focus on
Margery Kempe as pilgrim.
18
Both Bowers and Morrison have recognised a firm interaction between travel, gender and
transgression of the social order and demonstrate the extent to which socio-religious anx-
iety about the practice of pilgrimage tended to focus on female contravention of what was
considered to be woman’s ‘natural’ identity as potential or actual wife and mother.
4
INTRODUCTION
a public performance of piety which by rights should be restricted to the men

in the public arena, then the notion of male-identified space (the public)
begins to break down with this incursion of the female upon it. Moreover,
what Morrison observes in the case of Margery Kempe is a female pilgrim
who not only takes full advantage of pilgrimage’s performative possibilities
but continues to confound the binaries by means of offering her own literary
representation of her travels. In other words, she blurs the boundaries both on
the level of active participation and on the level of its representation.19 As a
result, The Book of Margery Kempe, with its female perspective on pilgrimage,
frequently represents the male participants as unpredictable, unfixed and
lacking in the necessary spiritual commitment.
Physical spaces, therefore, carried a multiplicity of meanings for those
who occupied them, and those meanings were frequently highly gendered
and productive of rules with which to police the boundaries. Unless negoti-
ated carefully, those who violated those rules or transgressed the boundaries
could be subject to expulsion or public humiliation, which served both to
punish and to act as a warning to others. For a woman, to transgress or vio-
late a prescribed space was sometimes, as Mary Douglas has also identified,
to pollute the area upon which she encroached.20 For this very reason, we see
the transgressive Margery Kempe physically enclosed under house arrest on
several occasions because of her insistence on occupying a public space out-
side the domestic one deemed ideologically to be more appropriate for her.
By returning her to the domestic sphere and forcibly restricting her move-
ment within it, the male authorities are better able to categorise and control
her according to their own precepts of what constitutes suitable behaviour
for a wife and mother.
Space, however, is not merely a geographically or architecturally static
entity. Space, as Daphne Spain suggests, is also an abstraction, a culturally
constructed ideologue which combines both location and social relations,
which then proceed to reinforce one another.21 The cultural meanings
attached to the enclosed spaces of bedroom and anchorhold so important to
Julian of Norwich, for example, are useful for demonstrating both rupture
and continuity in her writing. The inexorable movement from the
‘dyrke . . . chaumbyr’ (ST, 42), now thought to be the domestic sphere
19
As Morrison also points out, the representation of the woman pilgrim in literature rarely
depicts her outside familial terms. Indeed, she regards Margery Kempe as still embroiled
within her identity as wife and mother whilst performing her pilgrimages, although she
observes that ‘her role as mother is displaced into the spiritual realm’ (Women Pilgrims,
p. 146).
20
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London,
1966), especially pp. 140–58. For a medieval perspective on this concept of the polluting
female, see D. Jacquart and C. Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans.
Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 74 –8.
21
Daphne Spain, Gendered Spaces (Chapel Hill, 1992), p. 2.
5
where her experiences begin, to the anchorhold in which she becomes

‘recluse atte Norwyche’ (ST, 39) are central to Julian’s articulation of her
own transition from lack of knowledge and youthful naïvety to the mature
expression of a seasoned wisdom which characterises her later writing.
Thus, the physical and metaphorical meanings attached to the female
spaces of Julian’s sickroom and her anchoritic cell have a marked effect
upon the production of her texts, not just because of their locational speci-
ficity but also because those meanings are inscribed upon them by Julian
herself. As a result, paradoxically the apparent privation of the enclosed
cell was to offer its occupant much more freedom for the development of
her writing than was for a long time available to the more wordly Margery
Kempe. Both physically and conceptually, then, the spaces occupied by
Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich are of central concern to them as
women writers, and to the various subject positions they occupy in their
writing – something which will constitute one of the main focuses of
this book.
By very definition, of course, the term ‘woman writer’ when applied to the
Middle Ages can be regarded as oxymoronic, implying as it does a contra-
vention of space by a transgressive female voice speaking to an imagined
audience outside the margins of her social or religious confinement.22 The
very act of writing, be it performed within the confines of the private cham-
ber, anchorhold or monastery, constituted a type of public speech-act directed
at a real or imagined audience which necessarily moved the writer from the
realm of the private into the public. This, of course, goes some way towards
explaining the frequent use of the topos of humility in the works of medieval
writers of both sexes, but in the writing of medieval women in particular.23
Whereas for men the public pronouncement was generally deemed appro-
priate or acceptable, something which rendered their use of this topos tropo-
logical, for a woman the very act of writing served to place her on the
margins of her allocated space and often pushed her firmly into the grey
areas beyond. For her, therefore, the use of the topos of humility was more
than a customary trope; it served as a type of screen behind which she neces-
sarily had to operate as a writer. Such a defensive stance found in women’s
writing also goes some way towards explaining why women such as Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich either deferred the act of writing for some
22
Nicholas Watson asserts that during the period in the fifteenth century when these
women were operating, language politics and incarnational theology became synonym-
ous. He also argues that under such conditions the act of writing in the vernacular had
major theological implications which were not always positive (‘Conceptions of the
Word: The Mother Tongue and the Incarnation of God’, in Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland
and David Lawton (eds), New Medieval Literatures, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1997), p. 90).
23
Barbara Newman examines the use of the humility topos in terms of an internalisation of
supposed female weakness in Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegarde’s Theology of the Feminine
(Berkeley, 1987), pp. 2–3, 35, 114–15, 182, 248 and 254–7.
6
INTRODUCTION
considerable time or else evaded certain material or subjected it to lengthy

revision.
Any discussion of those women who occupied the margins and the grey
areas, of course, is made problematic by the fact that to some extent all
women were subject to social marginalisation because of their ideological
exclusion from the public sphere of influence within a patriarchal society,
something which Hanawalt has also argued.24 In this respect, not only were
women of all classes subject to varying degrees of physical and ideological
enclosure, but for the large majority who would live a life outside the clois-
ter or the anchorhold a destiny as wife and mother would render them per se
the site of enclosure as vessels for the unborn child. In this sense, incursion
into the public arena would often be tolerated if the woman were seen to be
conducting herself ‘appropriately’ as wife and mother (as Margery Kempe
resolutely refuses to do unless for purposes of expediency). Similarly, the
unmarried woman would be half tolerated if she were also seen to be carry-
ing her domestic roles with her into those public spaces – in the brewing, bak-
ing or other service industries, for example.25 It is an awareness of this type
of legitimation effected by the portability of the domestic which Margery
Kempe demonstrates on a number of occasions, particularly when she is in
those situations which present her with the most danger – at Leicester and
York, for instance, when she is arraigned for heresy.26 However, when she
fails to draw upon her own domestic roles, reactions to her are far more hos-
tile and can, perhaps, be best summed up by the famous exhortation directed
at her by an enraged monk at Canterbury in response to her public citation of
Scripture: ‘I wold þow wer closyn in an hows of ston þat þer schuld no man
speke wyth þe’ (27). The evident hostility which Margery has aroused here is
the result of what the Canterbury monks regard as her presumptuousness as
a woman engaging in conversation of a religious nature, not only in a public
space, but in one traditionally reserved for male religious. In this respect, this
castigation can be read not only as a gendered desire to enclose Margery like
an anchoress within the only legitimate space where such a female predilec-
tion for spiritual communion can be indulged, but it is also suggestive of the
need for all transgressive and troublesome women to return to the enclosed
24
Hanawalt, ‘At the Margin’, pp. 1–17. See also Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (eds), Framing
Medieval Bodies (Manchester and New York, 1994). Particularly relevant in this context is
Roberta Gilchrist, ‘Medieval Bodies in the Material World: Gender, Stigma and the Body’,
in the same volume, pp. 3–61, especially pp. 50–8.
25
Eileen Power examines women’s contribution in these areas of urban life, demonstrating
how they provided a source of income, whilst incorporating those activities which they
would most probably have been carrying out in a domestic capacity (Eileen Power,
Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 62–9).
26
On these occasions Margery relies upon her status as wife and mother from the upper
echelons of urban society to act in own defence, even though in practice she has not been
performing these roles for some time. See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe,
pp. 112, 115 and 122. This is something I will be examining in Chapter 1.
7
space of the domestic where they can be similarly categorised, controlled and
contained. The message is clear: the most appropriate place for a woman’s
voice to be sounded is within the stone walls of religious or domestic space.
Thus, for Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, the primary dilemma is
how to enter effectively the magisterial space of male intellectual activity
without at best invoking censure, or at worst endangering their own lives. In
this respect, the famously defensive use of humilitas by Julian in her Short
Text not only testifies to a denial of encroachment upon male intellectual
space whilst simultaneously taking up a position within it, but is also symp-
tomatic of the very real fear involved in an usurpation of the male preroga-
tive to write: ‘Botte god forbede that he schulde saye or take it so that I am a
techere, for I meene nouht soo, no I mente nevere so’ (ST, 47–8). It is clear that
both Julian and Margery are aware that, whether associated with the trad-
itional space of the domestic or living within the regimented space of the reli-
gious, it is an imperative to at least retain an appearance of adhering to its
imposed physical and intellectual boundaries and conform to its rules.
Female Specificities, Subjectivities and Theories of the Body
In order to examine the importance of the female body in the writing of Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich, I have drawn upon a variety of pertinent theor-
etical approaches to that body, both those which were prevalent when these
women were living and writing and more modern theories which have
informed our present attitudes. Not all of these theories, however, have
informed my work to the same extent. Some, such as those emerging from the
school of French feminist thought, have provided a convenient exegetical tool
only on occasion. On the other hand, more constructionist approaches, such as
that proposed by Judith Butler, have proved to be fundamental to my under-
standing of how medieval women such as Julian of Norwich and Margery
Kempe mapped out their own perception of the female body as a means to gain-
ing access to authority for their writing. At this point, therefore, I will first pro-
vide an overview of the theories of the body which have been most pertinent to
my appraisal of these writers and secondly delineate how these interconnect
with developing notions of selfhood which similarly inform their writing.
Most influential in the forging of attitudes to the body in the late Middle
Ages were probably the writings of Galen, the Greek physician from Asia
Minor who had practised his science in Rome in the second century AD.27
27
For an in-depth study of Galenic medical theories see Rudolph E. Siegel, Galen’s System
of Physiology and Medicine: An Analysis of His Doctrines and Observations on Bloodflow,
Respiration, Humours and Internal Diseases (Basel and New York, 1968). On Galen’s general
medical theories and on his role as medical philosopher, see Owsei Temkin, Galenism:
Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, 1973).
8
INTRODUCTION
Galen’s eclectic approach to the acquisition of information served to sustain

his popularity. He shared with Aristotle a desire to create a cohesive and ratio-
nal science based on philosophical precepts and cool intellectual analysis.
Although Galen did not devote any treatise specifically to gynaecology or
obstetrics, he nevertheless concurred with the popular Aristotelian notion
that women were moister and cooler than males and, as a result, were per-
petually in search of the male’s hotness and dryness in order to counter this
‘natural’ constitution. However, unlike Aristotle, who promoted the one-seed
theory of generation whereby only the male produced the necessary ‘seed’ for
procreation, Galen adhered to the ‘two-seed’ theory, recognising that both
the male and the female produced the seeds of generation.28 Galen’s use of
evaluative terminology in his discussion of sex differences led to a subtle dif-
ferentiation which fed into the prevalent myth of Eve’s imperfections and the
legacy of that perceived fallen and flawed human being. As in Aristotle’s sys-
tem of sexual difference, the polarities of hot and cold, dry and moist were
translated by Galen into a value system which favoured the male-associated
qualities over those of the female, who then became relegated to the inferior
position of inability and passivity. In effect, the female became interminably
bound up and confined to the realm of the flesh, rather than the spirit.29
In this sense, the teachings of Aristotle were highly influential in the promo-
tion of the belief prevalent throughout the literature of the Middle Ages
that women were in some way physically monstrous; in fact, according to
Aristotelian thought, they were deemed to be inverted – and therefore
deformed – males: ‘females are weaker and colder in their nature; and we
should look upon the female state as being as it were a deformity’.30
Equally popular in the late Middle Ages (and developing in its appeal well
into the early modern period) was Galen’s theory of the four humoral fluids
which he considered maintained the health of the individual. This theory,
first promoted by the Hippocratic writers of the classical period and later sys-
tematised by Galen, suggested that the health of the individual body was sus-
tained by a balance of the four humoral fluids – blood, phlegm, black bile and
yellow bile. According to this theory, illness was not visited upon a body
from without, but came about because of an internal imbalance of the
humours.31 However, as Michael Shoenfeldt has pointed out in the context of
28
For a useful comparison between some of the theories of Galen and Aristotle, see Joan
Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 108–9
and 117–19.
29
Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 23.
30
Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium [Generation of Animals], trans. A. L. Peck (London and
Cambridge, Mass., 1963), IV, vi. 775a, lines. 15–16.
31
For an analysis of the way in which humoral theory affected the perceived relationship
between bodies and individuality in the Early Modern period, see Michael C.
Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in
Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 2–39. For the ways in
9
Galenic influence upon the early modern sense of selfhood: ‘While it makes
the patient the agent rather than the victim of his or her health, it also pro-
vides a framework for blaming the patient for the illness that arbitrarily
afflicts him or her.’32
If we return to Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in this context, then,
we are offered a framework for appraising why the texts of both of these
women should be characterised at their onset by an account of their own
respective life-threatening illnesses. There is no doubt, for example, that their
audiences are meant to read the unique spiritualities of each of these women
in terms of a self whose body has failed it, and both women implicate them-
selves as agents in their own illnesses for different rhetorical and hermen-
eutic reasons. Margery Kempe’s accounts of suffering through illness often
suggest that it is her own moral corruption which brings about the malady.
Indeed, her entire text is peppered with accounts of illnesses, both her own
and those of other people, which she frequently identifies as God’s punish-
ment for self-imposed unworthiness.33 Julian is equally explicit in her asser-
tion of illness as self-inflicted when she documents the arrival of the suffering
which she had prayed for during the time of her youthful piety – something
she later identifies as the result of a somewhat naïve desire for ‘a bodelye
syekenes . . . as to the dede’ (ST, 40). For both women, illness is represented
as a self-initiated and transformative experience which sets in motion the
process which ultimately leads to writing. In other words it heralds their
emergence into an agency first enacted by means of the text of their own suf-
fering bodies, and later translated into the written word on the page. In the
course of this translation, their own female bodies become incorporated into
their writing and become synonymous with selfhood, insight and agency itself.
The concept of individuality and selfhood within medieval ideological
systems has received considerable attention. For example, Colin Morris has
examined the rise of the sense of personal individuality and identity within
the restrictions of Church and society between 1050 and 1200.34 Morris illus-
trates how the desire for self-knowledge was one of the dominant concerns
which Galenic theory affected constructions of sexuality in the Middle Ages, see also
Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, and Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body
and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, 1990). For an important analysis of the
intersections of physicality, psyche and subjectivity in early modern consciousness of
selfhood, with reference also to the medieval period, see Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the
Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994),
Introduction, pp. 1–34. For a series of useful discussions of some theoretical issues of
bodiliness in the medieval period see Kay and Rubin, Framing Medieval Bodies.
32
Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves, p. 7.
33
See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 7–8, 53, 66, 104, 169–70 and 137–8.
34
Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (Toronto, 1987). See also Peter
Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1970); R. W. Hanning, The Individual
in Twelfth-Century Romance (New Haven and London, 1977); R. W. Southern, The Making
of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1959), pp. 219–57.
10
INTRODUCTION
of the age, pointing out that the words of the legendary Delphic oracle ‘know
yourself’ had long been assimilated into the traditions of the western Church,
primarily through Augustine’s promotion of the importance of self- knowledge
as a path to God.35 The most influential of commentators to take up this
theme with enthusiasm was probably Bernard of Clairvaux, whose personal
and highly individualistic experiences often became a source of material for
his preaching. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bernard rejected the con-
cept of an unbridgeable chasm existing between the individual and God, and
promoted the idea of a negotiable bridge constructed out of fleshly love and
respect of self. Thus, the individual, who was also linked inextricably with the
human Christ, was offered access to God through the flesh, which in turn
could facilitate the development of pure, spiritual union. This union, there-
fore, did not necessarily require the relinquishment of selfhood, but pointed
towards its value and its eschatological potential if directed towards God.
In her analysis of the growth of an individual consciousness in the Middle
Ages, Caroline Walker Bynum has placed the development of the sense of
individuality in the twelfth century within the context of belonging to recog-
nisable groups and fulfilling certain expected social roles.36 Although con-
testing the accepted view that the twelfth century did, in fact, discover the
individual, Bynum suggests that ‘it did in some sense discover – or redis-
cover – the self, the inner mystery, the inner man, the inner landscape’.37 As
this quotation would suggest (and as is the case in the various other studies
on this issue which Bynum cites in her essay), any idea of female selfhood is
entirely absent from the picture presented to us. In spite of the flowering of
female mysticism in Europe during the period under examination, and its
further development well into the fifteenth century, at no point in this essay
does Bynum embark upon an examination of this phenomenon in the context
of the development of a sense of female individuality – even within the con-
text of her analysis of the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux and his com-
mentary on the heterosexual eroticism of the Song of Songs. Of course, one
could argue that Bynum’s later exhaustive studies of the religious experi-
ences of women in the Middle Ages which I have previously cited38 easily
35
Morris, Discovery of the Individual, pp. 65–6. For a detailed discussion of the process
whereby the figure of the Sibyl was absorbed into the tradition of the Christian West,
see Peter Dronke, Hermes and the Sibyls (Cambridge, 1990). On the influence of the
sibylline tradition in the Middle Ages see Bernard McGinn, ‘ “Teste David cum Sibylla”:
The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages’, in Julius Kirshner and
Suzanne Wemple (eds), Women in the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of J. H. Mundy
(Oxford, 1985), pp. 8–35. The relevance of the sibylline tradition to the writing
of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich will be examined in Chapters 5 and 6
respectively.
36
Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?’, The Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980), pp. 1–17.
37
Bynum, ‘Twelfth Century?’, p. 15.
38
See p. 3, n. 10 above.
11
redress the balance, but there is no doubt that within most explicit analyses
of selfhood in the Middle Ages it has been the male experience rather than
the female which has been represented and favoured as definitive. Bynum’s
more recent work, however, in spite of having become subject to charges of
essentialism in recent times,39 has nevertheless succeeded in bringing the reli-
gious sensibilities of women to centre stage in modern scholarship.
Moreover, it has opened up for debate the concept of a very different and
potentially empowering female perception of self and body and its transfor-
mation into a language which is able to articulate both individuality and the
sense of shared female identities. Unlike Bynum, however, my own reading of
this ‘language’ of the female body is in terms of its being used as an authori-
tative literary tool and effective hermeneutic by the authors under examin-
ation rather than as some pre-existing, prediscursive ‘essence’ which is tapped
into for purposes of achieving authority and asserting female ‘difference’.
The writing of both Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich makes extensive
use of the female body as female-identified literary tool and, as such, tends to
constitute a textual performance of what is deemed to be ‘female’ or ‘feminine’
within a culture which did essentialise gender difference, as we have seen.
What we must remember as readers, of course, is that what we have here are
not the practices of those medieval women themselves, but merely the ‘text-
ual effects’ of those practices which – unusually – are in these texts being
articulated by the women themselves.40 This produces a discrepancy which
also constitutes another possible site of slippage between experience and its
representation. This point of slippage is then ripe for exploitation by the
woman writer in its production of a screen behind which she can operate.
This study will argue that both Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich con-
sistently locate themselves at this point of slippage and take up a position
behind the screen which allows them to successfully speak and to be heard.
In effect, they both redefine location and reconstruct body within the inde-
terminate space between ideology, experience and representation.
Within any study of the experiences of the female mystics of the Middle
Ages, however, the moment comes when a confrontation with the question of
female agency becomes inevitable. Were these women acting strictly within
the confines of patriarchal thinking and tradition and assimilating patriarchal
attitudes towards them and their ‘transgressive’ bodies? Or were they, by
means of a strategic performance of the effects of a supposed female specificity,
able to challenge and ultimately to evade apparently hegemonic socio-religious
39
See, in particular, Kathleen Biddick, ‘Genders, Bodies, Borders: Technologies of the
Visible’, Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 389–418. Here Biddick considers Bynum ultimately to
have failed in her enterprise because of a tendency towards essentialist conflation of the
female and maternal.
40
On the depiction of medieval women as ‘textual effects’, again see Biddick, ‘Genders,
Bodies, Borders’, pp. 411–12.
12
INTRODUCTION
restrictions and produce a female-centred insight into the metaphysical and

eschatological dilemmas which constitute the human condition?
In recent years, the notion of female agency in the Middle Ages has been
questioned by David Aers, who believes their agency to be limited because of
the necessity of their operating within specific discursive regimes – some-
thing I address in Chapter 1 of this volume.41 As Aers’s discussion demon-
strates, the question of female agency is a complex one and much of this
present study will constitute an attempt to unravel its feasibility both in the-
ory and in practice and investigate some of the ways in which these writers
may have interrogated, used and exploited traditional attitudes towards the
female body for purposes of personal and literary authority. This is not to say
that I believe such women did not also internalise and accept some of these
attitudes. But what is also characteristic of them is that they demonstrate a
conscious attempt to provide an alternative way of thinking and behaving
which diverges from traditional patriarchal – and masculinist – thought. In
turn, this allows them an alternative and female-identified route by which
to approach God. This alternative route, as I will suggest, was based not only
upon their own experiences of what it was to be female within their own
cultural and religious environments, but upon the fissure between what mas-
culine discourse said about their bodies and their own individuated
experience of them. In this context, I will argue that their use and exploitation
of the accepted paradigms of gender difference allowed for the creation of a
personally delineated space for self-expression and the attainment of some
kind of fulfilment in their intellectual and spiritual lives.
It is also true to say that any study of female interiority or subjectivity
from any literary period cannot ignore the influence of post-Freudian inter-
rogations of patriarchal thinking promulgated by some of the contemporary
feminist theorists who have emerged during the last few decades. In particu-
lar, theorists such as Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, whose theories of the
female body have had much to offer as an interpretive lens through which to
examine the writing of medieval women, can provide a convenient point of
departure for any investigation into how the ‘feminine’ operates in this con-
text. Although there are self-evident problems connected with ahistoricity,
anachronicity and a tendency towards an essentialist view of the feminine,
within the application of contemporary post-Freudian psychoanalytical the-
ory to medieval texts, theorist Michel de Certeau has been influential in
demonstrating its potential as a means of investigating both literary and his-
torical texts. Certeau has cogently illustrated the extent to which the lines
of demarcation inscribed upon history by historiographers in order to struc-
ture time and memory can be seen as entirely arbitrary, and suggests that any
41
David Aers and Lynn Staley, Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in the Late
Medieval English Culture (Cambridge, 1996), p. 35.
13
psychoanalytical approach to the past helps to break down these arbitrary

boundaries.42 If, as psychoanalysis would assert, the past continues to exist
in the present, then its relationship with the present takes the form of an
‘imbrication’, creating a cyclical palimpsest of experience which results in
‘games of masking, reversal, and ambiguity’.43
The principal questions arising from these different ways of revisiting
the past are, of course, whether or not they are compatible and whether
or not they can be reconciled. If, like Certeau, we accept that both history
and psychoanalysis are strategies used to quantify and structure time and
memory, then both approaches ultimately deal with the same problems and
can be of assistance to each other. Both approaches, too, concern themselves
with the analysis of the conditions which generate human behaviour and
seek to create a discourse to enable us to appreciate how our own present
is conditioned by our collective past. To embrace the possibilities contained
within a psycho-analytical approach to the history of women, for example,
is to disrupt the tendency of historical surveys to represent those women on
the margins as being, in the words of Lyndal Roper, nothing but ‘colourful
psychic primitives from a carnival world’.44 Traditional approaches to
Margery Kempe, of course, have rendered her exactly that, but more
psycho-analytically aware examinations have been able to create a deeper
understanding of the responses of medieval women such as Margery
Kempe to their own lived experiences and the materiality of their own bod-
ies, serving also to uncover traces of their own repressed drives as gendered
and sexed human beings. Roper has added further to this debate by argu-
ing that we neglect the psychic realms of historical subjects ‘at our peril’.45
She is also emphatic that bodies ‘have materiality and this must have its
place in history’.46 Similarly, in his discussion of the relationship between
bodies and selfhood in early modern England, Michael Schoenfeldt also dis-
putes the idea of radically different experiences of the body between past
and present subjects. Instead, whilst acknowledging that discursive termin-
ology and interpretations of corporeality differ widely over the course
of time, nevertheless he is driven to conclude: ‘Bodies have changed little
through history, even though the theories of their operations vary enormously
across time and culture. We are all born, we eat, we defecate, we desire, and
we die.’47
42
Michel de Certeau, ‘Psychoanalysis and Its History’, in Heterologies: Discourse of the
Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minnesota, 1986), pp. 3–17. For the application of the
Freudian psychoanalytic concept of the Unheimliche to the writing of Julian of Norwich,
see Nancy Coiner, ‘The “homely” and the Heimliche: The Hidden, Doubled Self in Julian
of Norwich’s Showings’, Exemplaria 5, 2 (1993), pp. 305–23.
43
Certeau, Heterologies, p. 4.
44
Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, p. 12.
45
46
47
Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves, p. 6.
14
INTRODUCTION
Roper too acknowledges the universality of such corporeal phenomena,

adding to the list the capacity to experience pain and illness, feel joy or reli-
gious ecstasy, sorrow, grief, loss, longing. All of these experiences are written
onto the body and are carried forward into the future as both corporeal and
psychic texts which, to echo Roper, ‘are more than discourse’.48 In the context
of the findings of this present volume, the female-specific experiences of
menstruation, gestation, giving birth, breast-feeding are also capable of being
transformed into text which is written upon bodies (both male and female,
human and divine) and used as a language to validate the equal worth of the
feminine. So, we see Margery Kempe’s relinquished maternity re-emerge in
bodily expressions of piety which reinvoke the pains of childbirth and simul-
taneously inscribe the imprint of Marian maternity and holy virginity upon
her body. Similarly, the text of Julian’s bodily suffering during which she
‘gives birth’ to her own mystical experience is carried forward on and in her
body and hermeneutically reiterated in the body of her written text, culmin-
ating in a fully realised depiction of God as divine mother.
When speaking of ‘femininity’ or alluding to some kind of ‘female speci-
ficity’ in the context of medieval women, however, the danger of slipping into
a blindly essentialist mindset is always a very real one. Indeed, as Kathleen
Biddick has demonstrated in her critique of Bynum’s recent work, unless the
notion of gender is interrogated in a highly nuanced way, modern scholarship
can fall prey to simply reinforcing those very binaries which it seeks to break
down. The danger is further compounded by the adoption of theories which
advocate gender difference, such as those of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva,
who arguably themselves run perilously close to essentialising the female
experience as an ontological given, forced to operate within patriarchal struc-
tures of thought. Yet, as Diana Fuss has eloquently argued, the fear of essen-
tialism has brought about an alarming impasse in feminist criticism which has
to be overcome if progress on this front is to continue.49 Fuss proceeds to
demonstrate that, far from being entirely counter to a constructionist approach
to gender such as that posited by Judith Butler (which I examine below), essen-
tialism is fundamental to all belief systems connected with gender difference.
According to Fuss, ‘it is difficult to see how constructionism can be construc-
tionism without a fundamental dependency upon essentialism’.50 Indeed, she
goes further to assert that constructionism merely operates as a more sophisti-
cated form of essentialism and the line of division is by no means as solid and
unassailable as advocates on both sides of the debate would have us believe.
The unfixed area between the two positions, therefore, can offer up possibil-
ities which prove entirely suitable for this present study. As Fuss suggests, the
48
49
Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (New York and London,
1989).
50
Fuss, Essentially Speaking, p. 4.
15
project of interrogating essence does not mean necessarily dismissing it out of

hand; indeed, the deployment of what she terms a ‘tactical essentialism’ can
form a potentially fruitful interrogative tool for the study of medieval women,
particularly those writers who forged for themselves some kind of middle
ground within highly essentialised dogmatic discursive regimes. What is
important, however, is that essentialist discourse should not be deployed for
purposes of dogma or ideological domination as is the case under patriarchy,
but as a disruptive interventionist strategy which, by throwing some light on
how that hegemony operates, can point towards how its prescription may be
escaped, evaded or displaced. For this reason, in the words of Fuss, ‘it is a risk
worth taking’.51 So Margery Kempe’s identification of herself as ‘not lettryd (in)
witte & wisdom’ (128) and ‘vnstable’ (2) and Julian’s self-representation as
‘woman, leued, febille, & freylle’ and ‘wrecche’ (ST, 48), for example, demon-
strate the same kind of risk-taking as Fuss is advocating. By making use of
exactly the type of terminology used to repress women but in a context of pro-
activity, the hollowness of the hegemony is revealed for what it is – an ideo-
logical construct which can be proved erroneous and misinformed. In this way,
both Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich push the boundaries of an essen-
tialist notion of femininity discursively to the limit and bring about a breach
which causes rigid gender categories to collapse. So, an equally tactical critical
position within the moving terrain between the two polarities could perhaps
offer a means of preventing those polarities from solidifying and occluding the
fluid treatment of gender within the texts under examination. Thus I have
found it expedient to draw selectively and intermittently upon some of the
theories of Irigaray and Kristeva in my appraisal of the re-emergence of body
and voice within the writing of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich but
have also turned to more constructionist approaches in order to extend the pos-
sibilities, as I will demonstrate.
Luce Irigaray is probably best known for her advocacy of sexual difference
and she is highly critical of the Freudian/Lacanian employment of the one
model of humanity – paradigmatically male – by which all others are
defined. Irigaray considers it remarkable that such theories continue to reflect
the Aristotelean concept of the ‘one-sex’ model to which I have already
alluded. She recognises – and here there are obvious parallels with Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich – that the female body needs to be reconceived
and represented in a way which presents it in terms of positive agency in
what she regards as its very specificity rather than as merely constituting a
lack of maleness. In her essay, ‘This Sex which is Not One’, from the volume
of the same title,52 Irigaray attempts to posit another way of representing
51
Fuss, Essentially Speaking, p. 32.
52
Luce Irigaray, This Sex which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Cornell, 1985),
pp. 23–33. Other useful works which theorise the relationship between gender, language
and religious experience are Luce Irigaray, ‘La Mystèrique’, in Speculum of the Other
16
INTRODUCTION
woman in terms of the multiple nature of female pleasure and the female sex-
ual organs (‘two lips’) rather than her being perceived as a lack within the
economy of the phallus. Such an identification serves to redefine woman in
terms of agency rather than passivity, in the same way as the female mystics
had done six centuries earlier in their use of a discourse of the female body
in order to deconstruct traditional male religious discourse and offer in its
place a language based on the specific, though not universal, bodily experi-
ences which tended to be female-focused: menstruation, virginity, sexual
penetration, pregnancy, childbirth and prophetic utterance. These ‘female’
experiences of the body, of course, are not, nor ever have been common to all
women and in no sense can they be regarded as paradigmatic of a pre-existent
‘female condition’. They were and still are, however, closely associated
with constructions of the feminine under patriarchy and, as Irigaray suggests
elsewhere, came to constitute much of the language used to relay the mysti-
cal experience. In her essay on female mysticism entitled ‘La Mystèrique’,53
Irigaray constructs her theory of female agency both through and within that
same language in an attempt to emulate the textual practices of the women
about whom she is writing. In so doing, it can be said that she is indeed ‘tak-
ing the risk’ and occupying the very grey area between constructionist and
essentialist argument which we have seen Fuss advocating. Like those writ-
ers too, Irigaray attempts a prose which aims to liberate herself from the
restrictions of patriarchal structures and discourse by drawing upon her own
definition of a discursive female body rather than remaining within the con-
fines of masculinist rhetoric which would aim to contain it. In this way, just as
is the case with Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, Irigaray’s writing
both promotes and constitutes its own agency:
And if ‘God’ who has thus re-proved the fact of her [the mystic’s] non-
value, still loves her, this means that she exists all the same, beyond what
anyone may think of her. It means that love conquers everything that has
already been said. And that one man, at least, has understood her so well
that he died in the most awful suffering. That most female of men, the Son.
And she never ceases to look upon his nakedness, open for all to see,
upon the gashes in his virgin flesh, at the wounds from the nails that pierce
his body as he hangs there, in his passion and abandonment. And she is
overwhelmed with love of him/herself. In his crucifixion he opens up a
path of redemption to her in her fallen state.54
Woman, trans. G. C. Gill (Ithaca, New York, 1985), pp. 191–202; Hélène Cixous, ‘The Laugh
of the Medusa’, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, New French Feminisms
(Massachusetts, 1980), pp. 245–64; Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection,
trans. L. S. Roudiez (New York, 1982). In addition, for an overview of the works of these
writers, see Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London, 1988),
pp. 107–73.
53
Irigaray, ‘La Mystèrique’.
54
Irigaray, ‘La Mystèrique’, pp. 199–200.
17
Irigarayan theory then, in its recognition of the alternative hermeneutics of a

reconfigured, reconstructed female body, is rich in possibilities for the mod-
ern reader to arrive at a deeper understanding of the creation of the female
spaces and agency upon which the writing of female mystics such as Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich are predicated. Similarly, an Irigarayan
lens offers an illuminating means for understanding the rich and subversive
possibilities within the texts under consideration in this book.
Of similar value have been some of the observations made by Irigaray’s
contemporary, Julia Kristeva, who is perhaps best known for her work on the
semiotics of language and for her call for the recovery of the maternal body
within language. Her work on motherhood and the preimaginary symbiosis
of mother and child which forms a crucial aspect of her theory of the semi-
otic is particularly useful as a lens through which to reread texts in which
motherhood provides one of the central discourses. For Kristeva, maternity
at its early gestative stage, like Irigaray’s female auto-eroticism, is one of the
‘unsymbolised instinctual drives’ and is therefore a phenomenon which ‘eludes
social intercourse’.55 According to Kristeva, this process of ‘becoming’ has
been misrepresented by phallocratic discourses of science and Christian the-
ology which have tended to reify the mother as the embodiment of the phe-
nomenon taking place within her. Thus, Kristeva argues, maternity is the
location of a fissure in the symbolic order because the unborn child lies ultim-
ately out of reach of the law of the father which focuses instead upon the
gestative process’s embodiment – the mother. Ultimately it is entirely unable
to impose its order upon the invisible process of gestation itself56 which
becomes symbolic of an order which is prediscursive and extra-linguistic,
and escapes the hegemony of patriarchal law. Such a theory, therefore, can
prove particularly useful in an examination of Julian of Norwich’s own use
of motherhood in her texts, employed as it is by the author to explicate the
essentially inexplicable mystical experience. Although by no means the first
writer to make use of this discourse, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 2, Julian
takes it way beyond its traditional boundaries. Recognising its potential for
the provision of a hermeneutic which simultaneously invokes and yet ultim-
ately evades phallogocentric logic, like Kristeva, Julian of Norwich draws
upon maternity as image, hermeneutic and linguistic tool which also serves
to validate a widespread female bodily experience which, even vicariously,
tended to lay outside the realm of the male participation in the Middle Ages.
In the theological context – a context which Kristeva identifies as part of the
55
Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (Oxford, 1980),
p. 238. See also Luce Irigaray’s interview with Hélène Rouche, an expert on placental
biology, ‘On the Maternal Order’, in Luce Irigaray, Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of
Difference, trans. Alison Martin (New York and London, 1993), pp. 37–44.
56
These theories of maternity are primarily taken from Kristeva’s essays entitled
‘Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini’, in Desire in Language, pp. 237–70 and ‘Stabat
Mater’, in Toril Moi (ed.), A Kristeva Reader (New York, 1986), pp. 160–86.
18
INTRODUCTION
male symbolic and subject to the law of the father, and within which, of
course, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were necessarily operating –
Julian adopts as paradigmatically feminine the discourses of motherhood
amongst others and inserts them into the heart of the religious experience by
inscribing them upon a masculine deity. In so doing, she disrupts the law of
the father and makes way for the feminine to assert its equal validity as part
of the redemptive process. Thus, in the words of Roland Barthes writing
about Kristeva (but an assessment equally as applicable to Julian of Norwich):
‘Julia Kristeva changes the place of things. She always destroys the latest pre-
conception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which
we could be proud . . . she subverts authority.’57
Perhaps more consistently useful to my study, however, have been some of
the constructionist gender theories of Judith Butler, in particular her refu-
tation of the existence of fixed gender identity and her establishment of gen-
der as a series of bodily ‘performances’ rather than a ‘natural’ phenomenon
or ‘essence’ which cannot be altered in any real sense.58 Along with other
writers, Butler re-examines the Irigarayan and Kristevan analyses of gender,
offering a critique which reveals both their inherent strengths and their limi-
tations, some of which I have identified above. Butler is led to conclude that
gender identity is nothing more than a series of ‘acts, gestures, and desires’
which appear to be a permanent and ontological reality, but which, in fact,
constitute nothing more than ‘fabrications manufactured and sustained
through corporeal signs and other discursive means’.59 For Butler, gender is
not ‘a set of free-floating attributes’ but is acutally ‘performatively produced
and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence’.60 Such a the-
ory of performativity is particularly helpful to any study of Margery Kempe,
as I have suggested, with her dramatic and gendered public performances of
piety which draw heavily on contemporary notions of the feminine, and her
uncompromisingly high-profile enactment of imitatio Mariae. Indeed, it pro-
vides a clarifying lens through which to examine the more premeditated and
subversive aspects of her performances and the concomitant creation of agency.
By means of a delineation of her own dramatic spaces of performance,
Margery Kempe challenges contemporary notions of appropriate gender
behaviour, pushes out the boundaries of societal demarcation and extends its
limits: Margery Kempe teaches and preaches to the people; Margery Kempe
travels often unaccompanied, albeit sometimes reluctantly; Margery Kempe
takes on the ecclesiastics in their own male-defined and male-dominated
57
Roland Barthes, ‘L’Étrangère’, La Quinzaine Littéraire 94, p. 19, as translated and quoted by
Toril Moi in Sexual/Textual Politics (London and New York, 1985), p. 150.
58
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and
London, 1990). See also Butler’s development of much of this theory in Excitable Speech:
A Politics of the Performative (New York and London, 1997).
59
Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 136.
60
19
spaces; Margery Kempe admonishes the archbishop of Canterbury and she

creates her own authority to do so.61 All this she does in the guise of holy
woman who is also a wife and mother from the higher social echelons of
fifteenth-century Bishop’s Lynn – a status which also undoubtedly helps her to
challenge the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour and interrogate the
‘regulatory practices’ themselves. Quite simply, her awareness of the poten-
tial agency within performances of gender and gendered performances
allows her to ‘get away with it’. It is such a subversion of the ‘rules’ (or, again,
the ‘law of the father’) which Irigaray has also attempted in her own stra-
tegic disruption of male discourse, and which Butler would recognise as the
subversion of a gendered identity by means of a simultaneous performance
of the ‘feminine’ whilst appropriating the type of authority normally reserved
for the male. Along with these contemporary theorists, therefore, both
Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich illustrate how the protected position
of the masculine is ultimately appropriable from within.
Reception and Response: An Overview
It was, of course, these same hegemonic discourses, so ripe for disruption by

contemporary feminist theorists, which coloured the reception of the unique
manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe following its discovery in the library
of Colonel William Butler-Bowdon in 1934. Until its re-emergence, the writ-
ing of Margery Kempe had only been extant in two printed editions, forming
what was ostensibly an instructional handbook for devotional purposes.
Many of the extracts contained in the first printed version by Wynkyn de
Worde in 1501 were taken out of context, rearranged, merged, or their
chronological order altered and the narrative aspects of the text omitted
almost entirely.62 As a consequence, in this version the uncompromising and
insistent voice of Margery Kempe is almost entirely silenced. There is no evi-
dence of her habitual and incontinent weeping and wailing, her highly visual
and troublesome presence or her suffering at the hands of her contempor-
aries, nor is there any autobiographical content whatsoever.63 This highly
redacted version of the Book was later anthologised by Henry Pepwell in 1521,
61
Again, for a discussion of Margery Kempe’s usurpation of space for religious perform-
ance in the context of pilgrimage, see Morrison, Women Pilgrims, pp. 128–41.
62
An edition of this redacted version of the text appears in Meech and Allen, The Book of
Margery Kempe, pp. 353–7. See also Introduction, pp. xlvi–xlviii, for a discussion of its
compilation.
63
For an examination of the possible reasons for the eradicating of Margery’s voice in this
text see my forthcoming essay, ‘ “Closyd in a hows of ston”: Anchoritic Discourse
and The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mari Hughes-Edwards
(eds), Intersections of Gender and Enclosure: Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs (Cardiff, forth-
coming 2004).
20
INTRODUCTION
being included with such venerable company as Hilton’s Song of Angels and
The Divers Doctrines of Saint Katherin of Seenes. It is this slightly later version
which incorporated the designation of ‘ancres’ after Margery Kempe’s name:
‘Here endeth a shorte treatyse of a deuoute ancres called Margerye kempe of
Lynne’ (357, n. 11), and until the discovery of the Butler-Bowdon manuscript
(known also as the Salthouse manuscript after the name of the scribe,
Salthows, who signed it),64 it was presumed that Margery Kempe had been
an anchoress and, in the words of one early twentieth-century critic, ‘a worthy
precursor of that other great woman mystic of East Anglia: Juliana of
Norwich’.65 Such a categorising of Margery Kempe was thus instigated
within eighty or so years of her death and served until the twentieth century
to conveniently contain what we now fully recognise as a highly uncontain-
able persona. In this context, it was with much scholarly disappointment that
the discovery of the Salthouse manuscript was greeted, revealing as it did a
very different kind of woman from the ‘deuoute ancres’ it had formerly been
presumed Margery was, and one who could no longer be placed conveni-
ently inside the same ‘box’ as Julian of Norwich. More recent criticism has
therefore tended to concentrate on what has been perceived as the radical dif-
ferences between these two women, and in most comparisons Margery
Kempe has seemed destined to be reduced to a position of inferiority. For
example, although responding forcefully to her highly individual and visible
presence, commentators such as David Knowles, Wolfgang Riehle, Ute
Stargardt, Edmund Colledge and James Walsh have displayed traditional
anti-feminist prejudices in their readings of Kempe’s behaviour, not least
because of their ambivalence towards her eccentric body-language and noisy
mode of self-expression.66 These commentators have inadvertently betrayed
the perennial preferences within patriarchal thinking for the quiet, contem-
plative, recessive and physically unchallenging but spiritually informed
‘wise woman’ to the loud, vociferous, physically uncompromising and highly
visible (and therefore sexualised) female, as epitomised by Margery Kempe.
In comparison, Julian has been represented as quietly introspective, enclosed
and controlled, in spite of the insistently radical voices emerging from her
texts. More recent feminist scholarship such as that practised by Karma Lochrie,
64
See The Book of Margery Kempe, Introduction, p. xxiii, for an analysis of the scribe and his
handwriting.
65
Edmund G. Gardner, The Cell of Self-Knowledge (London, 1925), Introduction, pp. xx–xxi.
66
See David Knowles, The English Mystic Tradition (London, 1961): ‘[Neither] in depth of per-
ception or wisdom of spiritual doctrine, nor as a personality can she challenge comparison
with Julian of Norwich’, p. 139. See also Wolfgang Riehle, Middle English Mystics (London,
1981), pp. 27– 31, 96, 102–3, 112 and 116; Robert K. Stone, Middle English Prose Style (The
Hague and Paris, 1970), pp. 155–6; T. W Coleman, English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century
(Westport, 1971), p. 175; Ute Stargardt, ‘The Beguines of Belguim, the Dominican Nuns of
Germany, and Margery Kempe’, in J. Heffernan (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval
England (Knoxville, 1985), pp. 277–313; Edmund College and James Walsh (eds), A Book of
Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols (Toronto, 1978), p. 38.
21
Lynn Staley, Hope Phyllis Weissman, Kathy Lavezzo, Sarah Beckwith,

Clarissa Atkinson, Diane Watt, Rosalynn Voaden, Sarah Salih and others has
sought to rescue Kempe from dismissal as a mere ‘hysteric’, emphasising
instead the positive and ultimately expedient uses to which she puts her
bodily and verbal performances, and the means by which they enable her to
transgress the boundaries laid down for her by the society in which she is
operating.67 I am therefore much endebted to these scholars for their attempts
to redeem Margery Kempe from accusations of inadequacy and aberrance,
and particularly for their provision of a forum from which her worth as a
writer, as a mystic and as a wholly exceptional woman can be reappraised in
a less prejudiced way.
Until very recent times, criticism of Julian had tended to be from a theo-
logical perspective, predicated on the firm belief that she had been writing as
a Benedictine nun.68 It was for her contribution to modern theological insight
that she was best known, the literary merit of her work being a secondary
consideration. However, in more recent times, contemporary critical opinion
has deemed it far more likely that Julian was living the life of a pious lay-
woman before her anchoritic enclosure which probably took place at some
stage during the 1390s.69 Benedicta Ward, however, has gone further and in a
compelling and persuasively argued essay has postulated Julian’s having
been both a wife and a mother prior to anchoritic enclosure, which may well
67
Lochrie, Translations; Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Pennsylvania,
1984); Hope Phyllis Weissman, ‘Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Hysterica Compassio in the
Late Middle Ages’, in Mary Carruthers and Elizabeth Kirk (eds), Acts of Interpretation: The
Text in Its Contexts 700–1600 (Oklahoma, 1982), pp. 201–17; Kathy Lavezzo, ‘Sobs and
Sighs between Women: The Homoerotics of Compassion’, in Louise Fradenburg and
Carla Freccero (eds), Premodern Sexualities (New York and London, 1996), pp. 175–98;
Sarah Beckwith, ‘A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery
Kempe’, in David Aers (ed.), Community, Gender and Identity: English Writing 1360–1430
(London, 1988), pp. 34–57; Clarissa Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and World of
Margery Kempe (New York, 1983); Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late
Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997); Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words,
Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries
(York, 1999); Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2001).
For a variety of approaches to Margery Kempe, see McEntire, Margery Kempe: A Book of
Essays.
68
See, for example, Colledge and Walsh (eds), Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings, vol. 1,
Introduction, p. 43. See also Caroline Spurgeon, Mysticism in English Literature
(Cambridge, 1913), who asserts that Julian was ‘almost certainly a Benedictine nun’,
p. 120.
69
Amongst the critics who now concur with this view are David Knowles, The English
Mystical Tradition (London, 1961); Clifton Walters (ed.), Julian of Norwich: Revelations of
Divine Love (Harmondsworth, 1966); Ritamary Bradley, ‘Julian of Norwich: Writer and
Mystic’, in Paul Szarmach (ed.), An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany,
1984), pp. 195–216; Frances Beer, Women and the Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 1992); Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London,
1993); Nicholas Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’,
Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 637–83; Alexandra Barratt in Women’s Writing in Middle English
(London, 1992).
22
INTRODUCTION
have taken place upon widowhood.70 Whilst Glasscoe’s reaction to this specu-
lation considers it ‘not very fruitful’,71 Alexandra Barratt is more amenable
to the suggestion and whilst she concurs that the conjecture has to date been
ultimately unprovable, nevertheless her own work on Julian’s evident famil-
iarity with medical and gynaecological tracts has certainly added fuel and
credibility to this intriguing idea.72
This present book, however, is based upon accepting that Julian was prob-
ably a pious laywoman prior to enclosure, which necessarily narrows the
arbitrary gulf set up between herself and Margery Kempe by early commen-
tators and is substantiated by the aspects of her writing on which this particu-
lar study concentrates. In this context, the theological import of Julian’s
writing will not be of a major concern – that is best left to the theologians
themselves. What it does seek to illustrate, however, is how Julian as a simul-
taneously marginalised and yet centrally important member of society also
relied upon aspects of female bodily experience to create a language in which
to express her remarkable insights, and that her own attitudes towards gen-
der were as flexible, as radical and utilitarian as were those of her contempor-
ary, Margery Kempe. In Julian’s extensive use of the female body as
hermeneutic tool for the explication of her unique experience of God we find
yet another example of a woman writer using a malleable and manoeuvrable
definition of gender in order to appropriate from within the traditionally
masculine space of public utterance and written text. To that end we see
Julian pushing out the boundaries not only of gender identity (as in her
Motherhood of God narrative), but also those which lie between orthodox
and heterodox ideologies within late medieval society.
Equally transformative to studies of Julian of Norwich has been the close
attention paid to her writing in recent years by Nicholas Watson and his rad-
ical reassessment of the dates of composition of both texts.73 His research has
brought about a consensus that, far from being a writer operating largely
during the last three decades of the fourteenth century, Julian indeed must
now be regarded as an early fifteenth-century writer operating during a time
of proscription against religious writing in the vernacular, and as a woman in
her mature years, rather than in her early thirties as was generally considered
to be the case. Equally pertinent to my own work, and probably one of the
most helpful of concise appraisals of medieval women writers to date, is
Watson’s suggestion that women writers of the Middle Ages, although inheri-
tors of misogynistic gender stereotyping, responded by neither accepting
70
Benedicta Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (eds), Julian the
Solitary (Oxford, 1988), pp. 11–35.
71
Glasscoe, Games of Faith, p. 24.
72
See, in particular, Alexandra Barratt, ‘ “In the Lowest Part of Our Need”: Julian and
Medieval Gynecological Writing’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of
Essays (New York and London, 1998), pp. 240–56.
73
Watson, ‘Composition’.
23
nor rejecting these cultural attitudes. Instead, he argues, they tended to iden-
tify with these attitudes and augment them ‘to the point where their author-
ised meaning undergoes basic shifts’.74 Watson has also pointed out that the
tradition within which Julian was writing was one which associated devotion
to the manhood of Christ with women, a tradition which she proceeds to
fully exploit in her writing. Watson bases his argument upon a passage in the
Short Text where the author documents her reluctance to relinquish her gaze
upon Christ hanging on the crucifix in favour of beholding God in his heaven
(ST, 55). In preferring devotion to the Son to contemplation of the Godhead,
according to Watson Julian ‘accepts the social models which define proper
female activity’ but does so in a way which fundamentally shifts or inverts
those models ‘by resisting the passivity and low prestige’ with which they are
associated in traditional socio-religious discourse.75 Such simultaneous
acceptance of social attitudes towards themselves as women and their con-
scious exploitation of the same prejudices was what enabled both Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich again to create an alternative and highly indi-
vidual space out of the point of slippage between these two positions from
which they could operate as writers and holy women and from which their
voices could be heard.
In this context, I am also highly endebted to the ground-breaking work of
Karma Lochrie whose identification of the ‘fissured flesh’ of the female mys-
tic and its provision of an Irigarayan ‘blind-spot’ in the eyes of patriarchy has
led to a reading of the writing of these women as also ‘fissured’.76 Thus she
has provided a framework for a reappraisal of the writings of the female mys-
tics generally – and Margery Kempe in particular – as contemporaneously
traditional and assimilative, radical and subversive, essentialist and con-
structionist. Lochrie has also illustrated that much of the difficulty that scholars
have had in coming to terms with these women has been because of the
distracting inclusion of the female body at the forefront of their texts, espe-
cially Margery Kempe’s Book. My own study would concur with Lochrie in
that it is the insistent presence of the female body in these texts which lends
them their authority and their alternative mystical access to what they per-
ceive as divine truth. However, I would add to Lochrie’s thesis by pointing
out that it is the slippage which emerges at the point of intersection between
what women were told about their own bodily experiences and their own
intimate experience of them which provides the main point of departure for
their writing. It is at this point of slippage that the text of the female mystic
becomes fully operational, and it is the constitution and effects of this result-
ant lacuna with which this book will therefore be primarily concerned.
74
Nicholas Watson, ‘ “Yf wommen be double naturelly”: Remaking “Woman” in Julian of
Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Exemplaria 8, 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 1–34.
75
Watson, ‘Remaking “Woman” ’, p. 7.
76
Lochrie, Translations.
24
INTRODUCTION
Following on from the work of these critical positions, this book therefore
aims to develop, refocus and indeed challenge many of the accepted attitudes
towards Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich and their texts and add to
the ongoing debate about their agency. It will not, however, comprise a com-
parative analysis. The tendency of commentators to engage in comparative
analyses of these two writers, as I have suggested, has usually left Margery
wanting as the hysterical, hyperbolic, noisy and undignified renegade who
fails to match up to the wisdom of the peaceful, serene woman of intellect
and dignity which Julian is generally perceived to be.77 My own placing of
Margery Kempe alongside Julian of Norwich is primarily one of conveni-
ence, therefore, in that they emerged from the same geographical and socio-
religious specificity of mercantile East Anglia, and were part of the same
chronology within the movement towards religious writing in the vernacu-
lar and a female-identified desire for imitatio Christi. More pertinently, how-
ever (and in contrast to the ubiquitous flowering of female mysticism
experienced in continental Europe during the high Middle Ages), they were
the first female visionaries of English provenance to leave their mark on late
medieval religious thinking since Christina of Markyate in the eleventh cen-
tury and were operating in the context of a very late and sudden flowering of
mysticism in England in the early fourteenth century which included the
Cloud author, Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton. Another reason, therefore, for
examining these writers alongside each other is that to my knowledge no
study of any depth has yet been completed which examines the commonal-
ities within the language and imagery of their writing in spite of the material
differences in the mode of production of the texts of both women. Another
purpose of this book is therefore to place these two women writers alongside
each other in a position of parity in order to illustrate how their generically
different texts nevertheless reflect the experiences of their originators as
women living within a specific socio-religious framework of belief systems
and as culturally gendered beings within that structure. In addition, and in
keeping with a prevalent trend in contemporary criticism, I will be referring
to both writers by their first names throughout, since this will serve also to
maintain some parity and balance in the face of a lack of information about
Julian of Norwich’s surname. Moreover, as Sarah Salih has recognised in
her own recent study of The Book of Margery Kempe which appears in her
book, Versions of Virginity,78 these texts invite a closeness and familiarity
between author and reader which justifies such a choice of nomenclature.
Indeed, in both cases, the distinction between author and narrative voice is
77
Again, see Knowles, The English Mystic Tradition, p. 146: ‘There existed quite clearly, and
from the beginning of her adult life, a large hysterical element in Margery’s personality.’
See also Robert K. Stone, Middle English Prose Style (The Hague and Paris, 1970),
pp. 155–6; Coleman, English Mystics, p. 175; Riehle, Middle English Mystics, pp. 27–31,
p. 96, pp. 102–3, p. 112, p. 116 for similar sentiments.
78
Salih, Versions of Virginity, p. 173.
25
actually a distinction between ‘the writing and written selves of autobiog-

raphy’79 and the line of demarcation is therefore blurred. Another advantage of
such an approach is that by placing them alongside each other as equal and
virtually unique representatives of a highly rich and varied mystical tradition
which was emerging in England, is to maximise on the potential of the female
body to render up discourses which can be employed to explicate the unfath-
omability of the mystical experience. Similarly, a resistance to comparison
will facilitate a greater understanding of the potential of that body to provide
a means towards female empowerment and its articulation, as demonstrated
by both writers in their own independent attempts to authorise their texts.
Again in the words of Roper, ‘since we are our bodies (more so than we like
to admit), bodily symbolism belongs to the deepest religious tools we have. It
can convey what we find impossible to put into words’.80
For purposes of my analysis and in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of com-
parative studies, the book will adhere to a tripartite structure, each section of
which focuses on a particular aspect of widespread, if not universal, female
experience which was subject to paradoxical and therefore problematic defin-
ition in the Middle Ages: motherhood, female sexuality and the public female
voice. Each of these three sections is further divided into two chapters, the first
of which examines the writing of Margery Kempe, the second of which looks
at Julian of Norwich. In this way I aim to prioritise theme over writer and cre-
ate an interwoven and yet parallel study of the ways in which both writers
made use of the discourses and imagery under examination, and in the longer
term draw some conclusions about the potential of the female body to provide
an effective hermeneutic for women writers and female mystics in particular.
These three main areas upon which I have chosen to concentrate, of course,
are by no means all that exist within these texts; they do, however, reflect
the most insistent of gynaecentric discourses present. Moreover, they are also
discourses which seem always to have occupied a space at the forefront
human consciousness re-emerging throughout world literature in such figures
as the good or bad mother, the harlot, the wise woman or her antithesis – the
witch. All three figures too have a history of reification and have been
worshipped and deified transtemporally and transculturally in a multiplicity
of ways within pre- and post-Christian religious systems.81 Within more
79
Salih, Versions of Virginity, p. 171.
80
81
For an interesting study of the religions which focused on a Mother Goddess figure see
Merlin Stone, The Paradise Papers (London, 1976). For the worship of the Goddess in
ancient Europe, see Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and
Cult Images (London, 1982) and The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden
Symbols of Western Civilization (San Francisco, 1989). For an account of the transformation
and assimilation of the Goddess by western Christianity, see Pamela Berger, The Goddess
Obscured: Transformations of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint (Hale, 1988). For a
detailed overview of the process whereby the goddess worship became suppressed and
transformed under patriarchy, see Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford, 1986).
26
INTRODUCTION
patriarchal systems, of course, they continued to occupy a position at the fore-

front of consciousness, but gradually became subject to proscription and con-
trol. This is particularly well represented in western mythological and
Christian systems by the transformation of the transcendent goddess into the
figure of transgressive Eve, in whom the once-honoured concepts of mother-
hood, sexuality and desire for knowledge become problematised – demonised
even – as the expression of human sinfulness and abjection. I will therefore
suggest that, despite their being scapegoated by traditional patriarchal think-
ing, these areas of experience which were identifiably female were not always
conceived as negative by the women themselves. Even whilst appearing to con-
form to social paradigms, both Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich demon-
strate that it was also possible for a woman to define her own notion of
femaleness and reassess (and cause others to reassess) the appropriateness of her
own behaviour, both as an individual and as part of a corporate Christian body.
Finally, by examining the ways in which both writers make use of these
multilayered categories of women and their multiple possibilities in their
texts, it is possible to extrapolate some conclusions about the extent to which
they are successful in resolving the tension between society’s expectations of
them as products of the male imagination, and their own lived experiences as
women and as writers. Not only, therefore, is this an examination of the ways
in which two women writers insist upon the importance of the female as part
of the human condition, it is a study of how they reconstruct the female body
in their own image and imbue it with lasting authority. Ultimately then, it is
an examination of their redemption of Eve.
27
SMM5-Chapter 1.qxd 4/27/04 5:04 PM Page 28
Motherhood and Margery Kempe
The history of medieval women, then, is in part a history of the constraints of

economic disadvantage, familial duty, and prescribed social roles. But it is also
in part a history of women’s agency within and against these constraints.1
Writing these words in the context of her investigation into the lives of
medieval women, Judith Bennett could indeed have been referring specifi-
cally to Margery Kempe,2 whose book has been ploughed endlessly as a
rich source of information for historians, theologians, literary critics and
even psychologists since the rediscovery of the only extant manuscript in
1934. Bennett’s findings have suggested that medieval women – of whom
Margery Kempe is perhaps one of the best documented – were frequently
able to search out and appropriate a myriad of ways of functioning more
comfortably within a society which imposed the ‘pressures of patriarchal
oppression’ upon them.3 Concurring with Bynum on this issue, Bennett
asserts that women’s lives were subject to a central paradox which arose
out of contrary expectations of them imposed by society and the Church.
According to Bennett, however, such a paradox ‘both shaped the lives of
medieval women and allowed medieval women themselves to shape, to
some extent, the content of their own experiences’.4 Bennett’s analysis here
may be productively considered in conjunction with the theoretical stand-
point of contemporary gender theorist, Judith Butler, who, in her radical
critique of the notion of fixed gender identity, promotes the concept of gen-
der as ‘performative’,5 that is to say, it constitutes a series of performed
1
Judith M. Bennett, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jean, F. O’Barr, B. Anne Vilen and Sarah Westphal-
Wihl (eds), Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 1989), p. 6.
2
Elsewhere, Bennett refers to Margery Kempe’s religious conversion as ‘a bold and indi-
vidualistic step’ which Margery takes in order to regain some of the status lost to her dur-
ing her marriage (Judith M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender
and Household in Brigstock before the Plague (Oxford and New York, 1989), p. 188).
3
Bennett et al., Sisters and Workers, p. 6.
4
Bennett et al., Sisters and Workers, pp. 10–11.
5
On this see Butler, Gender Trouble, especially pp. 24–5, 33, 115 and 134–41. Butler’s theory
of the performativity of gender and injurious language is something which she develops
further in a later volume: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York and
London, 1997).
28
MOTHERHOOD AND MARGERY
acts or enactments which, although suggestive of a gendered ‘essence’ or

‘core’, are nevertheless no more than mere inscription upon the surface of
the body:
[A]cts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or sub-
stance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of sig-
nifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of
identity as a cause. Such acts gestures, enactments, generally construed, are
performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise
purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through
corporeal signs and other discursive means.6
Such an approach to gender can prove most useful for helping us to arrive at
an understanding of some of the ways in which medieval women such as
Margery Kempe were able to negotiate with their bodies the restrictive hegem-
ony of gendered identity and, through redefinition and recontextualised per-
fomances of that identity, manoeuvre themselves into a position which
offered them a little more freedom for self-expression.7
Of course, such a claim for Margery Kempe would suggest considerable
agency on her part, both in her life and in her writing, something about which
commentators so far have failed to agree.8 David Hirsch, for example, has
argued that Margery’s book was not simply dictated by her, but that the second
scribe took on a major authorial role in the work’s creation, thus rendering the
Book an effort of major collaboration.9 Hirsch, however, does also concur that ‘if
the scribe did influence the language, he did not control it’.10 David Aers, on the
other hand, has questioned the plausibility – even the possibility – of such
female empowerment within late medieval culture, speculating that a use of the
feminine – and the maternal in particular – in women’s writing, far from being
subversive, merely served to echo and perpetuate what he terms a ‘divinization
of maternity as the essence of “woman” ’.11 For Aers, women such as Margery
Kempe and Julian of Norwich were only ever operating within ‘specific discur-
sive regimes with specific technologies of power’,12 in themselves hegemonic
influences which they were wholly unable to escape. Whilst acknowledging the
6
Bulter, Gender Trouble, p. 136.
7
For a useful examination of Margery’s body as the site of performance see Denis
Renevey, ‘Margery’s Performing Body: The Translation of Late Medieval Discursive
Religious Practices’, in Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing Religious
Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England (Cardiff, 2000),
pp. 197–216.
8
The case for Margery’s literary autonomy will be assessed fully in Chapter 5.
9
John C. Hirsch, ‘Author and Scribe in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Medium Aevum 44
(1975), pp. 245–50.
10
John C. Hirsch, The Revelations of Margery Kempe, Medieval and Renaissance Authors 10
(Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne, 1988), p. 43.
11
David Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ: Reflections on Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of
Love’, in Aers and Staley, The Powers of the Holy, pp. 77–104 (p. 35).
12
Aers and Staley, Powers of the Holy, p. 35.
29
socio-cultural limitations imposed upon both men and women by these discur-
sive regimes, nevertheless cultural discourses concerning the female body and
the feminine may well have been received differently by women (who were in
possession of that body) from men (for whom it remained a representation of
‘otherness’). If the female body, albeit one constructed by cultural narratives and
mediated by systems of patriarchal power, was what was ‘known’ and ‘experi-
enced’ by the woman, then regardless of the origins of that construction, it could
present her with an experiential ‘authority’ or ‘knowledge’ of that body which
was ultimately unavailable to men. Thus, the point of slippage between what
she was told and what she knew (or considered she knew) could reconstruct her
body as location of contested meanings which could then be filtered and manipu-
lated expediently by the woman herself for her own purposes.
Another critic who addresses this site of contested meanings is Lynn Staley,
who interprets Margery Kempe as a skilful writer who treats her protagonist,
Margery, as a fictional character and in so doing promotes the Book as an acerbic
social commentary.13 Whilst Staley’s approach is probably one of the more
helpful to date in its examination of Margery Kempe’s text as an organised
and highly conscious construction and has served to restore to its author some
kind of gravitas as a writer, it also largely fails to acknowledge the fact that
much of Margery’s spiritual development is clearly founded on the physical
experiences of being a wife and a mother within a gender-conscious society
and on the recontextualisation of those experiences to support an insistent reli-
gious calling. This chapter, therefore, will examine the extent to which
Margery Kempe’s progress towards her goal of spiritual perfection – what she
herself identifies as ‘þe wey of euyrlestyng lyfe’ (11) – can be traced though an
analysis of the variety of ways in which she redefines and re-employs the
socially prescribed roles of wife and mother, both in her documented life and
in her text. It will also examine how such a redefinition serves to transform
these concepts from ones which initially threaten to keep her from her calling
into a form of agency, both in her life as she chooses to represent it and in her
writing. In particular, it will demonstrate how Margery continually draws
upon both ideological and experiential discourses of motherhood in a variety
of ways, exploiting the potential they hold for female empowerment and thus
facilitating her own occupation of her preferred subject positions of holy
woman and spiritual mother to the whole world.
The Motherhood Hermeneutic
According to contemporary critic and philosopher, Julia Kristeva, who has

done much in recent years to reidentify the concept of motherhood as central
13
Staley, Dissenting Fictions.
30
to human experience, maternity provides a figurative grid or matrix which

facilitates an analysis of its contribution to symbolic functioning.14 For Kristeva,
although motherhood remains the foundation upon which the repression of
women has been built, yet maternity is also the unspoken foundation to all
social and signifying relations and a ‘source of archaic jouissance’.15 Within
this paradigm, she regards the shared location of mother and child during
gestation as the site of a primary symbiotic relationship, a process without a
subject which lies ultimately outside patriarchal influence because of that
absence of subjectivity. Instead, the influence of the symbolic is imposed
upon the mother herself as reification of the process going on within her. At
this stage too, for Kristeva the body of mother and child are initially indis-
tinguishable: changes, growth and development take place internally and
invisibly and, for Kristeva this constitutes a site of slippage and source of the
semiotic – what she terms the chora16 – which can also bring pressure to bear
and ultimately disrupt the patriarchal hegemony which dictates the sym-
bolic. Similarly, she identifies this ‘pre-Oedipal mother’ as both masculine
and feminine, something which helps her to escape the trap of essentialist
thinking, since in pre-Oedipality the binary opposition between masculine
and feminine, male and female simply does not exist. In this way, she reinforces
the power of the semiotic to render up a discourse which proceeds to disrupt
traditional gender binaries.
Kristeva’s analysis of motherhood in these terms, which she undertakes
primarily via analysis of the figure of the Virgin Mary, remains controversial.
However, the semiotic possibilities offered by the pre-Oedipal mother in par-
ticular, can be helpful for a study of the marginalised medieval woman such
as Margery Kempe. Both central to her own community as daughter of an
influential local politician, wife to a wealthy merchant and mother to four-
teen children, and yet occupying the margins because of her refusal to oper-
ate conventionally within society’s rules for daughters, wives and mothers,
like Kristeva, Margery recognises both the semiotic and the performative pos-
sibilities of occupying both these discursive sites simultaneously. Not only
can motherhood be recontextualised and performed at will, both physically
and rhetorically (and thus constituting a strategic invocation of the language
14
For a contemporary theoretical approach to the influence of the image of the Virgin upon
socio-religious attitudes towards motherhood, see Kristeva, ‘Stabat Mater’. For a com-
mentary on Kristeva’s theories of motherhood see Elizabeth Grosz, Sexual Subversions:
Three French Feminists (Sydney, 1989), pp. 78–85.
15
Grosz, Sexual Subversions, p. 81.
16
According to Kristeva, once the subject emerges into the Symbolic Order (the product of
the male Imaginary), the chora will be subject to various degrees of repression and
remains only within language in the form of contradiction, meaninglessness, disruption,
silence and absence. See also Toril Moi, who, interpreting Kristeva’s theories, defines the
chora as ‘a rhythmic pulsion . . . [which] constitutes . . . the heterogeneous disruptive
dimension of language, that which can never be caught up in the closure of traditional
linguistic theory’. Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, p. 162.
31
of the symbolic), but it also provides an access to the semiotic which is par-
ticularly suitable for reaching a female-focused understanding of God.17 For
Margery, as I will argue, this language of the semiotic emerges as a primary
agent of self-expression and empowerment, as well as providing a means of
disrupting those ideologies which would keep her from her calling and modi-
fying those which encouraged that same vocation.
In spite of the importance of motherhood in this text, however, overt refer-
ences to Margery’s experiences of childbirth and maternity are documented
only sketchily by her – ostensibly as background material to enable us to fol-
low her on her path from worldliness to holiness. For example, her narrative
informs us of how, after a difficult first delivery, she continued to have thirteen
more children before being able to negotiate a vow of chastity with her
husband which would enable her to travel the road to perfection to which she
felt she had been called. Far from being integral to the story, however, specific
allusions to her own children, who under normal circumstances would have
been expected to have taken up a great deal of her time and energy,18 are iso-
lated and tantalising in their lack of concrete detail. Surprisingly too, in view
of how frequent an activity it must have been, she chooses to tell us nothing of
her continual childbearing and childrearing, and the domestic details which
one would suppose to have been entirely engrossing in the life of a woman
such as Margery are almost entirely absent from her text. The fact that such
details are not included in her treatise suggests several things to the reader.
Firstly, Margery Kempe did not deem the minutiae of the lives of her children
and her rearing of them relevant to her literary purpose, which was essentially
to provide a spiritual (auto)biography demonstrating her personal growth
towards the love and mercy of God as an example ‘for synful wrecchys, wherin
þei may haue gret solas and comfort to hem and vndyrstondyn þe hy &
vnspecabyl mercy of ower souereyn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu’ (1). Secondly, she
17
In this context, Karma Lochrie identifies the flesh of the mystic as itself ‘fissured’ and,
therefore, as a site of disruption. This she relates to the semiotics of the suffering female
body which also appear prevalently in the female mystical experience, and that of
Margery Kempe in particular (Lochrie, Translations, pp. 13–55).
18
On those maternal duties carried out by mothers amongst the wealthier urban classes,
see Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London, 2001, repr. 2003),
pp. 57–60. Here Orme demonstrates how women within this particular social stra-
tum would have had a solid support structure of servants to assist in the childrearing or to
carry out basic household tasks, at the very least. This is probably what Margery is refer-
ring to when she mentions ‘hir maydens’ and ‘hir meny’ in her first chapter (pp. 7 and
8). See also Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood
in History (Oxford, 1993), especially pp. 68–88, for the description of a child’s daily rou-
tine. Hanawalt also argues for the mother as primary parent (p. 94), which presumably
implies that the responsibility for the daily overseeing of their tasks or those of their
carers would have been hers. For an account of a mother’s responsibility for her children in
a wider context, see Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New
York, 1992), pp. 115–16. For a history of the Church’s attitude towards childhood
see Diana Wood (ed.), The Church and Childhood, Studies in Church History, vol. 31
(Oxford, 1994).
32
is far more concerned with the implications of her early contamination by the
sins of vanity, pride, covetousness and lechery to which she fell prey as a
young wife and mother, rather than providing a literal representation of an
adherence to the more socially acceptable role of mother to fourteen children.
What the absence of these details suggests primarily, however, is not that
Margery was merely intent on suppressing material which detracted from her
self-representation in the Book as holy woman, but that as author she is highly
selective in the material she chooses to include in a narrative which is far more
orderly, premeditated and structured than has often been considered.19 For this
reason, when domestic and maternal specificities are documented in the
text, they take on special emphasis and serve not merely as contextual autobio-
graphical material but as points of reference for the establishment of a series of
powerful hermeneutics which will continue to surface at strategic points
within the narrative. Such hermeneutics, in turn, will serve to uncover the
cracks in the controlled façade of the dominant patriarchal socio-religious
order in which Margery is operating, and allow for an unmediated glimpse of
the underlying chaos beneath its fragile surface – a chaos which is eminently
ripe for exploitation by Margery, both as holy woman and as author.
Margery Kempe’s Children as Structural Cohesion
In spite of the rarity of specific allusion to Margery’s domestic roles as wife

and mother in her text, it can be of no small importance that the only extended
allusions to individual children occupy parallel places of privilege in the
Book’s narrative structure. The initial chapter of both Book 1 and Book 2 is
characterised by the representation of a child, both accounts then assuming
pivotal positions in the narrative. The account in Book 1 documents the birth
of Margery’s first child, and Book 2 the return of a prodigal, renegade adult
son whom she struggles to convert to a life of goodness and temperance.20
19
This, of course, is the line of argument pursued by Staley in Dissenting Fictions. For a
more recent argument for the Book as a highly sophisticated and crafted production see
Samuel Fanous, ‘Measuring the Pilgrim’s Progress: Internal Emphases in The Book of
Margery Kempe’, in Renevey and Whitehead, Writing Religious Women, pp. 157–76.
Fanous, however, considers much of the Book’s organisation to be attributable to the
influence of Margery’s scribe – something which I will contest in Chapter 5.
20
It is now widely considered that this adult son of Margery’s, who was married to a
German woman and who lived in Germany for a time, was also her first amanuensis
whose script ‘was so euel wretyn’ and ‘neiþyr good Englysch ne Dewch’ (4). Sanford
Brown Meech introduces this possibility in his Introduction, pp. vii–viii, but in note 4/4
on p. 257 indicates that it is unlikely. Knowles, however, is more favourable to the idea
because of the confusion between English and German which characterised the work of
the first scribe, The English Mystical Tradition, pp. 14–17. Watson also considers Margery’s
son to be the probable first scribe, something he has argued in an unpublished paper
delivered at the University of Wales conference, Virile Women, Consuming Men: Gender
and Monstrous Appetites in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, at Gregynog in April 2000.
33
Considering their absence elsewhere in the text, the dramatic entrance of both
of these children at these key points constitutes a strategic engagement with
the discourse of maternity, an engagement which here serves a purpose out-
side that of mere narrative and evidences potentialities within a maternal sub-
jectivity to offer support and authority to Margery’s chosen vocation as holy
woman of God.
Margery Kempe’s description of her first pregnancy at the beginning of
Book 1, occurring almost immediately after her marriage to John Kempe ‘as
kynde wolde’ (6), serves initially to underscore most poignantly the changes
that marriage and maternity necessarily brought about in the life of a young
woman, and their ability to impose upon her a new bewildering and ambigu-
ous identity.21 Within months of marriage, for example, Margery’s life is trans-
formed from eligible young woman who ‘was comyn of worthy kendred’ (9)
to pregnant wife who ‘labowrd wyth grett accessys’ (6) throughout her preg-
nancy, the experience of which, along with what she euphemistically refers to
as ‘labowr sche had in chyldyng’ (6), causes her to despair of her life. It is at
this point that Margery first alludes to a great sin she was harbouring in her
conscience at this time (‘sche had a thyng in conscyens whech sche had neuyr
schewyd beforn þat tyme in alle hyr lyfe’; 6–7), which, in spite of her own
attempt at expiating it by means of the ascetic practices of ‘greet penawns in
fastyng bred & watyr & oþer dedys of almes wyth devowt preyers’, without
actual confession she felt the devil assailing her regularly, telling her ‘þat sche
schuld be dampnyd, for sche was not schreuyn of þat defawt’ (7). Appearing
where it does at the very start of the narrative and included within the account
of her marriage, immediate conception, pregnancy and labour, it is generally
considered that Margery’s sin is of a sexual nature.22 This supposition is sup-
ported, of course, by the fact that throughout the Book Margery continues to
21
Sheila Delany discusses the effects of marriage upon the Wife of Bath and Margery
Kempe in ‘Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe’,
in Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson (eds), Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature:
The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London, 1994), pp. 72–87. For discussions of a woman’s
role within marriage see also Shahar, The Fourth Estate, pp. 65–125 and pp. 177–83. See
also Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, pp. 115–16. For a recent examin-
ation of Margery’s changing role and status within an esteemed family and mercantile
milieu see Michael D. Myers, ‘A Fictional-True Self: Margery Kempe and the Social
Reality of the Merchant Elite of King’s Lynn’, Albion 31, 3 (1999), pp. 375–94. For a
detailed full-length study of the Book as literary artefact and historical source see
Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and Her World (London, New York, Toronto etc.,
2002).
22
My interpretation here of the sexual nature of Margery’s guilt is based upon the fact that
she juxtaposes descriptions of her attempts to expiate her unconfessed sin and the
description of her desire not to have to endure John Kempe’s sexual advances any more
(11–12) alongside the account of a potentially adulterous liaison with a male acquaint-
ance (13–16). She appears to be using this incident as a type of confessional in the narra-
tive in order to expiate both this ‘sin’ and her earlier unconfessed one. Likewise, she
endures sexual torment later in her life when God withdraws his grace from her (144–6).
Here I concur with the reading of Weissman, ‘Hysterica Compassio’, p. 208.
34
be wracked periodically by sexual temptation, even as she approaches her old

age,23 an aspect of the Book which will be examined in more depth in the third
chapter of this volume. There is, however, some circumstantial external evi-
dence, as well as some internal pointers to suggest that Margery’s unspeakable
‘sin’ may, in fact, have been an early flirtation with heresy.24 William
Sawtre (whom Margery fails to mention in her writing) was the first heretic to
be burned in England in 1401, and had previously been a priest in Margery’s
own parish church and would probably have had some influence on her early
spiritual guidance and those irregular confessional practices to which she con-
fesses in her opening pages.25 In this instance, however, Margery never reveals
to her readers the specific nature of this sin, suggesting it is too painfully fun-
damental to be uncovered. Summoning her ‘gostly fadyr’ to hear what she
assumes is her final confession before death, she is on the brink of confessing
when the nature of the sin – or else, her articulation of it – brings a too hasty
rebuke from him, confirming to Margery her inherent wickedness and fall
from grace. As a result, she is silenced by his sharp censure and unable to pro-
ceed with her expiation.26 What follows is an agony of what many modern
critics like to identify as ‘post-partum psychosis’,27 or a range of other now
diagnosable psychological ailments.28 Margery herself, however, interprets it
23
In her essay, ‘From Woe to Weal and Weal to Woe: Notes on the Structure of The Book of
Margery Kempe’, in McEntire, Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, pp. 73–91 (p. 86), Timea K.
Szell examines Margery’s behaviour in terms of Freud’s concept of repetitive compul-
sion, ‘according to which one unconsciously “repeats” some version of a negative experi-
ence with the (unconscious) hope of mastering and appropriating it’. Such a reading
adds weight to the interpretation of Margery’s sin as sexual, particularly in the context
of her later sexual temptations.
24
This is something which has been suggested by Stephen Metcalf in The Later Middle Ages
(New York, 1981), pp. 116–17.
25
I will investigate the possible influence of the Lollard heresy upon Margery in Chapter 5.
26
For an illuminating examination of the power relationship between female penitent and
confessor see E. A. Petroff, ‘Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for
Dialogue’, in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford, 1994),
pp. 139–60. Also useful in this context is Janet Dillon, ‘Holy Women and Their Confessors
or Confessors and Their Holy Women?’, in Rosalynn Voaden (ed.), Prophets Abroad: The
Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 115–40.
For the importance of the confessor in shaping the subjectivity of the holy woman see
Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices, especially pp. 57–61.
27
Critics who place Margery’s suffering within this category include, for example, Julia
Bolton Holloway, ‘Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval England’, in
McEntire, Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, pp. 203–37 (p. 214); and Janet Wilson, ‘Margery
and Alisoun: Women on Top’, in the same volume, pp. 223–37 (p. 227). Maureen Fries
goes even further, describing Margery’s illness as ‘a painful and lengthy postpartum
depression (apparently at its unipolar manic phase)’, ‘Margery Kempe’, in Paul Szarmach
(ed.), An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany, 1984), pp. 217–35 (p. 219).
28
See in particular Mary Hardman Farley, ‘Her Own Creatur: Religion, Feminist Criticism,
and the Functional Eccentricity of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 11, 1 (1999), pp. 1–21.
Here Farley diagnoses Margery as a psychotic. However, in common with other com-
mentators keen to diagnose Margery’s illness, Farley is unable to overcome the problem
that modern diagnostic criteria are necessarily contaminated by cultural considerations.
See also Richard Lawes, ‘The Madness of Margery Kempe’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.),
35
as a punitive diabolical possession which continues for eight months ‘& odde
days’ (7), significantly almost the same length as a full-term pregnancy and
therefore an apt ‘punishment’ to fit a perceived ‘sin’ of concupiscence. The
depiction of her suffering at this time is graphically articulated in the text with
its documentation of consummate physical suffering and psychological despair:
Sche slawndred hir husbond, hir frendys, and her owyn self; sche spak
many a repreuows worde and many a schrewyd worde; sche knew no vertu
ne goodnesse; sche desyryd all wykkydnesse; lych as þe spyrytys temptyd
hir to sey & do sche seyd & dede. Sche wold a fordon hirself many a tym at
her steryngys & a ben damnyd wyth hem in Helle, & into wytnesse þerof
sche bot hir owen hand so vyolently þat it was seen al hir lyfe aftyr. And
also sche roof hir skyn on hir body ahen hir hert wyth hir nayles spetowsly,
for sche had noon oþer instrumentys, & wers sche wold a don saf sche was
bowndyn & kept wyth strength boþe day & nyght þat sche mygth not haue
hir wylle. (7–8)
The application of twentieth-century medical terminology to explain away

Margery’s suffering here is clearly too simplistic and anachronistic. Margery’s
suffering is not merely a result of an unfortunate post-partum pathology, as
many critics would have it. It is, in fact, brought about also by the failure of
the doubly privileged male and priestly authority of the confessor with his
critical ‘vndyrnemyn’ and ‘scharp repreuyng’ (7) of her for her sin. This man’s
inability to recognise and respond appropriately to Margery’s female predica-
ment leads her to sink into a madness which becomes, therefore, not only a
monstrous re-enactment of the traditionally female protestations of ‘hysteria’
and self-harm but, more importantly, a language of the suffering and
repressed female body which will be heard and responded to ultimately by
God himself. Margery’s suffering, therefore, constitutes a raging against the
world which stands between her and a desired subjectivity, and an acerbic cri-
tique of male ecclesiastic authority whose supposed ‘hot-line’ to God renders
her subject to its hegemonic judgements. It is, however, also a bodily articula-
tion of the unconfessed and sinful condition which has been deeply under-
scored by her transformation from virgin to wife to mother.29 Whatever her
The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Wales and Ireland, papers read at Charney
Manor, July 1999: Exeter Symposium 7 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 147–67 and his essay,
‘Psychological Disorder and the Autobiographical Impulse in Julian of Norwich,
Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve’, in Renevey and Whitehead, Writing Religious
Women, pp. 217–43. Lawes, a trained psychiatrist, brings to bear contemporary scientific
knowledge and diagnostic skills upon Margery’s self-representation. For an assessment
of Margery’s behaviour as symptomatic of ‘madness’ see also Stephen Harper, ‘ “So euyl
to rewlen”: Madness and Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Neuphilologische
Mitteilungen 98, 3 (1997), pp. 53–61.
29
For a summary of the teachings of the Church Fathers which influenced negative
medieval attitudes towards motherhood see Clarissa Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation:
Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 71–3. For a useful discussion of
36
piety before her marriage – and she does hint that she was devoted, albeit a
little insouciant about undertaking orthodox confession (‘(she) nedyd no con-
fessyon but don penawns be hirself aloone’; 7)30 – the transition into married
motherhood is represented as a hideous and isolating trauma for Margery,
symbolised in the text by the physical bonds which tie her up, the single room
to which she is confined and by the resounding silence in the narrative about
the presence of midwife or female relative who would have been expected to
help her through labour, delivery and lying-in.31 Thus, in her abject suffering,
the venial, sexually threatening presence of the devil becomes an anthropo-
morphic expression of the perceived sin she harbours within her and the
embodiment of her own sense of self as polluted, sexual being. Both literally
in her childbirth labour, and in her struggle with mental and physical collapse,
Margery labours to the point of death. In this way, birth and death become
inextricably linked at this early point in the text and, as a re-enactment of the
punishment imposed upon Eve as a result of her first transgression, mother-
hood necessarily carries with it the punitive subtext of damnation. The
implied correlation between the agonies of childbirth and the loss of
Margery’s virginal state at this point prefigure her later increasing anxiety
about the impediments they provide to her desired goal of living the holy life
and redeeming the primal sin of Eve. By Chapter 3, for example, Margery’s
narrative will be concerned with recounting her desire to live chastely with
her husband (including, presumably, the desire to bear no more children) and
with the expression of her disgust at her own enforced concupiscence:
And aftyr þis tyme sche had neuyr desyr to komown fleschly wyth hyre
husbonde, for þe dette of matrimony was so abhominabyl to hir þat sche
had leuar, hir thowt, etyn or drynkyn þe wose, þe mukke in þe chanel, þan
to consentyn to any fleschly comownyng saf only for obedyens. (11–12)
Even at this early stage, purity of body is something which Margery feels she
has lost because of her need to be obedient to the cultural expectations which
the medieval belief in the link between female sexual pleasure and conception see
Shahar, The Fourth Estate, p. 71. For an overview of the medical and anatomical theories
which supported these beliefs see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 93–7; and
Laqueur, Making Sex, pp. 99–103.
30
Again, this could present further evidence of early Lollard inclinations. According to
Lollard belief, oral confession to a priest was deemed to be of no value because forgive-
ness and remission remained the power of God alone. See, for example, the Westminster
Diocesan Archives record of the confession of Lollard Robert Cavell: ‘non est facienda
alicui sacerdoti sed soli Deo, qui solus peccata dimittit’ (it [confession] is not to be made
to any priest, but to God alone, who alone remits sins), as recorded in Norman Tanner
(ed.), Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich 1428–31 (London, 1977), p. 95.
31
On this practice, see Monica Green, ‘Women’s Medical Practice and Care in Medieval
Europe’, in Bennett et al., Sisters and Workers, p. 73. See also Shahar, Childhood in the Middle
Ages, p. 38. For a recent full-length study of childbirth ritual in Renaissance Italy see
Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New
Haven and London, 1999).
37
have dictated the course of her life so far. It would appear that any possibility
of a life as a virgin has been consumed by marriage, and the birth of this first
child testifies materially to that loss.
Thus, the birth itself and its aftermath are characterised by visions of dev-
ils and attempts at self-destruction. Such is the violence of her possession that
Margery scarifies her own body, creating the ‘stigmata’ on her hand which
she will wear permanently as a testimony to her own ‘Christic’ suffering, and
rends the flesh over her heart with her fingernails. Examined in this way,
Margery’s suffering cannot be anachronistically dismissed as ‘hysteria’ or
‘psychosis’ or even in the patronisingly sympathetic terms employed by
those commentators who do not entirely dismiss her suffering outright.32
Instead, it can be viewed as an early attempt to uncover a hermeneutic in
order to transcend the suffering and find a meaning within the pain.
Motherhood has effectively separated her from her family, her friends, from
her child, from herself and from God, and appropriately it is Christ who
recognises her abandonment and chooses a moment in her physical isolation
to reveal himself to her.
[O]wyr mercyful Lord Crist Ihesu, euyr to be trostyd, worshypd be hys

name, neuyr forsakyng hys seruawant in tyme of nede, aperyd to hys
creatur whych had forsakyn hym in lyknesse of a man, most semly, most
bewtyuows, & most amyable þat euyr myght be seen wyth mannys eye,
clad in a mantyl of purpyl sylke, syttyng upon hir beddys syde, lokyng vpon
hir wyth so blyssyd a chere þat sche was strengthyd in all hir spyritys. (8)
This appearance of Christ to Margery in her abject suffering therefore serves

to stabilise her in that it offers an exit-route from the prison in which she finds
herself, provides her with a substitute husband who will remain constant in
her times of need, and offers her not only the possibility of redemption but
also engagement with a more satisfactory friend, father and beloved spouse.
In effect, Christ is offering Margery a chance of rebirth as virgin and lover of
God. Thus, in this moment of physical and spiritual healing, the bonds begin
to fall away and an alternative modus vivendi begins to open up before her.
32
See in particular Anthony Goodman, ‘The Piety of John Brunham’s Daughter of Lynn’,
in Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 347–58, particularly
pp. 351–3 in which he uses negatively weighted language to describe Margery’s early
experiences as a wife and mother, presenting her in terms of a failure in both contexts. For
Goodman, too, Margery’s experiences are demonstrative of a ‘mental banality’ (p. 350).
More recently, he has modified this stance somewhat, although he still considers that a
‘temptation nowadays would be to put the Margery of The Book on the couch or in the
surgery’ (Margery Kempe and Her World, p. 5). See also Knowles, The English Mystical
Tradition, pp. 142–4, for a discussion of what he regards to be Margery’s ‘neurosis’, and
Harper, ‘ “ So Euyl to Rewlyn”: Madness and Authority’, who designates Margery ‘genu-
ine madwoman’ (p. 56). Pre-eminent amongst such critics, however, is probably
Donald R. Howard who describes Margery as ‘quite mad, an incurable hysteric with a
large paranoid trend’, in Writers and Pilgrims (Berkeley, 1980), p. 35.
38
As soon as John Kempe returns, Margery demands from him the keys to ‘þe
botery’ – that symbol of the female domestic sphere33 – and in doing so pre-
sents to her readers the image of a healed and reborn self embarking on a new
journey, and to her husband and household a freshly restored appearance of
conformity which is performed ‘wysly & sadly jnow’ (9).
In this context then – and in the light of Bennett’s assertion of women’s
agency within or against hegemonic constraints with which this chapter
began – Margery’s return to the domestic sphere and apparent social conform-
ity can be read as the initialisation of a process of recontextualisation of for-
mer constraints and a recognition of their ability to yield up for her an
alternative way of proceeding. In Butlerian terms, it heralds the beginning of
an active reappropriation and self-conscious performance of those socially
prescribed roles to which she is evidently less than fully committed, a per-
formance which will eventually re-emerge as primary strategy and
hermeneutic in her text. In this sense, Margery recognises that the endlessly
‘stylised repetition of acts’ which constitute wifehood and motherhood can
house the potential for a subversion of patriarchal hegemony in their embodi-
ment of a myriad of ‘performative possibilities for proliferating gender con-
figurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination’.34 She
also sees the potential, however, of appearing to work within those frames –
in her adoption of a high-profile affective piety, for example, and imitation of
the Virgin, both approved religious practices at the time when Margery was
operating, as I will demonstrate below. This reappropriation and performa-
tive reconfiguration of wifely and motherly duty is something which is soon
endorsed by Christ in her account of a subsequent vision and which the critic
Hope Phyllis Weissman has defined in suitably maternalistic terms as ‘at
once an Annunciation and a Nativity, marking the birth of Christ in
Margery’s soul’.35 This time, Christ appears to Margery in the chapel of Saint
John in the Church of Saint Margaret in Lynn on the Friday before Christmas.
Having first ‘rauysched hir spyryt’ (16) he offers her eternal absolution for
her sins and confirms the way forward for her which was opened up during
his first appearance: ‘I . . . forheve þe þi synnes to þe vtterest poynt . . . for I
am þi loue & shal be þi loue wythowtyn ende’ (16–17). As Weissman has also
suggested, this absolution is not only for the sins of Margery’s life, both past
and contemporary, but also for that sin which has caused her most despair,
the sin which the Church had taught her was the result of being a woman and
a daughter of Eve: ‘Margery’s old sin within her life is the Original Sin within
Eve’s, and it is Eve’s curse, the pains of childbirth, which compels Margery’s
33
See Martha C. Howell, Woman, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago,
1986), p. 11. For a discussion of the duties of the manorial housewife which would have
been replicated by an urban housewife of the upper bourgeoisie such as Margery, see
Eileen Power, Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1975), p. 46.
34
35
Weissman, ‘Hysterica Compassio’, p. 209.
39
acknowledgement of the sin which is woman’s eternal reproach’.36 Without

the absolution of Christ, this sin is essentially inescapable and unforgivable,
occupying as it does a position at the core of Margery’s persistent anxieties
pertaining to wifehood, motherhood and sexual activity. Christ now offers
her the opportunity to ease the burden of Eve’s sin by giving her ‘an hayr in
þin hert þat schal lyke me mych bettyr þan alle þe hayres in þe world’ (17),
and in so doing, bestows upon her the gift of tears which will forever link her
with the Virgin Mother of the Mater Dolorosa paradigm37 and the tears of the
penitent whore, Mary Magdalene, both of whom will become primary role-
models for Margery in her text.38 By means of such an identification, albeit a
conventional one, Margery Kempe manipulates the irrevocability of her own
motherhood and loss of virginity to create for herself a means towards self-
empowerment within a socio-religious hegemony which is also intent on
frustrating her desire for autonomy. Following this endorsement by Christ,
therefore, Margery is ‘reborn’ to herself and to God and, in effect, emerges
from her own rent and fissured body into the arms of her loving father and
spouse – Christ. The curse of Eve which we saw Margery re-enacting in the
Book’s opening sequence and which she is destined to revisit in the birth of
another thirteen children, thus heralds her own rebirth as Mary, Mother of
God, whose path she will increasingly follow in an insistent expression of an
imitatio Mariae.
Margery Kempe’s representation of one of her adult children at the begin-
ning of Book 2 serves similarly as a powerful narrative device and creates a
strategic structural balance within the text. The account of a fractured rela-
tionship with an adult son has much in common with that of the Prodigal Son
in the New Testament,39 and it is highly likely that Margery is fully exploit-
ing a genre of storytelling best illustrated by Christ himself during his min-
istry. There is little or no evidence to suggest that this transgressive son is the
aforementioned firstborn of Margery, but parallels between the two narra-
tives are nevertheless drawn by the privileged position each one takes up in
the text, a position which in both cases categorically inscribes upon Margery
a definitive subjectivity as mother. In both accounts too the relationship
between mother and child is an ambivalent one, the child being the cause of
much suffering for the mother. Similarly, both narratives depict a major rup-
ture in the mother–child relationship, the first arising from Margery’s implied
36
Weissman, ‘Hysterica Compassio’, p. 208.
37
Weissman, ‘Hysterica Compassio’, pp. 209–10. Atkinson examines the conventional trope
of maternal tears in The Oldest Vocation, pp. 106 and 144–93. For a discussion of Margery’s
tears as representative of her power and her link with the Other, see Dhira B. Mahoney,
‘Margery Kempe’s Tears and the Power over Language’, in McEntire, Margery Kempe: A
Book of Essays, pp. 37–50.
38
Margery’s imitation of Mary Magdalene will be examined in detail in Chapter 3 of this
volume.
39
Luke 15: 11–32.
40
inability to care for her child for over eight months, as we have seen, the sec-
ond because the son actively avoids what he evidently considers to be a pro-
scriptive mother, preferring to live his own life as a merchant in ‘þe perellys
of þis wretchyd & vnstabyl worlde’ (221). This son’s dissolute living is a
source of much concern to Margery who constantly seeks him out to advise
him ‘to leeuyn þe worlde & folwyn Crist’ (221). Margery documents his
angry reaction to the advice she proffers that he repent and alter his way of
life and, in a brief description of an encounter between them, the anger of
both mother and son lurks palpably beneath the surface of the narrative,
reflecting a very human relationship within the topos of the parabolic story.
Hers is not the passive patience of Luke’s patriarch, however. Margery is con-
vinced of the need for a forceful and proactive persuasive technique and we
feel her sense of urgency as she refuses to relinquish her son to the terrors of
purgatory from where his soul will be far more difficult to extricate. There is
a forceful, almost parodic emphasis placed upon on Margery’s repeated
efforts to dissuade her son from his course of action. It is an effort which she
has performed ‘many tymys’, but nevertheless she takes it upon herself to
speak to him ‘ageyn þat he xulde fle þe perellys of þis world & not settyn hys
stody ne hys besynes so mech þerupon as he dede’ (221). As a result, her son
continually flees her company in an ironic reversal of what she desires him to
do, which is to embrace her counsel and to abjure temptation and sinful prac-
tices. At this point we recognise a complete breakdown in the mother–son
relationship and a setting up of a filial antagonism in its place. Nevertheless,
this mother will not relinquish her influence easily, spurred on as she is by
maternal love and a recollection of Christ’s words to her in her youth:
‘ “Dowtyr, þer is no so synful man in erth leuyng, yf he wyl forsake hys synne
& don aftyr þi cownsel, swech grace as þu behestyst hym I wyl confermyn
for þi lofe” ’ (23).
Margery’s desire to influence her son in this episode, of course, conforms
wholly to a religious and maternal duty as laid down by the Church in its
teachings on the seven spiritual works of mercy and the activities of mother-
ing, in particular.40 These activities – teaching, preaching, chastising, consol-
ing, advising, praying for enemies, and patient suffering – were common
patterns of behaviour within the cloister, but were also taught to the faithful
laity during the later Middle Ages.41 However, whilst acceptable within the
convents, such modes of behaviour were often suspect when observed in lay-
women within the public domain, in spite of the fact that they would seem to
40
On a mother’s spiritual duty to her children, see Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 157
and 204. See also Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, pp. 205–6, 116 and 171–2.
41
For this observation I am grateful to an unpublished paper by Mary Beth Davis,
‘Margery Kempe, the Spoken Word and the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy’, as deli-
vered at the Gender and Medieval Studies conference, Gender and Space in the Middle Ages,
held at the University of East Anglia in January 1997.
41
be paradigmatic of those practices performed by a mother bringing up her

children in the private, domestic sphere. To bring a child to maturity, a
mother would spend much of her time teaching life and domestic skills,
preaching to a child about dangers and modes of behaviour, chastising mis-
demeanours, consoling when hurt or unwell, offering the benefit of experi-
ence, exercising patience and praying for their safe delivery into adulthood.42
The Church’s teachings on these patterns of behaviour within a religious con-
text would, no doubt, have had the effect of impressing further the import-
ance of maternal responsibilities upon women such as Margery. More
importantly, however, they would serve to forge closer links between the
world of the maternal and the religious, in keeping with the Pauline edict:
‘(Woman) shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and
love and sanctification with sobriety’.43
In this way, Margery Kempe’s worldly ministry, undertaken in fulfilment
of Christ’s will, can be regarded as merely a development of those mother-
hood activities (which were, of course, in themselves part of a hegemonic
imperative) which she would have spent most of her domestic life as a
mother undertaking in any case. If we examine the dissension between
Margery and her son in this context, we can see that Margery’s response to
his misdemeanours is therefore twofold. She is the anxious mother of the
domestic sphere who feels that her guidance has been insufficient and who
must now take responsibility for altering his aberrant behaviour; she is also
the holy woman, chosen spokesperson of Christ and spouse to the Godhead
who must redeem the fallen young man along with the rest of humanity,
of which he constitutes a symbol. Whilst it can be argued that both roles
are identifiably orthodox and conventional within the medieval socio-
religious context, for a woman to occupy both sites simultaneously disrupts
their orthodoxy and constitutes a site of slippage within which she can fash-
ion for herself a subjectivity which emulates that of the Virgin herself.
Significantly, here, however, it is the experienced, worldly mother who takes
control and there are traces in the text of only partly restrained retrospective
anger as years later she recounts to her amanuensis her words of reproof to
her son:
‘Now sithyn þu wil not leeuyn þe world at my cownsel, I charge þe at my

blissyng kepe þi body klene at þe lest fro womanys feleschep tyl þu take a
wyfe aftyr þe lawe of þe Chirche. And, hyf þu do not, I pray God chastise þe
& ponysch þe þerfor.’ (222)
Bearing more resemblance to a curse than the firm motherly warning she
would have us believe she offers, Margery’s words here are problematic and
42
Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, pp. 113–14 and 116.
43
1 Timothy 2: 15.
42
unstable if we accept them at surface value. When her son does indeed become
sick, disfigured by an illness which resembles leprosy, and which causes him
to be dismissed from his employment, it seems to the reader as if the holy
mother has been abusing her privileged power in a quasi-diabolical way.
Margery’s neighbours are equally disturbed by her actions towards her son
and consider his punishment to be a result of an invocation of evil by
Margery. More poignantly, the son himself is convinced that his illness is a
result of his mother’s cursing of him, signifying not only a protracted rupture
in their relationship but the risks she is taking by occupying such an unsta-
ble and disruptively multiple subject position. Margery, however, will not
show compassion until the son shows himself to be contrite. On one level we
are privy to one of the mini-dramas of ordinary domestic life re-enacted
before us – and in a household of fourteen children there must, indeed, have
been many. This tale therefore provides an engaging example of Margery
Kempe’s ability to universalise the personal and to personalise the universal
in her text, often by means of the seemingly more mundane and prosaic
aspects of existence. Representing herself here both as clichéd nagging
mother, and as divine agent, she simultaneously places herself back within
the domestic sphere whilst inserting herself into sacred history. She is at once
Margery the earthly mother, parabolic parent of Christ’s own exemplary nar-
rative, and spiritual mother to the entire world – in essence, the neo-Virgin
Mary. When her son does return to her, having found no other remedy for his
illness, we witness no cathartic mother–son reunion, however. Instead,
Margery documents it in terms of the sinner begging for the intercession of
Mary, Mother of God, thus subtly including a subliminal and personal vindi-
cation into her own narrative:
So at þe last, whan he sey non oþer bote, he cam to hys modyr, tellyng
hir of hys mysgouernawns, promittyng he xulde ben obedient to God & to
hir & to amende hys defawte thorw þe help of god enchewyng al mysgouer-
nawnce fro þat tyme forward vpon hys power. He preyid hys modyr of hir
blissyng, & specialy he preyd hir to prey for hym þat owr Lord of hys hy
mercy wolde forheuyn hym þat he had trespasyd & takyn awey þat gret
sekenes for whech men fleddyn hys company & hys felaschep as for a lepyr.
(222)
Significantly here, Margery demonstrates how maternal and Marian skills

can work towards salvation and make a difference before the Day of Judgment.
In so doing, she asserts the potential of the mother as agent of redemption.
The son being unable to approach God directly in this instance, Margery
stands in for the Virgin Mary and becomes her own son’s mediator for divine
forgiveness. Thus, Margery’s son’s contrition is a triumph for Margery’s
worldly and spiritual maternity, consolidating for herself, her contemporaries
and her readers alike her synonymous subjectivity as dutiful earthly mother
and privileged Mother of God.
43
Imitatio: Margery as Maternal Martyr
A most important aspect of Margery’s manipulation of her identity as a

mother is to be found in her textual identification with the hagiographic fig-
ure of the maternal saint, who gained in popularity from the thirteenth through
to the fifteenth century.44 Developing out of the image of the Virgin as Mater
Dolorosa, the maternal saint provided women with a role model which was
infinitely more attainable than that of virgin motherhood and it became a
hagiographic stereotype which was well established by the fourteenth cen-
tury,45 fuelled as it was by a newly enthusiastic support for marriage and
increased devotion to the Christ child.46 The notion of the redeeming good-
ness of wives and mothers was reinforced by attention to Mary and her
mother, Saint Anne, and an element of maternal sacrifice was exemplified by
each of these holy women who voluntarily relinquished her child to divine
will.47 This notion of child sacrifice (although not implicit to all maternal
hagiography), which began with the story of Isaac in the Old Testament and
was perpetuated in the apocryphal stories of Saint Anne and the Virgin, had
now arrived at the forefront of late medieval religious consciousness and was
a tradition with which Margery Kempe would certainly have been familiar.48
Two such maternal martyrs who may well have had some influence upon
Margery’s desired vocation and her striving for literary authority, were
Elizabeth of Hungary and the Swedish Saint Birgitta, both of whom are men-
tioned in Margery Kempe’s book.49 Both women were wives and mothers who
44
On the tradition of the maternal martyr see Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 19–22 and
144–93. See also Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval
Religion and Literature (Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 76–107, especially pp. 91–2. On Margery’s
identification with the virgin martyr again see Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 195–201. Of
course, as Salih cogently demonstrates, an identification with holy virginity does not
preclude the maternal because of virginity’s role as discourse rather than fixed physical
state. This, of course, converges in the figure of Virgin who was able to combine both
qualities at once.
45
Newman, Virile Woman, p. 77.
46
Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 153–7.
47
Newman, Virile Woman, p. 82; Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 161–2. For a selection of
Middle English versions of the Life of Saint Anne see Middle English Stanzaic Versions of
the Life of Saint Anne, ed. Roscoe E. Parker, EETS o.s. 124 (London, 1928). Also useful for
an examination of the cult of Saint Anne from a number of cultural perspectives is
Kathleen M. Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (eds), Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne
in Late Medieval Society (Athens, Georgia and London, 1990).
48
Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 136; Newman, Virile Woman, p. 78.
49
References to Birgitta punctuate Margery’s text, although the single reference to Saint
Elizabeth appears in one of the sections generally attributed to scribal interpolation
(154). As Alexandra Barratt has pointed out, however, the work which has influenced the
priest here was probably either the Latin or a Middle English version of the Revelationes
Beatae Elisabeth of Elizabeth of Toess (who is identified in one of those vernacular ver-
sions as ‘Seynt Elysabeth the Kynges Doughter of Hungarye’). Elizabeth of Toess – who
was also the daughter of a Hungarian king – postdated the maternal Saint Elizabeth of
44
were called to the life of perfection and spent a lifetime trying to fulfil their
own vocational needs in the face of opposition from family and society.
Elizabeth of Hungary, who was born in 1207, and who Margery’s scribe tells
us ‘meuyd hym to heuyn credens to þe sayd creatur’ (154), was a highly influ-
ential saint who, according to the widely read Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden
Legend, was betrothed at the age of four, marrying ten years later.50 She became
the mother of three children and ran a large household as befitted a Hungarian
princess. Her saintly austerity was renowned during her lifetime and she strug-
gled to reconcile the roles of wife, mother and saint. Eventually she was liber-
ated by the death of her husband during one of the Crusades, threatening
self-mutilation when her family attempted to remarry her.51 Regarding her chil-
dren as worldly possessions, she abandoned them all, including a new-born
baby, and concentrated instead on caring for the children of the sick, the poor
and the needy. As Clarissa Atkinson explains in the context of women such as
Elizabeth: ‘motherhood was comprehended in terms of physical suffering and
service, and the mother-saints of the late Middle Ages extended maternal service
to all those in need – with the exception, very often, of their own children.’52 By
diverting her love for her children to those of the poor, Elizabeth transformed
motherly love into a form of divine love, freeing her from the worldliness of the
maternal and enabling her to enter the realm of the sacred. The fact that she
seems to have been influential upon the priest with whom Margery spent so
much time would suggest that Margery would have been fully aware of her
potential as witness for her life by the time she came to write, and the example
offered by Elizabeth probably provided concrete proof that it was possible for a
married woman to be re-established as holy – if, however, she were able to redir-
ect her wifely and maternal energies ultimately towards God.
It is just such a rechannelling of maternal activity which no doubt also
attracted Margery to the married Saint Birgitta as important role-model, espe-
cially in view of her recent canonisation at the time of writing and whose
maidservant Margery had visited when on pilgrimage in Italy (94–95).53
traditional hagiography but it was the maternal saint to whom the Revelationes were erro-
neously attributed. On this see Alexandra Barratt, ‘Margery Kempe and the King’s
Daughter of Hungary’, in McEntire, Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, pp. 189–201.
50
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger, 2 vols (Princeton, 1983),
vol. 2, pp. 302–18. This was the standard account of Elizabeth’s life in the Middle Ages.
51
On voluntary mutilation as a practice for early medieval women see Jane Tibbetts
Schulenburg, ‘The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation’, in
Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: A Literary and Historical
Perspective (Syracuse, 1986), pp. 29–72.
52
Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 167.
53
For an analysis of the influence of Birgitta’s influence in England see Holloway, ‘Bridget
of Sweden’s Textual Community’. For a detailed and considered assessment of Birgitta’s
prophetic authority see Voaden, God’s Word, Women’s Voices. The best full-length study of
Birgitta and her influence is by Bridget Morris, Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge,
1999). For a brief but helpful examination of the influence of Birgitta upon Margery
Kempe in particular, see Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 188–91.
45
Birgitta of Sweden died in 1373 at the age of seventy, whereas Elizabeth had
died at the age of forty-one. It is therefore significant that the woman who
seems to exert most influence on Margery (and certainly the only one to
whom she herself refers most consistently in her text) was also a holy woman
who survived into old age. Birgitta had also been a mother of eight children
and a woman who, in the words of Atkinson, ‘shed a brilliant light on the his-
tory of Christian motherhood’.54 She was active and influential politically, a
highly charismatic figure who lived for many years as a dutiful wife and con-
scientious mother and a woman who managed to balance her domestic life
with an successful religious vocation. Freed to that vocation ultimately by
widowhood, she continued to care for her children in a way that many other
maternal saints did not. Birgitta’s writing, for example, is punctuated with
references to her four sons and four daughters, two of whom died before
reaching adulthood,55 and the fate of each one of them is known to us through
the many stories told about the saint.56
For Margery, then, Birgitta was possibly the ideal worldly role model: she
was a woman who only just preceded her chronologically and whose personal
circumstances she may have perceived as in some ways reflecting her own.
More importantly, Birgitta appeared to have survived many tribulations and set-
backs to live well into old age. Like Margery, too, she had received divine sanc-
tion as to her sexual status from the Virgin, who reassured her: ‘ “For if sho þat
is a modir wyll plese my son, and lufe him ouir all oþer þinges, pray for hirselfe
and her childir, I will help hir to have effet of hir praier” ’.57 More importantly,
Birgitta insisted on virginity as being a less desirable constituent of holiness than
humility58 and it is in the context of Birgitta’s influence on Margery that we
should perhaps begin to examine the perplexing idea of the suppression of
Margery’s own worldly motherhood in her text. In a typically hyperbolic
account – and not to be outdone by her precursor – Margery describes the reas-
surance offered to her by Christ himself about her lack of virginal status: ‘ “foras-
mech as þu art a mayden in þi sowle, I xal take þe be þe on hand in Hevyn &
my Modyr be þe oþer hand, & so xalt þu dawnsyn in Hevyn wyth oþer holy
maydens & virgynes” ’ (52). This example of Margery’s desire to supersede
Birgitta in the love shown to her by Christ is entirely typical and constitutes
another strategy used by her to achieve authority in the Book. Just as the Virgin
had reassured Birgitta that her lack of virginity was compensated for by the
intense maternal devotion she showed to the community and to the infant
54
55
56
For an overview of some of these stories see Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 176–81.
See also Morris, Birgitta of Sweden, pp. 46–52.
57
The Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden, ed. Roger Ellis, EETS o.s. 291, 2 vols (Oxford,
1987), vol. 1, p. 300.
58
See Liber Celestis, p. 300, for Birgitta’s documentation of several revelations concerning
the problems of sexual status for women.
46
Christ, so the superior reassurance of Christ for Margery would similarly serve
to place Margery neatly within the space between prescribed care of her own
children and total abandonment. She is, in effect, liberated from either necessity,
resulting in a selective treatment and literary non-committal to them in her text.
Margery and the Maternal Dichotomy
The regular appearance of Birgitta and allusion to other maternal and vir-
ginal saints in Margery’s narrative nevertheless points towards an ongoing
dichotomy in her life concerning commitment to her family, although it is
something which is largely repressed in her account. At one point, for example,
Christ advises Margery that to achieve her desired goal of perfection: ‘þu
must forsake þat þow louyst best in þis world’ (17). Margery has already docu-
mented how she has chosen to relinquish her former worldly pleasures of
fashion, commerce and secular prestige (‘sche . . . forsoke hir pride, hir
coueytyse, & desyr þat sche had of þe worshepys of þe world’; 11) and, in
view of her evident affinity with saints Elizabeth and Birgitta, it is tempting
to read this instruction in terms of a requirement to relinquish home and fam-
ily in order to follow the path of holy woman. This is further suggested by
the fact that Christ’s instructions here take place on the Friday before Christmas
and in the church in Lynn dedicated to the virgin martyr, Saint Margaret,
another firm role-model of Margery, as Sarah Salih has demonstrated.59 As
readers we would be perfectly justified in presuming now upon Margery’s
requirement to leave her children in order to adopt an ideal of ‘neo-virginity’
and ‘holy poverty’ as did some of her precursors. However, with what is
almost a twist of disingenuity both humorous and disarming, Margery has
Christ explain what it is that she actually does love the most in the world: ‘&
þat is etyng of flesch’ (17). Ostensibly then, we are being led to believe that
Margery’s love of eating meat – and by implication the status and sense of
belonging which it imbues – is superior to everything else, even her love for
her own children. I would argue that this confounding of reader expectation
is deliberate and it is by no means the only time when Margery disarms the
expectations of her readers in this way.60 For a moment we are being lured by
the narrative into judging Margery in the same way as she is judged by her
contemporaries.61 She is tempting the reader to express incredulity in spite of
59
Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 196–7. On Saint Margaret’s significance and popularity in
the Middle Ages see Teresa Reed, Shadows of Mary: Reading the Virgin Mary in Medieval
Texts (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 90–105.
60
See, for example, when she chooses to share the joy of heaven with Robert Spryngolde,
her spiritual confessor rather than her family (The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 50), as dis-
cussed below.
61
Bynum, of course, has argued that food is inextricably linked to the social role expected
of women in most cultures, and certainly in medieval Europe. She links this requirement
47
the fact that this information is being proffered and endorsed by Christ him-
self. The presumed-upon reference to her children, however, fails to materi-
alise and the void left by their textual absence at this point creates a space in
the narrative for the representation of something altogether more serious.
Christ proceeds to inform Margery that he is to become the living flesh upon
which she will feed: ‘þow schalt etyn my flesch & my blod, þat is þe very
body of Crist in þe Sacrament of þe Awter. Thys is my wyl, dowtyr, þat þow
receyue my body euery Sonday, and I schal flowe so mych grace in þe þat alle
þe world xal meruelyn þerof’ (17). The intensely anthropophagic and sacrifi-
cial images connected to the Mass are obvious here, and it is likely that Christ
is articulating the explicit iconographic link between the Mass and child sac-
rifice which was drawn during the late Middle Ages.62 As Miri Rubin has
comprehensively documented, connections between child sacrifice, maternal
deprivation and the Eucharist had increased in importance during the thir-
teenth century and a theological emphasis on the paternal loss inherent in
Christ’s Passion was now superseded by that of a specifically maternal loss
and sorrowing.63 It would seem that Margery is here making full use of these
connections to assert that the child who will fulfil her will not be that born of
her own body, but is the divine child who will enter her body as sustenance
in the form of the Host and keep her as its figurative mother in a perpetual
state of grace. In effect, she will enter a state of perpetual pregnancy, but the
progeny will be a grace which she will hold within herself and which will
to a woman’s ability to lactate, something which renders her the essential provider of
nourishment. Bynum also points out, however, that women are more often associated
with food provision rather than with its consumption, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 190–1.
In support of her argument Bynum cites Elias Canetti who has suggested that the mother
offers her own body to be eaten, first nourishing the child within her and then with her
own milk. Thus, she continues this ‘passion to give food’ over the course of many more
years. See Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York, 1962), p. 221, as
cited in Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 190. The main problem with this argument,
of course, is its essentialist assumption that the maternal and the female are synonymous.
For a critique of this approach see Biddick, ‘Genders, Bodies, Borders’. For a satirical rep-
resentation of how reservedly a pious woman was supposed to approach food, see
Chaucer’s depiction of the Prioress’s eating habits in ‘The Prioress’s Tale’, The Riverside
Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson (Oxford, 1988), p. 25.
62
On the prevalence of this link see Leah Sinanoglou, ‘The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A
Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays’, Speculum (1973), pp. 491–509.
63
On this, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christ: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge,
1991), especially pp. 135–9. The image of the suffering mother was also a popular one in
those writings attributed to Saint Bonaventure, to which Margery Kempe refers later in
her book (154). These accounts departed from the Gospels in content and served to
encourage popular meditation on the Passion. Much of the writing attributed to the pen
of Saint Bonaventure, including the Stimulus Amoris mentioned in Margery’s book
(pp. 39, 143, 153 and 154) were actually the works of other writers. I am grateful to Richard
Higgins of Durham University Library for directing me towards the Bonaventure bibli-
ography, Bonaventurae Scripta Authentica, Dubia vel Spuria Critice Recensita, by Balduinus
Distelbrink, Subsidia Scientifica Franciscalia 5 (Rome, 1975), which gives 56 authentic
texts and 184 attributed texts, including three versions of the Stimulus Amoris.
48
direct her on her desired path towards perfection. Indeed, when she visits
him soon after this vision, her anchorite confessor proceeds to interpret this
revelation for her by means of an inversion of the same imagery. Reassuring
her, ‘ “Dowtyr, he sowkyn euyn of Crystys brest, and he han an ernest-peny of
Heuyn” ’ (18), the anchorite here renders Margery both divine child and
divine mother.
The idea of Christ as feeding the faithful from his breast, of course, was not
an uncommon one in medieval religious iconography and there was a firm
analogy between the blood of Christ consecrated at the Mass, and the milk of
the Virgin mother used to sustain the faithful.64 In fact, as Bynum has shown,
in one literalistic depiction of the infant Christ, he is even represented as a
child with engorged breasts.65 Thus, some aspects of medieval religious dis-
course rendered Christ as both child and mother, a discourse which Julian of
Norwich was also to exploit in her own visionary narrative, as we shall see.
Such a conflation of the literal and metaphorical allows for the development
of a hermeneutic which functions on various levels and enforces a response
which incorporates the text of the nurturing mother as a means of under-
standing the ineffable. One can imagine that such a imagistic pattern and dis-
course would have been particularly empowering for Margery when she
came to document her experiences, given the number of children to whom
she had probably offered similar sustenance. Moreover, it would not only
have appealed to her aspirations towards a fully realised imitatio Mariae but
also to her desire to emulate Christ himself. Thus, this endorsement of mater-
nity reassures on a literal level that Margery’s sex and marital status does not
preclude an achievement of an imitatio Christi but is actually privileged by it.
Now Christ as mother to Margery is also transformed into her own mother
as she figuratively receives divine sustenance from his breasts. The child-
Host within Margery thus effects her transformation into daughter of Christ
as well as into his virgin mother, a transformation which clearly exonerates
her for leaving her worldly husband and children and helps her in her desire
for a subjectivity as neo-virgin in her insistent quest for holiness. Thus, the
same transformation of lived motherhood into spiritual and textual
hermeneutic as I have been examining previously also provides Margery with
a clear resolution to what seems to have been the source of repressed
dilemma.
64
See, for example, Hildegarde of Bingen’s depiction of the wedding of Ecclesia and Christ
from the second part of Scivias for a literal depiction of the conflation of breast milk and
the blood of Christ. This and other similar representations are to be found in Bynum,
Holy Feast and Holy Fast, plates 12 and 25–30.
65
Jan Gossaert, Madonna and Child, as reproduced in Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption,
p. 213. Again, Biddick takes exception to Bynum’s uncritical inclusion of these images
which, as Biddick points out, Bynum fails to discuss, except in passing. However,
Gossaert’s depiction of an ambiguous and lactatating Christ is fully in keeping with the
web of imagery regarding both Margery and Christ in the Book at this point and its
implications for the dissolving of gender boundaries.
49
Another instance when we witness a trace of this dilemma resurfacing is in

a conversation which she has with the Virgin, again soon after her religious
conversion (20). When asked whom she would most desire to accompany
her to the privileged place which has already been reserved for her ‘be-for my
Sonys kne’ in heaven, Margery again disarms her audience by requesting the
company of ‘fadyr Maystyr R’, that is to say her principal confessor, Robert
Spryngolde. Even the Virgin’s response to this answer contains a note of only
semi-disguised incredulity and reproof: ‘Why askyst thow mor hym þan thyn
owyn fadyr er þin husband?’ (20). In this way, Margery allows the Virgin to
ventriloquise the question which we as readers most want to ask at this point,
and Margery’s explanation is characteristically persuasive. Robert
Spryngolde, she says, has shown such goodness to her in ‘þe gracyows
labowrys þat he hath had abowt me in heryng of my confessyon’ (20) that she
feels she could never herself repay him. In view of her devastating experience
with the first confessor carefully documented at the onset of her narrative, we
can certainly appreciate the inordinate amount of love and gratitude she
would have felt towards this new, sympathetic and humane ‘gostly fadyr’.
The Virgin, however, is not that easily convinced. Whilst acknowledging
Margery’s love for her confessor and granting her this desire, in a telling
addendum she nevertheless insists upon including Margery’s family within
this sphere of divine privilege: ‘ “I grawnt þe þi desyr of hym, & het schal þi
fadyr ben sauyd, & þi husbond also, & alle þi chylderyn” ’ (20). Evading the
articulation of the dilemma, the author instead allows the Virgin to voice the
dichotomy by having her point out to her what, as a wife and mother, she is
expected to feel and desire. In so doing, not only does the Virgin identify for
the reader the tactical vacuum left in the text by the absence of Margery’s
children, but she also intimates that the choice Margery has to make is per-
haps not as radical as she may think. Typically, Margery’s response to this
solution is to reassert her own position as desiring, speaking subject. Without
drawing breath, she moves in to destabilise even the Virgin’s authority by
continuing to insist on the worth of Robert Spryngolde and, more signifi-
cantly, her own desire to do penance to save the whole world – a world, of
course, which necessarily includes her own husband and children. Thus, by
incorporating her personal responsibilities into the universal, Margery simul-
taneously evades them and yet recoups the same reward as if she had actu-
ally undertaken them. By implication, she will honour and perform the
duties of wifehood and motherhood and protect her children by absorbing
them into her salvific duties towards the whole of humankind.
Motherhood as Performative Strategy
It is now becoming clear that Margery’s treatment of motherhood in the

Book – no doubt based upon her own experience of it – gradually begins to
50
constitute an adept performative strategy which is at the same time both val-
idatory and liberating. In a literary context, Margery punctuates her text with
examples of how the performance of her maternal skills come to be highly
valued by many of those with whom she comes into contact, something
which also serves to offset the opprobrium she receives at the hands of others
who do not appreciate her special talents. Some of these performances
take the form of physical re-enactments of maternal activities; others, how-
ever, are purely visionary and serve to corroborate the suitability of these
maternal skills for redirection towards a spiritual goal. This is perhaps best
illustrated in Margery’s visionary assumption of the role of handmaid to
Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin, whilst she is herself still entrapped by the
bonds of domesticity, sexual compliance and childbirth. In her adoption of
this role, Margery acts not only as midwife upon the birth of the Virgin but is
also present at the birth of Christ (18–19). Popular contemporary icono-
graphic representations of Saint Anne emphasised her role as teacher to the
young virgin66 but in Margery’s narrative it is Margery herself who, in her
usurped role as ‘handmayden’ to the infant Mary ‘tyl it wer twelve her of age’
(18), takes on a quasi-instructional role, telling the young Mary, ‘Lady, he
schal be þe Modyr of God’ (18).67 In the same visionary experience she will
do the same for the infant Christ, not only procuring food and shelter for him
and his mother, but also anticipating his particular destiny, covering him
‘with byttyr teerys of compassyon, hauyng mend of þe scharp deth þat he
schuld suffyr’ (19). Similarly, in another much later visionary encounter,
Margery describes to her readers how she ministers to the distraught Virgin
following the death of Christ, even carefully preparing for her ‘a good
cawdel . . . to comfortyn hir’ (195). This type of visionary manifestation of a
maternal ministry, which is self-evidently informed by Margery’s own lived
experiences, is also translated into Margery’s worldly ministry on a number
of occasions. She is, for example, called upon to care for an old and infirm
woman for six weeks whilst in Rome on the way home from Jerusalem, a role
which she performs ‘as sche wolde a don owyr Lady’ (85). Much later in her
life in her capacity as spiritual healer and woman of some authority, Margery
will similarly be called upon to comfort and heal a young woman obviously
66
By the early fourteenth century artists had begun to represent Saint Anne as teaching the
Virgin to read, although this tradition does not seem to have entered the literary one. On
this, see Orme, Medieval Childhood, p. 244. Miriam Gill has identified twenty-two pos-
sible examples of wall paintings in English churches which represent Saint Anne reading
to the Virgin. Of these, fourteen are still clearly or partly visible. Miriam Gill, ‘Female
Piety and Impiety: Selected Images of Women in Wall Paintings in England after 1300’,
in Samantha Riches and Sarah Salih (eds), Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in
Late Medieval Europe (London, 2002), pp. 101–20 (p. 105).
67
As Reed points out in Shadows of Mary, p. 43, by the fourteenth century, Mary was com-
monly associated with a schooling in prophecy and she is frequently depicted as read-
ing from Isaiah 7: 14 which anticipates the virgin birth of Immanuel, thus ‘enmeshing
her sexuality in the necessities of Christian history’.
51
suffering from the same post-partum problems as she had endured herself so
many years previously – and, of course, she is supremely qualified to come
to her aid (177–89). On yet another occasion, following years of separation
from her husband, Margery will once again find herself caring for him after
he has suffered a life-threatening fall in his home which causes him to
become ‘chidisch ahen’. At pains to emphasise John’s double-incontinence
and his senility, Margery cares for John until his death ‘as sche wolde a don
Crist himself’ (181).
Such a reappropriation and recontextualisation of her own maternal prac-
tices as part of a strategy of self-empowerment is everywhere apparent in
Margery’s text. Perhaps, however, it is nowhere more fully sustained than
when she finally embarks upon her pilgrimage to Jerusalem some time dur-
ing the autumn of 1413.68 Following a recent vow of chastity with John
Kempe (25) and the assurance from Christ that she will bear no more children
(38), this journey heralds for Margery a new mode of existence for her. In set-
ting sail to the Holy Land she is freed from the physical shackles of earthly
motherhood and is able to fully explore her developing vocation as spiritual
mother and holy woman on this most important of journeys,69 something
nowhere more evident than in her intensely realised identification with the
Virgin whilst in Jerusalem.
In an important essay examining Margery’s imitation of the Virgin as
recounted in the Jerusalem narrative, Hope Phyllis Weissman has already
illustrated the full extent of this imitatio and has suggested an inextricable
connection between Margery’s identification with the Virgin’s grief at
Calvary and her own previous experience of what she terms the ‘woman’s
disease of womb-suffering’.70 Redefining the anachronistic term ‘hysteria’
which has often been levied against Margery by antipathetic commentators,71
68
For a detailed analysis of the chronology of Margery’s pilgrimage see The Book of Margery
Kempe, p. 284, n. 60/18–19.
69
For a brief overview of the importance of pilgrimage in the late Middle Ages see Lochrie,
Translations, p. 28. For the importance of pilgrimage to Margery Kempe in particular see
Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics, pp. 292–5, and Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’.
For a more general overview of medieval pilgrimage see D. J. Hall, English Medieval
Pilgrimage (London, 1966), especially pp. 1–2; R. C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular
Beliefs in Medieval England (London, 1971), p. 40; Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveler
(Woodbridge, 1989). Particularly useful is Diana Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Medieval
Europe (London, 1999) and Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims. Morrison also includes
a helpful critique of earlier works on pilgrimage, medieval or otherwise, pp. 84–105.
70
Weissman, ‘Hysterica Compassio’, especially p. 217. Also useful on the link between the
expression of Marian piety and the pains of childbirth is Amy Neff, ‘The Pain of Compassio:
Mary’s Labour at the Foot of the Cross’, Art Bulletin 80 (1998), pp. 254–7.
71
Again see Howard, Writers and Pilgrims, p. 35. The most vociferous of the early critics on
this issue was Herbert Thurston, who referred to Margery’s ‘terrible hysteria’ and ‘hys-
terical temperament’ in ‘Margery the Astonishing’, The Month 2 (1936). Interestingly,
whilst accepting this early ‘diagnosis’, Hope Emily Allen, the Book’s first coeditor for the
EETS edition, views it in a much more positive light than Thurston and later critics of a
similar opinion, regarding Margery’s ‘hysteria’ in terms of a suggestibility which is a
52
and returning to its etymological root in this way, Wiessman suggests that
Margery’s uncontrollable sobbings and cryings (which emerge for the first
time in Jerusalem) constitute the ultimate expression of a maternalistic
womb-for-womb identification with the Virgin Mary as Margery re-experiences
the Passion in Jerusalem alongside the envisioned grieving Virgin.
Accounts of the Virgin’s maternal suffering at Calvary, of course, were highly
popular during this period and served to encourage an intensely affective
response to the Passion amongst the laity. However, in most treatments of it –
unlike Margery’s own – the Marian body tended to retain its dignity within
the narrative. In other words, the excess of weeping and lamentation induced
in the Virgin remained contained within the topos of bodily control appropri-
ate for the mother of God. As a result, maternal suffering was partially internal,
resulting ultimately in swooning and silence. This, of course, allowed the
weeping Virgin to conform to the culturally desirable reticence demanded of
the perfect woman whilst simultaneously giving voice to maternal grief. In
one meditation on ‘þe sorowe þat oure Lady had’, for example, an account of
the Passion translated into English from the writing of Pseudo-Bonaventure
by Robert Manning of Brunne,72 the Virgin everywhere retains her bodily
integrity in spite of the fact ‘she swouned, she pyned . . . she fylle to grounde’.73
In this text Mary’s performance of grief never transgresses the boundaries of
acceptable female behaviour and any potential embarrassment is offset by
the stress which is placed upon the epithets of passivity attached to her: she
is ‘meke & mylde’ (line 779) and ‘so gracyus, so meke and so mylde’ (line
814), in addition to which her actions are also performed ‘softly & myldely’
(line 808). In contrast, Margery Kempe’s emulation of such a maternal expres-
sion of grief, whilst drawing on an orthodox imitatio and identification which
was actually encouraged by the Church during the later Middle Ages,74 never-
theless shifts the ground beneath it by means of her quasi-hyperbolic use of
words and phrases such as ‘walwyd & wrestyd’ (68), ‘roryng’ (69) and
‘labowryn’ (70). Thus, her description of her own Jerusalem experiences of
the Passion comprise a radical deviation from these traditional pseudo-
Bonaventuran narratives and inscribe upon herself an intensely active rather
than a gently passive and socially acceptable performance of suffering. More
pertinently too, it is a performance of maternal grief enacted and written
from the perspective of a mother herself, rather than comprising an account
‘valuable source for a historian tracing the cross-currents of religious influence in

medieval East Anglia during its great period’ (The Book of Margery Kempe, p. lxv). For a
cogent refutation of negatively weighted accusations of hysteria, see Atkinson, Mystic
and Pilgrim, pp. 210–12.
72
Robert Manning: Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Hours of His Passion, ed.
J. Meadows Cowper, EETS, o.s. 60 (London, 1875).
73
Manning, Meditations, p. 25.
74
For an account of this kind of identification with maternal grief again see Atkinson, The
Oldest Vocation, especially pp. 147, 176, 188, 191 and 192–3.
53
of its appropriate expression from a male (and ecclesiastic) point of view. Such
a discrepancy is, therefore, the site of yet another lacuna which opens up
between the male perspective on a woman’s experience and what she experi-
ences herself, and it is a point of slippage between representation and mean-
ing of which Margery then proceeds to take full advantage in her text. Far
from being meek and gentle, her own account of her response to the Passion
in Jerusalem is laced with abandonment and indignity, so much so that even
a contemporary audience well versed in devotional affectivity were entirely
‘astoynd’ by it (69): ‘þan sche fel down & cryed wyth lowde voys, wondyr-
fully turnyng & wrestyng hir body on euery syde, spredyng hir armys abrode
as hyf sche xulde a deyd, & not cowde kepyn hir fro crying’ (70). Here, and in
the narrative which follows on from this extract, Margery’s sufferings not
only comprise a hyperbolised expression of those of the grieving mother but
are articulated in terms of an auto-suggestive performance of the pains of
childbirth fully reminiscent of the account of the pre- and post-natal suffering
documented in the opening passages of the Book, as we have seen. Such a
recontextualisation of that earlier suffering suggests that Margery’s extensive
performances at Jerusalem are not only a result of her own visionary and
affective participation in the death of Christ which she experiences there, but
also serve as a validation of her own life experiences and thus separate her
further from the sin of Eve which had previously been the cause of so much
anxiety. Now the punishment of Eve with which she had been so well
acquainted is transformed into the cathartic agony of redemption in emula-
tion of both Mary and Christ.75 Moreover, it is a redemptive process which is
identified as intensely gynaecentric and maternal. By the time Margery
reaches the burial place of the Virgin, her identification with the Virgin Mother
is almost complete. Here both the Virgin and Christ appear to her in order to
endorse her newly acquired gift of tears and somatic bodily responses: ‘be
not aschamyd . . .’ Mary tells her earthly counterpart, ‘no mor þan I was
whan I saw hym hangyn on þe Cros, my swete Sone, Ihesu, for to cryen & to
wepyn’ (73). It is at this point in the narrative that Margery’s long journey
towards a conflation with the Virgin is finally effected, a conflation which
will serve to authorise her life and her calling and which has been achieved
primarily by a recontextualised and overdone performance of her own
worldly motherhood.76 It is at this point that Margery’s redefined sense of
75
For a useful examination of the unique relationship between Mary and Eve see Reed,
Shadows of Mary, pp. 22–9. See also Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult
of the Virgin Mary (London, 1990), pp. 59–61 and Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and
Metaphor (New York, 1993), pp. 137–8.
76
On a parent’s emotional attachment to a child during the Middle Ages see Shahar,
Childhood in the Middle Ages, especially pp. 149–55. Here Shahar disputes earlier findings
such as those of Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans.
Robert Baldick (New York, 1962), demonstrating that, rather than being a mere topos,
written evidence suggests that parents displayed a great deal of affection for their infants
54
identity, as informed by her own subjectivity as a mother, fully establishes

itself as powerful hermeneutic in the text and from this point onwards con-
stitutes a performance which will be publicly sustained within the new and
dramatic responses to the Passion which she will display throughout the
remainder of her life.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing examples of Margery’s public perform-
ance of maternity is to be found in a most extraordinary encounter as she
returns from Jerusalem to Rome (76–8). During this journey, Margery, who
has been abandoned by her fellow pilgrims because of what they see as her
embarrassing and aberrant behaviour, meets up with a ‘broke-bakkyd’ man
(76) whom she attempts to persuade to accompany her to Rome. The road is
fraught with dangers including many bandits eager to attack and rob the
steady stream of travelers, but more tellingly, this man, Richard, fears that he
will be unable to protect Margery from capture and rape along the way (inci-
dentally confirming for us that Margery’s periodic anxiety about rape is fully
justified).77 Margery, however, assures this reluctant guide, ‘God xal kepyn vs
boþen ryth wel’ (77) and she offers him two nobles for his pains. Within a few
miles along the road they encounter two Grey Friars accompanying an enig-
matic woman carrying with her a casket which houses a curious devotional
doll made in the likeness of the infant Christ. At each stop along the way, the
woman removes the doll from the casket and places it in the laps of women
whom she encounters. These women then proceed to dress and undress the
doll and shower it with kisses ‘as þei it had ben God hymselfe’ (77). So over-
come is Margery by this very physical expression of maternal devotion to the
Christ child embodied in this doll that she has to be taken away temporarily
and put to bed by the women who redirect their maternal ministrations from
the Christ-like doll to Margery:78
Whan þes good women seyn þis creatur wepyn, sobbyn, & cryen so
wondirfully & mythyly þat sche was nerhand ouyrcomyn þerwyth, þan þei
ordeyned a good soft bed & leyd hir þerupon & comfortyd hir as mech as
þei myth for owyr Lordys lofe, blyssed mot he ben. (78)
in the Middle Ages. In this context, Shahar proceeds to examine parental bereavement
in some detail (pp. 149–55). For her refutation of earlier findings on this issue (which
suggested that parents had become indifferent to the deaths of their children), see
pp. 1–4 and 145. This is also the stance taken up by Nicholas Orme in his recent reassess-
ment of medieval childhood, Medieval Children.
77
For other instances of this anxiety see The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 112, 113 and 241.
For a variety of perspectives on representations of rape in the Middle Ages and early
modern period, see Christine Rose and Elizabeth Robertson (eds), Representing Rape in
Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Basingstoke and New York, 2002).
78
Kathy Lavezzo has examines this incident in some detail in the context of a queer read-
ing of The Book of Margery Kempe in ‘Sobs and Sighs between Women’, pp. 184–7. Here
Lavezzo suggests that the doll becomes the instrument for a homosocial bonding
between the women as well as the means by which Margery is able to represent herself
as a similar object of female devotion. For an explication of this type of religious practice
55
As we have seen, Margery has left her own fourteen children, including a
new-born baby, back in England, something which has added to the diffi-
culty of many critics to take Margery’s religious vocation seriously. Yet, as
this episode illustrates, Margery’s motherhood is a concept which is intrin-
sic to her shifting identity and as we will see, possesses a flexibility which
will be employed and re-employed by her wherever she travels and what-
ever she encounters. Here, the outpouring of maternal feeling of the women
and of herself – albeit ostensibly directed at a doll – is juxtaposed as a coun-
terbalance to the specifically male-identified violence of female rape, and it
is significant that the Grey Friars and Richard are entirely excluded from
the female and maternal ritual performed by these women. Through her
identification and sense of solidarity with the other mothers she encounters
here, Margery is establishing an alternative not only to the threat of male
violence which was lurking in the shadows at the beginning of this episode
but to patriarchal proscription generally to which all these women, herself
in particular, are subject. Thus, the protection of God which she was so
assured of receiving on the journey arrives from within herself in the form
of her own maternal responses which, united with those of the other
women, wrap around them like armour as they join together to assert the
superiority of maternal love and compassion over the constantly hovering
threat of male disapprobation and violence which everywhere permeates
the narrative.
As Bynum has shown, the use of such dolls as devotional objects, espe-
cially amongst women religious, was not uncommon in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. She proceeds to argue that such artifacts were increas-
ingly seen to reflect what was considered to be a woman’s biological nature
and her perceived domestic instincts, whilst serving also to sanctify these
experiences at the same time.79 However, far from being ‘just little girls play-
ing with dolls’ (as Bynum allows herself to speculate for a moment about
these nuns),80 Margery and the women around her take their devotion very
seriously, just as maternal work for them has been and continues to be a serious
in medieval piety see Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 198. For an in-depth
analysis of the use of ‘holy dolls’ in Florence during the fourteenth century see Christiane
Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London,
1985), pp. 310–29.
79
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 198. Also useful here is Freud’s analysis of the
role played by the doll in the expression of female sexuality. On this see ‘Feminine
Sexuality’, in Philip Rieff (ed.), Sexuality and the Psychology of Love (New York, 1963),
pp. 205–6.
80
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 198. Here Bynum proposes that this is a natural
assumption to be made about those women who used the liturgical cradle from the
Grand Beguinage in Louvain (now to be found in the Metropolitan Museum in New
York) and which is pictured on p. 199 of her book. Perhaps more helpfully, however,
Klapisch-Zuber speculates that the appearance of these devotional dolls amongst both
the laity and the religious ‘broke down the transparent wall that separates reality from
its figuration’ (Women, Family, and Ritual, p. 329).
56
activity.81 As a result, Margery is once more driven to tears of maternal pleas-

ure and agony, what Kristeva would recognise in terms of maternal jouis-
sance which is brought about by the transcendence of pain through pleasure.
In this context, Kathy Lavezzo has argued for such moments in the Book as
displaying an intense homoeroticism as the women bond together in their
reaction to a wholly ‘passivated Christ’ (sic), who thus becomes the vessel for
the expression of ‘feminine needs and desires’.82 This innovative reading is
further enhanced by the fact that motherhood can also constitute a similar
type of female bonding agent as can lesbian sexuality, something which is
important to our understanding of Margery’s complex and often gender-
fluid relationship with both Christ and the Virgin.83 When she is stirred to
react with the grief of a bereaved mother during this episode, the other ‘mothers’
clearly recognise and identify with the language of her bodily response,
solicitously putting her to bed and offering the care which seems to have been
so resoundingly absent during her first traumatic birth-giving. At the same
time, of course, the response of these women is evocative of familiar icono-
graphic images of the Virgin being ministered to by women at the foot of the
cross during Christ’s Passion. However, whether maternal, homoerotic or both,
what is particularly pertinent about this episode is its exclusion of all men,
except for the passive male child whose very passivity arguably serves to femi-
nise him. This image of the Christ-child and the feminised scenario which
encompasses him, therefore, provides a site for the displacement of patriarchal
socio-religious discourse by asserting this exclusively female ritual as being of
a superior eschatological value to those embraced by the men who hover
around the margins of the narrative. Such an expression of a transcendent and
salvific maternal jouissance has perhaps been most effectively summed up by
Julia Kristeva in her analysis of the role of the Virgin Mary in western culture:
Marian pain is in no way connected with tragic outburst: joy and even a
kind of triumph follow upon tears, as if the conviction that death does not
exist were an irrational but unshakeable maternal certainty, on which the
principle of resurrection had to rest.84
Thus, Margery Kempe’s depiction of the spirituality of the women at this

point can be read in terms of a specifically female, maternal and homosocial
81
For a useful examination of motherhood as a philosophy, see Sara Ruddick, Maternal
Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London, 1990). Here Ruddick points out that mater-
nal work is long and arduous, forming ‘an organised set of activities that require discip-
line and active attention’, p. 50.
82
Lavezzo, ‘Sobs and Sighs between Women’, pp. 175–98, especially p. 187.
83
At one point in one of her meditations, for example, Christ thanks Margery for taking
both himself and his mother into her bed, p. 214. In a different context, Klapisch-Zuber
investigates the incestuous representation embodied in these devotional dolls in Women,
Family, and Ritual, pp. 326–7.
84
Kristeva, ‘Stabat Mater’, p. 175.
57
drama in which the power and the potential for agency remain with the
women, a potential which, like Kristeva, she recognises as lying at the heart
of motherhood – and divine motherhood in particular as its hypostatisation.85
Motherhood as Protective Strategy
Yet, as Margery Kempe is soon to discover, a status as mother to the whole

world does not necessarily lead to automatic acceptance in the world of men,
particularly if still categorised as an earthly wife and mother. Back in
England Margery continues to be vilified for not behaving in a conventional,
uxorial and maternal manner. Upon her return, for example, she is accused
of having borne an illegitimate child whilst on pilgrimage (103), following
which ‘folke spitted at hir . . . & bannyd hir & cursyd hir & seyd þat sche dede
meche harm among þe pepyl’ (105). Thus, a quest for validation of her calling
leads her from city to city, many of which were centres renowned for the
hounding of heretics. Her journeying is perpetually punctuated by a
search for ecclesiastic support, often in vain, and by the continued need to
find authorising strategies and defences to protect her from the animosity of
both her peers and the authorities. Although now separated from her family,
she nevertheless continues to draw upon her former subjectivity as wife and
a mother, particularly upon those occasions when most under threat. Already
we have seen how the cumulative experience of wifely duties, childbirth and
childrearing have provided her with a way of thinking86 and have guided her
spiritually, but during her pilgrimage to the north of England in 1417 Margery
now begins to demonstrate how an invocation of the discourses of domesti-
city can create a maternal space which she can reoccupy for purposes of her
own self-protection. Margery has never been averse to utilising both husband
and children in order to manipulate the attitudes and reactions of others to
her and such a strategy of defence proves particularly effective when she is at
her moments of greatest danger when answering charges of heresy in the
Lollard centres of York and Leicester.
Margery is arrested at York ostensibly on suspicion of heresy but in truth
it seems likely that the authorities are also challenged by her because she is
travelling alone without written permission from her husband and is not
dressed in the way that a categorisable wife and mother should be (122).87
85
This is a concept also examined by Ruddick, who refers to motherhood as ‘the bodily
potentiality, vulnerability and power which is woman’s alone’ (Maternal Thinking, p. 48).
86
On motherhood as providing an alternative way of thinking, again see Ruddick,
Maternal Thinking, especially pp. 220 and 222–9.
87
For a discussion of the links between fashion and the public perception of morality in the
Middle Ages see J. Scattergood, ‘Fashion and Morality in the Middle Ages’, in Reading the
Past: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Dublin, 1996), pp. 240–50. See also
Diane Owen Hughes, ‘Regulating Women’s Fashion’, in Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (ed.),
58
Arraigned before the archbishop, his first concern is that she is wearing the
ambiguous white garb, leading him to question initially her sexual status
rather than her religious stance (‘Art þu a mayden?’; 124).88 Margery’s meas-
ured answers, however, proceed to confound him and he becomes increas-
ingly irate with her controlled, articulate defiance, asking the perplexed
court, ‘What xal I don wyth hir?’ (125). His anger mounts as Margery refuses
to swear that she will not publicly preach or teach, thus further compromis-
ing herself in a situation of intense danger, it being considered a sure sign of
Lollard inclinations to refuse to swear an oath on the Bible.89 In reply, as she
has done in other threatening or trying circumstances,90 Margery recounts a
parabolic story there in the archbishop’s chapel, fettered as she is and hiding
her shaking hands beneath her garment. It is, however, the story which is to
save her life. This tale of priestly incontinence and corruption is told with
great aplomb91 and contains many of the elements of traditional fairy or folk
tale: a wood, nightfall, a sheltered arbour, a pear-tree in blossom, an ugly
bear, a seemingly virtuous protagonist. Margery shows herself to be thor-
oughly well versed in the art of story-telling, probably a skill developed dur-
ing the course of her twenty years of child-rearing92 when her role as mother
Silences of the Middle Ages, A History of Women II (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 136–58.
On the significance of the virginal white garb to Margery’s reconstruction of virginity,
see Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 218–24. See also Mary C. Erhler, ‘Margery Kempe’s White
Clothes’, Medium Aevum 62, 1 (1993), pp. 78–85.
88
Janet Wilson has pointed out that accusations of heresy were often founded more upon
the inability to classify a person rather than on an obvious lack of religious orthodoxy
(‘The Communities of Margery Kempe’s Book’, in Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women in
Their Communities (Cardiff, 1997), pp. 153–85 (p. 160)).
89
On this see, for example, Tanner, Norwich Heresy Trials, p. 15. See also ‘The Examination of
Lollards’, in Anne Hudson, Lollards and their Books (London and Ronceverte, 1985),
pp. 125–40, for the most common accusations levelled against those arrested for Lollardy.
90
See, for example, Margery’s arraignment in Canterbury before her pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
pp. 27–9. Although Margery’s tale in this instance incenses the monks, it has the effect
of diffusing the situation and creates the hiaitus which allows her a speedy escape.
91
For a detailed analysis of the telling of fairy stories see Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of
Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tale (London, 1976), pp. 150–6. Here
Bettelheim asserts that the effectiveness of the tale is shaped by the teller rather than the
tale itself and is dependent on the narrator’s own feelings about the tale. Margery can-
not afford for her tale to be ineffective or distorted by her audience at this point as she is
using it to bargain for her survival.
92
Derek Brewer has illustrated how three of the synoptic Gospels adhere closely to the for-
mulae of folktales, emerging as they did from a tradition of oral transmission in ‘The
Gospels and the Laws of Folktale’, Folklore 9 (1979), pp. 37–52. The earliest Gospel, Saint
Mark’s, in particular has a familiar, colloquial style and Brewer asserts that what is writ-
ten is still very close to the spoken word (p. 38). It is likely that Margery’s evident acquaint-
ance with these Gospels would have further increased her awareness of the possibilities
of oral narrative. For a discussion of women’s sociological role in the disseminating of
fairy tales see Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
(London, 1994), Introduction, pp. xviii–xx and 17. See also Karel Capek, Nine Fairy Tales
and One More Thrown in for Good Measure, trans. Dagmar Hermann (Evanston, 1990), for
a discussion of the orality of the fairy tale and of the importance of the female sphere of
the hearth for its dissemination from generation to generation. Other folklorists who
59
(and in keeping with those qualities of Saint Anne and the Virgin previously
discussed) would have involved not only the telling of tales, nursery rhymes
and singing songs but also the recounting of biblical stories.93 She moves skil-
fully between the language of the magical to the earthy and crude, creating a
contrast and ambivalence which has always thrilled and delighted audiences
and is one which invokes a similar response here from the listening court. As
a result of Margery’s performance, the archbishop capitulates, praising the
tale and releasing her into the custody of an escort to take her from York
(128). Relying upon her narrative skills Margery diffuses a potentially explo-
sive situation with a story. Not only that, but her anger at the injustice of her
arrest, her treatment at the hands of the authorities and the attempts made to
silence her voice and frustrate her vocation are also articulated as the subtext
to this story which is not only about ecclesiastic hypocrisy, but also constitutes
a thinly veiled attack on the humiliation she has received at their hands. If, as
psychoanalysis would have it, as well as entertaining, fairy tales can also
serve the purpose of enabling both teller and listener to articulate and re-
enact the deepest fears and frustrations in their lives and reconcile them to
their own lived experiences,94 it is probably the most important story that
Margery will ever tell, except perhaps for the Book itself, and is a firm testi-
mony to Margery’s often overlooked skill as a teller of tales and their use as a
medium for social and institutional critique.95
Margery’s greatest recourse to her previous role as wife and mother for pur-
poses of self-protection is probably on arrest at Leicester during the same pil-
grimage after several days of abuse and threats full of innuendo, this time of a
sexual nature (111–17). Forced on this occasion too to appear before a full eccle-
siastical court to answer a charge of Lollardy, once more she finds herself in a
situation of mortal danger and her invocation of her role as dutiful wife of John
Kempe which has been an effective protection on previous occasions has so far
make this assertion are Linda Degh, Folktales and Society: Storytelling in a Hungarian
Peasant Community (Indiana, 1969), pp. 90 and 92, and Narratives in Society: A Performer-
Centred Study of Narration (Helsinki, 1995), pp. 10 and 63. Also useful in this context is
Karen E. Rowe, ‘To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale’, in Ruth B.
Bottigheimer (ed.), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm (Philadelphia,
1986), pp. 53–74.
93
On the role of the mother in the teaching of songs, rhymes, tales etc. see Orme, Medieval
Childhood, pp. 129–62, especially, p. 134. For the mother’s role in the religious upbringing
of her child see Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 157. See also Shahar, Childhood in the
Middle Ages, p. 116.
94
On the nature and uses of fairy tales see Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, espe-
cially pp. 5, 45–53 and 57–60, and Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde, especially
Introduction, pp. xvi and 3–197. See also Max Luthi, Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of
Fairy Tales (Bloomington, 1977), especially pp. 70 and 113–14. For an illuminating account
by contemporary artist, Paula Rego, of the influence of fairy tales upon her work, see
John McEwen’s interview with her in Paula Rego, The Serpentine Gallery 15 October – 20
November (London, 1988), pp. 43–4.
95
In a Bakhtinian reading of the text, Lochrie deals briefly with Margery Kempe’s use of
parable as a source of disruptive laughter in Translations, pp. 141–4.
60
failed to protect her from arraignment in a court charged with sexual aggres-
sion. Although terrified, however, Margery’s reaction is incisive as she invokes
an even more powerful image to reinforce proof of her religious orthodoxy and
to silence her accusers. Speaking to the mayor, she admonishes him thus:
‘Sir’, sche seyde, ‘I take witnesse of my Lord Ihesu Crist, whos body is her
present in þe Sacrament of þe Awter, þat I neuyr had part of mannys body
in þis worlde in actual dede be wey of synne, but of myn husbondys body,
whom I am bowndyn to be þe lawe of matrimony, & be whom I haue born
xiiij childeryn. For I do how to wetyn, ser, þat þer is no man in þis world þat
I lofe so meche as God, for I lofe hym abouyn al thynge, & ser, I telle how
trewly I lofe al men in God & for God.’ (115)
In addition to asserting her belief in transubstantiation – the denial of which

constituted another almost universal Lollard heresy96 – Margery delivers the
coup de grace by lining up her fourteen absent children alongside her absent
husband to testify in her defence as a chaste, loyal and godly woman. No
matter that the ‘lawe of matrimony’ has been renegotiated in her marriage
and her children are obviously being cared for by others or by each other.97
Margery is equally as capable of using protective labels to designate position
and rank in the moral hierarchy of fifteenth-century England and of reap-
propriating the words of Paul in his first epistle to Timothy, quoted at the
beginning of this chapter, which are used implicitly against her during her
series of arrests. On this occasion, as at York, Margery reappropriates Pauline
proscription in her own defence and in so doing successfully disrupts the
hegemony of this male-dominated court by imitating their own tactics. In a
hyperbolic flourish, she dismisses their accusations of fleshly incontinence
by invoking the product of her marital fidelity – her children – alongside the
ideal and orthodoxically approved lover of humanity – Christ – to stand
between herself and her accusers. Margery’s own arbitrary categorising of
herself here renders her dutiful wife, devout lover of Christ, and most effect-
ively, the socially acceptable mother of fourteen children, which in turn
diffuses the court’s antipathy and disapproval towards her. With prior
96
On this see Tanner, Norwich Heresy Trials, pp. 12–22. Tanner’s findings also suggest that
almost every defendant who was accused of Lollardy denied the doctrine of transub-
stantiation (p. 10).
97
See John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from
Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York, 1988). Boswell asserts that parents of Margery’s
class would often have paid someone else to look after some or all of their children, either
part-time or permanently, which did not necessarily terminate the parent–child relationship.
He adopts the term ‘extra-mural fostering’ to describe this concept (p. 358). These children,
he claims, would often adopt the names of the foster family and continue with ‘their
unrecorded lives’ (p. 399). This seems to me far more likely than the theory of Verena
E. Neuburger who works on the premise that all of Margery’s children were dead before
she embarked upon the writing of her book (‘Margery Kempe: A Study in Early English
Feminism’, Zurich University dissertation (Berlin, 1994), p. 87).
61
knowledge of her more than ambivalent attitude to motherhood, as readers

we are privy to the irony of her performance and her manipulation of the
perceived symbolic order as dictated and represented by these powerful
men sitting in judgement over her. The immediate result of this adept
manoeuvre is the creation of a space into which Margery moves and from
where she can attack the hypocrisy and abuse of power exemplified by the
steward of Leicester, for example (who has previously threatened her with
rape), but which are also by implication prevalent in the attitudes of all the
men in the courtroom and in patriarchal ideologies in general: ‘Also ferþer-
mor sche seyd pleynly to hys owyn persone, ‘ “Sir, he arn not worthy to ben
a meyr, & þat xal I preuyn be Holy Writte . . . for, syr, he han cawsyd me
myche despite for thyng þat I am not gilty in. I pray God forheue how it” ’
(115–16). It is perhaps here that the most subtle clue lies as to the reason for
the physical absence of Margery’s own children in the text. The apparent
failure of representation which is thrown into relief by this sudden reinvo-
cation of her children is the site of a fissure through which Margery is able
to pass. Moving instantaneously from uncategorisable and marginal to some-
body with a central social and familial role causes the meaning inscribed
upon her body by the court to slip and Margery’s tactical reinstatement of
all fourteen children at the forefront of both her life and her text at this point
serves to reclose the fissure behind her and thus screen her from the patri-
archal and prejudiced court. As a result, it is the representation she has con-
structed which then receives judgement. In this context, Margery never
abandons her children, but carries them with her as a strategic screen with
which to obscure the place which she wilfully occupies and in order to fol-
low her vocation in a world hostile to it. In this instance the authorities are
convinced as to her orthodox piety and she is released to continue her travels
and her journey towards spiritual independence.
In a powerful confirmatory speech towards the end of Book 1, Christ
reveals just how far Margery has matured towards this autonomy. Her strug-
gle to attain a chaste and spiritual motherhood and her ability to recontext-
ualise her own experiences of worldly motherhood have finally effected her
own spiritual freedom. In a wonderfully subversive twist (and a conversation
which again smacks of authorial ventriloquism) Margery records Christ’s
sympathetic understanding for herself and for all those wives and mothers
who have been desirous of the same grace but who have had no choice but to
endure and lament their reluctant earthly wifehood and motherhood:
‘[Þ]u thynkyst þat þu art meche beholdyn to me þat I haue houyn þe swech
a man þat wolde suffryn þu leuyn chast, he beyng on lyue & in good hele
of body. Forsoþe, dowtyr, þu thynkist ful trewe, & þerfore hast þu gret
cawse to louyn me ryth wel. Dowtyr, hyf þu knew how many wifys þer arn
in þis world þat wolde louyn me & seruyn me ryth wel & dewly, hyf þei
myght be as frely fro her husbondys as þu art fro thyn, þu woldist seyn þat
þu wer ryght meche beheldyn onto me.’ (212)
62
Thus, in a remarkable textual flourish, Margery summarises her release from

a deep anxiety coterminous with the agony of all those wives and mothers
who are precluded from living the life of spirituality dictated by their impulses
and desires. Now, instead of earthly children, Margery is able to give birth to
a special spirituality which is the most powerful of all her progeny. It is born
from the accumulation of all her earlier labours, and the pains have been long
and exacting. Finally, twenty years after Margery abandons the worldly for
the spiritual she gives birth to one of her greatest and lasting triumphs, ‘þis
boke’, her written testimony which has made permanent the gendered space
and agency created out of the constraints of her own motherhood and from
which her imperative voice continues to be heard.
63
The Motherhood Matrix in the

Writing of Julian of Norwich
[T]he gestation drive – just like the desire to write: a desire to live self from
within, a desire for the swollen belly, for language, for blood.1
Society and Enclosure: Maps of Experience
Aftyr this my syght byganne to fayle, and it was alle dyrke abowte me in the
chaumbyr, and myrke as it hadde bene nyght; save in the ymage of the
crosse there helde a comon lyght, and I wyste nevere howe. Alle that was
besyde the crosse was huglye to me as hyf it hadde bene mykylle occupyede
with fendys. (ST, 42)
One could be forgiven for interpreting these disembodied words from Julian
of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love as the representation of the experi-
ences of an anchoress following the act of enclosure. The door to her cell has
been sealed and she is left with a sense of her own separation from the ugli-
ness of the world and with an awareness of the brightness of the crucified
Christ who alone remains with her. As the physical darkness of the anchorhold
descends, so her consciousness begins to merge with the illuminated crucifix
and we feel we are witnessing the approach to spiritual union of the anchoress
with Christ. Yet, restored to its context, this passage describes not the mys-
tical experience of the anchoress but that of a mortally ill woman of thirty
whose mother has summoned the priest to deliver the last rites as her life
ebbs away (41). The woman holds centre stage in this sickroom drama, her
proximity to death diminishing her eyesight and paralysing her body. Those
keeping vigil talk in hushed tones, watching and waiting, separated from
Julian by her rapidly advancing death. The sickroom becomes her figurative
anchorhold; the inert body which houses her soul echoes its tomb-like walls
and the only visible animation is that which emanates from the suspended
crucifix before her. Thus, a homogeneity between Julian’s worldly suffering
in the sickroom and the otherworldly existence she will later embrace within
1
Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, p. 261.
64
THE MOTHERHOOD MATRIX IN JULIAN
the anchorhold is established even in the early stages of the Short Text. This
chapter will argue that Julian’s experience of both these locations of enclosure
was crucial to the production of both texts and particularly to the develop-
ment of imagery connected with maternity which underpins much of the
visionary insight contained within them. In other words, we can recognise in
Julian’s sickroom narrative evidence of an embryonic desire to withdraw into
the anchoritic life in order to contemplate the meaning of her visionary experi-
ences and to permit the development of the initial Short Text into the com-
plex and imagistically rich Long Text.
In a study of the female visionaries of the closed community of Helfta in
the late thirteenth century, Rosalynn Voaden has examined the prevalent
gynaecentric imagery used in the writing of these literary precursors of
Julian of Norwich, namely Gertrude the Great, Mechthild of Hackeborn and
Mechthild of Magdeburg, who were instrumental in the development of the
cult of the Sacred Heart as it materialised at Helfta.2 The veneration of the
Sacred Heart was based on belief in the Incarnation and developed out of
devotion to the wound of Christ. It was from this opened side that the birth
of Christ’s Church had metaphorically taken place and through which access
could be gained to his womb-like redemptive heart within.3 As Voaden argues,
this highly gendered image ‘became a site of female biological characteristics:
it bleeds, it flows, it opens, it encloses’.4 Moreover, as Voaden also suggests, it
was enclosure within the supportive and empowering environment of the
female community of Helfta which allowed these women to develop this
unique expression of the cult of the Sacred Heart in terms of the female. More
importantly, the Helfta visionaries seem to have drawn specifically on the
experiences of their own biologically female bodies and from their compan-
ionship with other females within the cloister for this particular expression of
their mystical insights.5 The association made by these women in their writ-
ing between the mystical Sacred Heart of Christ (made accessible by means of
his wounded side) and the female womb therefore anticipates a similar use of
such imagery in the writing of Julian of Norwich, although there are crucial
differences in how they employ female imagery in their writing.
Both Voaden and Bynum conclude that women such as Gertrude the Great
and Mechthild of Hackeborn, both of whom were raised from an early age in
convents, seem to have been less conditioned by prevailing attitudes towards
the female intellect as inferior and the female body as corrupt than was their
2
Rosalynn Voaden, ‘All Girls Together: Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta’, in Watt,
Women in Their Communities, pp. 72–91.
3
For a detailed study of the development of the cult of the Sacred Heart at Helfta see Mary
Jeremy Finnegan OP, The Women of Helfta (Georgia, 1991), especially pp. 131–43.
4
Voaden, ‘Community, Gender and Vision’, p. 74.
5
On this see Voaden, ‘Community, Gender and Vision’, p. 73. See also Caroline Walker
Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (California and
London, 1982), pp. 228–9.
65
contemporary, Mechthild of Magdeburg.6 As a former beguine, Mechthild of

Magdeburg had lived most of her life outside the walls of the convent and
her writing appears to lack the sense of authority of the other two women
which was likely to have arisen from their own secure experiences as bio-
logical females living as part of an enclosed community of women.7 As a result,
Mechthild of Magdeburg is far more likely to express a sense of her own
unworthiness as female in her writing.8 In her book, The Flowing Light of the
Divinity,9 Mechthild of Magdeburg tells her readers: ‘Now many people may
wonder how I, such a sinful being can dare write such things. I can tell you
truly that, had God not intervened in my heart seven years ago, I would still
be silent and would never have done it’.10 Elsewhere, she similarly antici-
pates criticism and counters it: ‘Dear People, how can I help it if these things
are happening to me and have so often happened to me? In humble humility
and wretched poverty and in oppressed degradation God has shown his
marvels’.11 Mechthild of Magdeburg’s employment of the topos of humility in
this way would suggest that, as a woman who had lived outside the walls of
the convent, she was more intrinsically aware of both the benefits and the liabil-
ities of being classified as a vulnerable and inadequate female than were
her two other contemporaries at Helfta.12 Such an awareness of this basic
paradox leads her to exploit the lacuna between these two positions and
embrace the notion of her femaleness as an expedient expression of a lack of
both authority and power, as is clear from these extracts. The resultant void
created by this lack can then be filled by the Word of God, therefore making
women as the most lowly of his subjects particularly suited to this kind of
divine revelation.13 In a sense too, Mechthild also envisages herself in terms
of a womb which receives and encloses the redemptive seed of God in the
6
This reading is also supported by that of Alexandra Barratt in her essay examining the
erotic imagery in the writing of Gertrude the Great. In this essay Barratt argues for a lib-
erated and unconditioned use of erotic imagery on the part of the writer which ‘well(s)
up with a total lack of self-consciousness or guilt (‘ “The Woman Who Shares the King’s
Bed”: The Innocent Eroticism of Gertrud the Great of Helfta’, in Susannah Mary
Chewning (ed.), Intersections of Religion and Sexuality: The Word Made Flesh (London,
2004), pp. 105–17).
7
Voaden, ‘Community, Gender and Vision’, pp. 72–3. For a useful essay which examines
what enclosure might mean in terms of empowerment, see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ‘Chaste
Bodies: Frames and Experiences’, in Kay and Rubin, Framing Medieval Bodies, pp. 2–42.
8
This is something which Bynum also points this out in Jesus as Mother, p. 214.
9
Susan Clark (ed.) and Christiane Mesch Galvani (trans.), Mechthild von Magdeburg: The
Flowing Light of the Divinity (New York and London, 1991).
10
The Flowing Light, 3:1, pp. 65–6.
11
The Flowing Light, 3:1, p. 61.
12
Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 241.
13
Susannah Mary Chewning draws on the psychoanalytical theories of Luce Irigaray to
suggest that the mystical experience and associated loss of subjectivity is particularly
suited to women, who have in any case already relinquished their subjectivity in the
patriarchal social context in ‘Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: “A Time . . . of
Veiled Infinity” ’, in Watt, Women in Their Communities, pp. 116–37.
66
form of the Word, gestates it within her, and then proceeds to give birth to it
in the production of the written text. In an allegorical passage from The
Flowing Light of the Divinity, for example, Mechthild depicts herself as a hum-
ble maiden inside a vast church who suddenly finds herself wearing a golden
coronet like that of the Virgin on which is inscribed these words:
His eyes in mine,

His heart in mine
His soul in mine,
Uninhibited and unabashed.14
The concept of uninhibited enclosure here, leading to an ‘unabashed’ union

with God which follows closely on from the situating of the female subject
within a cavernous church/womb from which the Word of God is born,
invokes the Kristevan concept of the prediscursive chora as a means of access-
ing a primary jouissance. In this context it is significant such a union is entirely
liberating for Mechthild, achieved as it is by means of a feminine abjection,
and her use of such inherently gynaecentric imagery to identify the mystic as
both abject and transcendent is entirely typical of her writing.15 Moreover, by
simultaneously implicating herself within the topoi of both the weak and
flawed woman and the Marian salvatrix, Mechthild places herself at the fore-
front of the redemptive process, paradoxically empowering herself as woman,
visionary and writer as she does so.
Julian of Norwich also adopts to the same ends the topos of the inadequate
female early in the Short Text. Here she refers to herself both as ‘a woman,
leued, febille, & freylle’ (ST, 48), and as ‘a synfulle creature’ (ST, 43). Although
the expression of such humilitas was clearly an accepted convention of her day,
particularly for women writers,16 the use of this topos would suggest that Julian,
like Mechthild of Magdeburg, had internalised contemporary socio-religious
attitudes which considered women as weak and intellectually inferior
beings, and that she was seeking to justify the birth of her own text at this early
stage in her literary career. However, it is also significant that, like her visionary
precursor, Julian also qualifies this statement of weakness with a defensive
caveat: ‘Botte I wate wele this that I saye. I hafe it of the schewynge of hym that
es souerayne techare’ (ST, 48). Like the Helfta visionary, Julian is depicting her
perceived female weakness as the agency through which the Word of God can
be made known to her ‘evencristen’. The important point as far as this present
14
The Flowing Light, 2:1, p. 34
15
For a more detailed examination of the appeal of such imagery to enclosed women, see
my essay, ‘ “ Ant nes he him seolf reclus i maries wombe?”: Julian of Norwich, the
Anchorhold and Redemption of the Monstrous Female Body’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy
and Teresa Walters (eds), Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff, 2002), pp. 128–43.
16
For a discussion of the topos of humility as used by medieval writers see Newman, Sister
of Wisdom, p. 2.
67
study is concerned, however, is that Julian also appears to be actively trans-

forming an apparently internalised sense of female inadequacy from a passive
concept into an active and authoritative agent of redemption. Such a transform-
ation continues to develop gradually in the Short Text, but will be entirely
characteristic of the Long Text which was to preoccupy much of Julian’s more
mature years, perhaps even the remainder of her life. Moreover, it demonstrates
clearly an increasingly confident reliance upon the female body to provide both
interpretive tool and central hermeneutic which would finally culminate in her
specific inscription of the female upon God.
Until fairly recent times it was widely presumed that Julian had lived her
life as a nun before entering the anchorhold attached to Saint Julian’s church
in Norwich as a recluse,17 and that her writing and unique theological insights
which developed following her mystical experiences in 1373 were a result
of years of contemplation within the relative solitude of the cloister and
later in the enclosed environment of the anchorhold. However, since
Benedicta Ward’s astute reappraisal of both internal and external evidence to
refute this theory, her subsequent argument for Julian as having been a young
wife and mother who might well have been widowed or have lost a child
prior to her withdrawal into the anchorhold has brought about a radical
rethink of perspective within Julian studies.18 Although Ward’s theory
remains conjecture only, nevertheless it has encouraged the examination of
Julian’s writing as being the product of a woman with far more worldly and
secular experiences than hitherto considered. It is now considered probable
that, like those worldly experiences of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian’s own
experiences within the world were ones which could well have shaped her
theological understanding and the themes and the patterns of imagery she
chose to employ in order to disseminate it in her writing. Although at present
we have no way of corroborating Ward’s hypothesis, as I have just suggested,
17
On this see my Introduction, n. 68.
18
Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, pp. 23–4. Although most commentators remain careful about
making assumptions about Julian’s early life experiences because of the conjectural and
circumstantial nature of the evidence, nevertheless her work is now being appraised as
perhaps being the product of more diverse life experiences than religious or anchoritic
enclosure would have provided. For some of those critics on both sides of the argument
see my Introduction, nn. 68 and 69. More recently, in his monograph on Julian entitled
Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Cambridge, 1999), Christopher Abbott has
dismissed Ward’s claim as ‘unlikely’, although he fails to elucidate why he considers this
to be the case. In the same note, too, Abbott is equally as ambivalent about Julian’s
anchoritic status at the time of writing because of the unsure nature of the evidence. See
p. 53, n. 15. It would seem to me, however, that the evidence of local wills, which cer-
tainly place a Julian in the anchorhold in 1393, as well as The Book of Margery Kempe
which places her there in 1413, and the incipit at the start of the only extant manuscript
of the Short Text which designates her ‘recluse ate Norwyche and hitt ys on lyfe anno
domini millesimo CCCCxiii’, when read in conjunction with Watson’s redating of both
texts, would seem to provide evidence enough to dispel most conjecture. This is some-
thing I will be addressing in the final chapter of this book.
68
there is no doubt that Julian’s writing is saturated with images drawn from
being a woman in the world; allusions to childbirth, motherhood, sexuality
and domesticity, for example, combine to form a powerful statement assert-
ing the centrality of female experience to the redemptive process and its arti-
culation. Such an identification of Julian with both the social and the solitary,
the worldly and the spiritual therefore radically alters how we respond to her
writing, particularly the different uses to which she puts the theme of moth-
erhood in both texts, an examination of which will constitute the primary
focus of this chapter. In addition, such varied experiences as a woman in the
world outside the cloister would have provided the writer with the suitably
accessible interpretive framework for those visionary insights which we find
in her writing and, perhaps, to offer the sense of gentle authority for which it
is renowned.
It is likely that Julian’s withdrawal from the world did not occur until the
early to mid-1390s, a time when Julian would have been about fifty years of
age. Contemporary research has failed to find evidence of any solitary attached
to the church of Saint Julian in Norwich in the intervening period between
the 1320s and 1390s, which would seem to preclude earlier anchoritic enclos-
ure at Norwich.19 Indeed, using the evidence of local wills, the earliest
recorded bequest to an anchoress named Julian there appears to have been in
1394.20 This late date for enclosure is further supported by Nicholas Watson’s
important redating of both the Short and the Long Texts. Watson has argued
for the Short Text as being the product of the mid to late 1380s at the earliest,21
rather than constituting the immediate documentation of Julian’s visionary
experiences soon after they occurred in the early 1370s, as was originally
thought. Similarly, he demonstrates the likelihood that the Long Text is a
work over which Julian laboured from the late 1380s until she died, probably
some time after 1416.22 A date of enclosure for Julian as late as 1394 would
therefore appear to coincide with the early stages of the Long Text and lends
credence to Ward’s assertion that Julian could have continued to live in her
own household alongside her mother and her servants following her vision-
ary experiences of 1373.23 Watson’s redating therefore makes it increasingly
likely that Julian would have been living and writing in a domestic, albeit
19
J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire
(Woodbridge, 1988), p. 89.
20
See Glasscoe’s Introduction to the Long Text, p. vii.
21
Watson, ‘Composition’, p. 663.
22
This date is suggested by the fact that a will made by Isabel Ufforde, Countess of Suffolk,
and dated 1416, records the bequest of twenty shillings to Julian, a recluse at Norwich, as
cited in Glasscoe’s Introduction to her edition of the Long Text, p. vii. Although a later
will dated 1429 also records a bequest to an anchorite in the church of Saint Julian’s, no
recipient’s name accompanies the bequest. On this, see Long Text, Introduction, p. vii.
23
Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, p. 23. For a discussion of the activities of pious laywomen
such as Julian in the high to late Middle Ages see Helen Jewell, Women in Medieval
England (Manchester, 1996), pp. 165–72
69
devout setting prior to enclosure, rendering the earlier Short Text entirely a
product of that domestic setting. Julian’s later enclosure would then have
provided an appropriate environment for contemplation, deeper analysis
and revision of the already completed Short Text and its reworking in the
form of the Long Text, which thus becomes a product of perhaps almost a
quarter of a century of writing within the anchorhold.
Anchorhold: Womb and Tomb
The anchoritic life was, of course, a well-established and highly respected tradi-
tion throughout the Middle Ages and, as Ann Warren has shown, seems to
have been particularly attractive for women during the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries.24 It is possible that women with a particularly strong calling
to the religious life found that enclosure provided them with a paradoxical
freedom for self-definition, self-expression and spiritual development which
was unlikely to be available to them if they remained in the world. It would
also mean a separation from society’s attitudes and prejudices and the cre-
ation of the space, both literal and metaphorical for a less conditioned way of
thinking. The term ‘anchorite’ came originally from the Latin (and ultimately
Greek) ‘anchoreta’, meaning ‘one who has withdrawn’, and in theory it implied
a complete withdrawal from the world and its influences, although in prac-
tice it seems that not all female anchorites adhered so strictly to the guide-
lines. For example, Ancrene Wisse, an anonymous thirteenth-century work
written originally as a guide for a group of anchoresses, stresses the esteem
in which the anchoress was held in contemporary society but also reveals the
multifarious temptations and secular influences to which the recluse could
fall prey.25 Similarly, the ready access which Margery Kempe seems to enjoy
to a variety of anchorites, including, of course, Julian herself, would suggest
that the anchoritic life was not as segregated an existence as it is often
deemed to have been. However, in a rhetorical sense at least, although often
living within the heart of a bustling city, as was the case with Julian, or else
often situated symbolically at its gates, the anchoress was a marginalised fig-
ure. Both physically and spiritually, she was set apart from the rest of society
and, by implication, relatively free from the hitherto restrictive prejudices
24
Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Los Angeles, 1985),
especially pp. 20–2. For a reappraisal of the reasons for the gender imbalance within the
anchoritic community in England again see my essay, ‘Redemption of the Monstrous
Female Body’.
25
J. R. R. Tolkien (ed.), Ancrene Wisse, EETS o.s. 249 (London, 1962). See in particular pp.
92–153 for an account of the bodily and spiritual temptations to which an anchoress
might be subject. Contemporary research suggests that this text (of which there are sev-
eral versions) was reworked for an increasingly lay audience during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. On this, see in particular Bella Millet, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of
Hours’, in Renevey and Whitehead, Writing Religious Women, pp. 21–40.
70
and gendered attitudes of that society, as well as from the ties of family and
friends. Considered to be dead to the world, an anchoress’s immurement in
her cell would probably have been preceded by the recitation of the offices of
Extreme Unction and the Prayers for the Dead by the bishop.26 From this
point onwards her cell would be as a tomb, the marginalised domain of the
living dead, and often placed in the liminal location of a churchyard or
attached to the north side of a church.27 Such a notion of liminality is again
drawn upon by the author of Ancrene Wisse in his explicit correlation of
anchorhold and grave, a connection which reflects not only in the cell’s func-
tion of separating its occupant from the living, but also its tomb-like architec-
ture:28 as the author asks his audience, ‘for hwet is ancre hus bute hire
burinesse?’ (for what is the anchorhold but her grave?).29 It was from this
location that an anchoress such as Julian would be simultaneously dead to the
world and reborn into the glory of God. In this sense the anchorhold was
indeed her tomb, but by means of the rebirth which it enacted and the enclos-
ure which it performed, it was also envisaged in terms of a womb.30 Again,
as the anonymous author of Ancrene Wisse tells his audience:
Ant nes he him seolf reclus i maries wombe? þeos twa þing limpeð to ancre
nearowðe & bitternesse. for wombe is nearow wununge þer ure lauerd wes
reclus and þis word marie as ich ofte habbe iseid spealeð bitternesse hef he
þenne i nearow stude þolieð bitternesse he beoð his feolahes reclus as he
wes i Marie wombe.31
And was he not himself a recluse in Mary’s womb? These two things con-
cern an anchoress: confinedness and bitterness. For the womb is a confined
dwelling where Our Lord was a recluse. And this word ‘Mary’, as I have
often said, means ‘bitterness’. If you then endure bitterness in a confined
place, you are his fellows, recluse as he was in Mary’s womb.
26
On this, see, for example, Frances Beer, Women and the Mystical Experience in the Middle
Ages (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 121.
27
See Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women
(London and New York, 1994), for a study of how gender works in relation to material cul-
ture. In particular, Gilchrist examines how attitudes towards gender influenced the
archaeology of churches and nunneries in the Middle Ages. For the prevalence of
anchorholds placed on the north side of churches, see p. 177. See also Christiania Whitehead,
Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff, 2003), for an
in depth study of the use of architectural allegory in the literature of the Middle Ages.
See in particular pp. 91–2 for a discussion of architectural allegory in Ancrene Wisse.
28
For a description of the architecture of a selection of anchorholds in England see Gilchrist,
Gender and Material Culture, p. 178. See also Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons, pp. 31–4.
29
Ancrene Wisse, p. 58.
30
This image of the anchorhold as womb draws upon imagery connected with the ancient
Sibyl within the classical tradition, a connection which I will examine in Chapters 5 and 6,
as well as the penitential prison-like caves to which the Desert Fathers withdrew and, as
Roberta Gilchrist has illustrated, is part of an ongoing ontological association between the
mysteries of the womb and mystical insight. Gilchrist (Gender and Material Culture, p. 181).
31
71
For the anchoress then, the movement into the tomb of the anchorhold, as
well as constituting a figurative death, could also be seen in terms of a return
to the womb, a rejection of the past and the announcement of the beginning
of a new life, a passion which would be enacted until the moment of her phys-
ical death.32 For Julian, the material expression of that new life and passion
became her Long Text which, if we adhere to Watson’s assessment, was cre-
ated over the duration of her life within the womb-like anchorhold and is
therefore coterminous with her physical and spiritual rebirth into the more
mature wisdom and understanding which she herself identifies in the Long
Text, as we shall see. In this way, the extraordinarily complex use to which
Julian puts the theme of motherhood in her texts can now be examined in
terms of the older woman’s response to worldly motherhood, the maternal
body and the recontextualisation of both within the context of an articulation
of the mystical experience.
Images of the (M)other: Tears, Suffering and Jouissance
As the inheritor of a well-established tradition of female anchoritism, such as

that reflected in the Ancrene Wisse, much of Julian’s writing evidences aspects
of a specifically female spirituality. However, like that displayed by Julian’s
forerunner, Mechthild of Magdeburg, this spirituality is one which seems to
have been firmly mediated by traditional attitudes towards women and their
problematic bodies, as has been suggested. Like Mechthild, too, these atti-
tudes seem to have been simultaneously internalised and exploited by the
writer in the production of a series of hermeneutics which interrogate trad-
itional notions of God and serve to assert the feminine as an alternative means
of accessing him.
Knowledge of and/or misconceptions about the workings of the female
body, of course, had shaped the spirituality of women over countless millen-
nia as much as it had done their physical lives. At various stages within the
human history of the West woman had been sometimes worshipped (as in the
goddess-revering cultures of the ancient world),33 subjugated as sinful (a pri-
mary tenet within the medieval Church), or idealised (as in the various cults
based on the maternal saints discussed in the previous chapter). Intense debate
about the relation between motherhood, human sexuality and how both fitted
into God’s divine plan for humankind characterised much intellectual activity
32
For enclosure as a re-enactment of the Passion see Nicholas Watson, ‘The Methods and
Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The
Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1987: Exeter
Symposium 4 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 142.
33
On the tradition of the goddess, see Gerder Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, Chapter 7,
especially pp. 141–4. Also useful on this subject is Gimbutas, Goddesses and Gods of Old
Europe, pp. 152–200.
72
throughout the Middle Ages, both in a secular and a religious context. In

recent times Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset have suggested that
popular medieval theories pertaining to female sexuality (most of which were
based on the teachings of Aristotle and Galen) were perpetually being reinter-
preted and reworked in order to support the cultural belief in the superior-
ity of the male contribution to procreation.34 This putative superiority hinged
on the ‘one sex’ model of human anatomy – that is to say, the belief that the
female was anatomically merely a defective male with a sexual physiology
analogous to that of the male, only inverted and internal.35 Similarly, whereas
the male was considered to be hot and dry, the female was considered to be of
a much colder and wetter disposition and as a result constantly craved union
with the heat of the male through repeated intercourse.36 The belief in such a
physical need for sexual intercourse therefore served to justify the existence of
sexual pleasure in medical discourse by stressing its biological purpose. Since
human beings were not considered to be endowed with unflawed wisdom
and limitless self-knowledge, the void had been filled by an all-powerful pleas-
ure principle attached to sex in order to guarantee the preservation of
humankind and we find many medical treatises from the Middle Ages repeat-
ing this type of justification.37 Theology, however, kept encountering difficul-
ties in its attempt to reconcile itself with such medical theory, and medieval
theologians continually grappled with problems connected to the existence of
sexual pleasure. Medical theory, however, continued to pursue its own logic,
seemingly heedless of religious implication and ultimately left the patient
with the responsibility of choosing which course of action to take – that is to
say, whether to follow the demands of the body at the risk of endangering the
soul or vice versa.38 Nevertheless, within medical discourse, there was also a
belief that excess intercourse, or intercourse outside of marriage, could result
in infertility because of the slippery nature of the womb if not restricted to a
single partner. As a result, in medical terms, a lack of sexual control came to
be seen merely as a vice based on excess, whereas in theological terms, it was
viewed as a sin.39 As Jacquart and Thomasset have demonstrated, the link
between medical and theological discourse was therefore a close one and
throughout history theology would construct its sexual ethics on the medical
beliefs which were promoted during any given period.40
34
Jacquart and Thomasset point out that this was particularly true of the fourteenth cen-
tury when Aristotelian ideas were riding to ascendancy (Sexuality and Medicine, p. 195).
35
See Laqueur, Making Sex, pp. 25–62, and also Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 31–4,
for a summary of the Aristotelian influence on medieval thought, and Bynum,
Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 220–1, for a discussion of how the human body was
seen as ‘paradigmically male’.
36
On this see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 19–26.
37
Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, p. 80.
38
39
40
73
Medical and theological views of women in particular during the four-

teenth century thus served to reinforce one another and would no doubt have
been thoroughly internalised by women such as Julian and her female con-
temporaries.41 One of the primary results emerging from all this was that full
expression of female sexuality tended only to be culturally acceptable within
the context of marriage – and preferably motherhood too,42 although this was
further problematised by the ascendance of the cult of the Virgin, which had
been developing inexorably since the fifth century.43 As Maurice Hamington
has suggested in his study of the fragile relationship between Catholicism and
womanhood, the concentration on the sexual status of the Virgin Mary
and the creation of the ‘unique religious image of virgin motherhood’ has
always had a problematic effect upon its Christian adherents because of its
ultimate unobtainability.44 Whether this served to restrict women – either
physically in the suppression or extinction of their sexual desire, or psycho-
logically in that they were constantly made aware of their own sinful state as
Eve’s daughters – is still a matter open for debate,45 but what is evident is that
motherhood provided an important motif or matrix for many medieval writ-
ers attempting to describe the love of God for his human creation and the recip-
rocal love of humankind for God.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the iconographic motif of Jesus as
mother feeding sinful humans from his motherly breasts was a popular one
during the later Middle Ages, developing alongside a more affective expres-
sion of spirituality from the eleventh century onwards.46 As devotion began
to concentrate on the humanity of Christ rather than the trinitarian Godhead,
there was no better symbol than woman as the most fleshly and fallen of
humankind to illustrate God’s condescension in becoming human. The seem-
ingly ‘natural’ act of a mother breast-feeding her child thus provided a power-
ful representation of the bond between God and humankind. The fact that
in the medieval belief system, milk and blood were considered to be variants
in a ‘corporeal economy of fluids and organs’,47 a complex web of symbolic
representation centring on sacrifice and salvation came into play, something
which women writers such as Julian and Margery were able to draw upon,
develop and exploit to its fullest potential. In her Long Text, for example,
41
Watson defends what he sees as an apparent lack of radicalness in women writers of the
Middle Ages by asserting that most women accepted the notions of gender difference
and tried to interpret them as positively as they could (‘Remaking “Woman” ’, p. 8).
42
Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 144–93.
43
For a summary of the process of construction of the cult of the Virgin, see Maurice
Hamington, Hail Mary: The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism (London,
1995), pp. 9–29. See also Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, especially pp. 68–78.
44
Hamington, Hail Mary, p. 53.
45
Warner asserts that the cult of the Virgin sets up an impossible double bind for women,
leading them to a position of hopelessness (Alone of All Her Sex, p. 337).
46
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 212–18.
47
Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 35. See also Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, p. 52.
74
Julian asserts unequivocally in the context of God’s love that ‘the moders ser-
vice is nerest, redyest and sekirest, for it is most of trueth’ (LT, 97), illustrating
an apparent internalisation of common notions about Christian motherhood,
as well as an ability to exploit them by immediately putting them to work in
the creation of a language of maternity readily accessible to her ‘evencristen’.
One commentator who concurs with this reading of Julian is Elizabeth
Robertson who considers the author to be ‘a subtle strategist who sought to
undo assumptions about women and to provide . . . a new celebration of femi-
ninity through contemplation of Christ’s “feminine” attributes’.48 Moreover,
as Robertson also argues, Julian’s internalising of essentialist assumptions is
symptomatic of a desire to take part in the dialogue attached to contempor-
ary religious debate and that the end product of this participation, rather
than being subversive, is celebratory.49 And, indeed, there is much that is cele-
bratory about the use of the motherhood matrix in Julian’s writing. There is
also considerable evidence in both texts to suggest that she saw motherhood
as a powerful trope to explain the mystical experience and her unique know-
ledge of God. Of course, Julian’s theological exposition of the Motherhood of
God is not unique to her writing, as Caroline Walker Bynum has clearly
demonstrated.50 However, as developed in the Long Text, Julian’s treatment of
it is now probably the best known and most fully expounded example of this
trope in fourteenth-century religious writing. Nevertheless, its pervasiveness
within both of Julian’s texts has continued to be vastly underestimated by
modern commentators. Indeed, the concept of motherhood as a literal truth,
metaphorical tool, textual matrix, religious ideology and philosophy is central
to her work, underpinning both the Short and the Long Texts.
A brief article by Sarah McNamer appearing in 1989 has done much to alert
modern scholars to some of the more subtle uses to which Julian puts the
theme of motherhood in her writing and modern Julian scholarship has much
reason to be endebted to her astute and insightful investigation.51 Nevertheless,
the brevity of McNamer’s study has left gaps in our understanding and the
remainder of this chapter will therefore continue the examination from where
McNamer left it, serving to uncover some of the more strategic uses to which
Julian puts the motherhood theme in her work.
Perhaps the most literal representation of motherhood with which Julian
presents us is to be found in the allusion to her own mother at the onset of
the Short Text. Along with other unspecified persons, possibly friends or rela-
tives, she is keeping vigil over her mortally ill daughter, a practice which
48
Elizabeth Robertson, ‘Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in the
Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury
(eds), Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 161.
49
Robertson, ‘Medieval Medical Views’, p. 161.
50
Bynum, Jesus as Mother
51
Sarah McNamer, ‘The Exploratory Image: God as Mother in Julian of Norwich’s
Revelations of Divine Love’, Mystics Quarterly 15, 1 (1989), pp. 21–8.
75
seems to have been entirely in keeping with deathbed ritual amongst the
gentry and nobility in the fifteenth century.52 At this point, Julian’s ‘curette’
is summoned to deliver the last rites, and those who care most about Julian’s
physical and spiritual welfare, particularly her mother, are depicted as
watching, waiting and praying, vigilant in addressing her needs whilst her
illness reaches crisis.53 There is no doubt here that they are also witnesses to
what Julian herself initially suspects is an interlude of madness (‘and I sayde
that I hadde raued þat daye’; ST, 72), but what is in fact the onset of her
extraordinary visionary experiences. Julian’s detailing of a delicate and
touching moment of reciprocal laughter due to her realisation that ‘the
feende ys ouercomyn’ (ST, 51) adds to the atmosphere of mother–daughter
intimacy which she seems to be establishing in her account of this episode.
When the moment comes when the onlookers are convinced of Julian’s
death, however, it is – significantly – her own mother who takes control of
the situation and attempts to close the eyes of her daughter: ‘My modere that
stode emangys othere and behelde me lyftyd vppe hir hande before me face
to lokke myn eyen, for sche wenyd I had bene dede or els I hadde dyede’
(ST, 54). In commenting on this incident, Ward is unduly harsh in her response
to this maternal reaction and misses the multivalence of the description
altogether:
It always worried me to think that a woman of Julian’s maturity still held

such memories of her own mother but showed no warmth at all in her soli-
tary mention of her; in fact, her own mother totally misunderstood her,
and attempted to close her eyes when all Julian wanted was to have them
wide open.54
Far from lacking in warmth, however, the response of Julian’s mother is

qualified by this touching display of a heightened concern for her dying
daughter, mixed as it is with a poignant misunderstanding. Julian’s medical
condition has rendered her unable to move, the reflex action of her eyes is
inoperative and her attention is rooted to the crucifix before her from which
her visions are emanating. Not privy to her daughter’s visionary encounter,
from her different vantage point the mother naturally presumes her daughter’s
52
For a description of medieval deathbed ritual see Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes
towards Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (London, 1976), p. 12. Here Ariès claims
that death would become a type of public ceremony with the bedchamber becoming a
public place to be entered and left at will by family, friends and neighbours, a gathering
which would also include children.
53
For an interesting analysis of the nature of Julian’s illness, see James McIlwain, ‘The
“Bodelye syeknes” of Julian of Norwich’, Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984),
pp. 167–80. McIlwain identifies four disorders as being the leading candidates for a correct
diagnosis of Julian’s illness: diphtheria, inflammatory polyneuropathy, tick paralysis and
botulism. Of the four, he argues, ‘ botulism seems the most likely to have been responsible
for Julian’s illness’, p. 167.
54
Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, p. 24.
76
demise and Julian’s phrasing of the episode with her use of words such as
‘behelde me’ and ‘wenyd’, far from being indicative of cold detachment, in
fact articulates a connection between mother and daughter which is imbued
with intimacy. Julian’s mother is watching her deterioration closely and
responding to what she is witnessing with care and concern. This woman is
performing one of the last bodily acts available to her as a mother as she
reaches forward to close the eyes of her seemingly dead daughter and her
misunderstanding, rather than rendering her culpable, as Ward’s reading
would intimate, serves to articulate the unique space into which Julian is
moving as a result of the experiences which will forever separate her from the
days of her youth. Julian’s sorrow and anxiety are therefore represented as
twofold: she does not want to relinquish the vision of Christ which has been
granted her and yet is aware of the misconception – and the consequent sor-
row – of her mother. Unable to reassure her, the pain she feels for her mother’s
sense of loss becomes palpable, juxtaposed as it is with the reference to
Julian’s own pain engendered by the fear of the potential loss of Christ within
the enclosed sickroom: ‘And this encresyd mekille my sorowe, for nouhtwith-
standynge alle my paynes, I wolde nouht hafe been lettyd for loove that
I hadde in hym’ (ST, 54). Thus, even at this early stage in the narrative, we see
Julian subtly translating the experience of maternal grief into an expression of
the pain and subsequent despair caused by the potential loss of Christ.
Drawing on her own mother’s muted sense of loss here, Julian proceeds to
assert that the loss of Christ would be so unbearable that she would prefer to
‘hafe dyede bodylye’ herself. Thus, in her analysis of her deeply personal
experience of the Passion in that room of sickness, whilst in the company of
her own mother, Julian identifies with a worldly, maternal despair of loss,
which she will subsequently reappropriate as primary hermeneutic to
describe that most indescribable loss of all, the loss of Christ. ‘I thougt, “Es
any payne in helle lyke this payne?” And I was aunswerde in my resone that
dyspayre ys mare for that es gastelye payne’ (ST, 54). Julian’s treatment of her
material here is wholly in keeping with what Watson has recognised as the
ability of medieval women writers to adopt and render positive many of
those negative attitudes which abounded towards them.55 It is therefore apt
that in order to contextualise and validate the discourse of maternal loss she
is engaging with here, Julian now moves on from the description of her own
mother to a depiction of the most revered of all mothers, the Virgin Mary, in
her role as Mater Dolorosa standing with the disciples at the foot of the cross.
Moreover, this narrative transition from her own mother to Virgin Mary is an
entirely seamless one, the depiction of Mary obviously predicated upon the
role which Julian’s own mother herself has just been performing in the
narrative:
55
See Introduction, pp. 23–4.
77
Hereyn I sawe in partye the compassyon of oure ladye saynte Marye, for
criste & scho ware so anede in loove that þe gretness of hir loove was the
cause of the mykillehede of hir payne. For so mykille as scho lovyd hym
mare than alle othere, her payne passed all othere, and so alle his disciples
& alle his trewe lovers suffyrde paynes mare than thare awne bodelye
dying. (ST, 55)
This allusion to the Virgin and the disciples draws upon the scenario of fam-
ily and friends gathered around Julian in her own suffering which she has
just been recounting and draws a firm link between worldly and visionary
experience which will characterise her exposition of the entire mystical
encounter. Julian’s imitatio here is therefore multilayered: not only is she link-
ing the pain of her own mother to that of Mary, but in acknowledging the role
played by herself as source of that pain, identifies with Christ in an imitatio of
his own particular moment of suffering. Thus, as Christ is to the Virgin, so
Julian is ‘anede’ to her own mother and as a result this multifaceted correl-
ation between herself and Christ as suffering children, and between both suf-
fering mothers, is skilfully manipulated in order to render her new mystical
understanding of God’s love in terms of the relationship between mother and
child. In so doing, she manages even at this early point to articulate clearly the
maternal bond as being representative of the love shared between God and
humanity in its never-ending cycle of maternal and filial reciprocity.
Such a use of the link between motherhood and emotional vulnerability is
used by Julian elsewhere in her depictions of the Virgin in other guises. Soon
after this first encounter in the Short Text Julian tells us that the Virgin
appears to her as a ‘sympille maydene & a meeke, honge of age in the stature
that scho was when scho conceyvede’ (ST, 44). This time Julian is drawing on
a tradition of the mother of God as a child-woman, a representation which
was fundamental to the development of the cult of the Virgin within the
medieval Church.56 The fact that Mary is also ‘owre ladye’ therefore serves to
create a tension in the text. She is both child and woman, simple and yet her
soul is constituted of both ‘wisdom’ and ‘trowth’. This apparently oxy-
moronic assertion, of course, as well as reflecting the essential paradox within
the concept of virgin motherhood, in fact echoes perfectly the position of the
ordinary, worldly mother within medieval society. Considered potent in her
role as carer, teacher, nurturer and guide for the child and as sustainer of
56
Depictions of the Virgin as a precociously adult child are common in the many non-
canonical representations of her which proliferated during the Middle Ages. See, for
example, J. K. Elliott (ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal
Christian Literature in an English Translation based on M. R. James (Oxford, 1993), pp. 48–67.
In this account the young Mary is subject to excessive piety and daily visions, even as a
small child. Similarly, the East Anglian N-Town Mary Play initially depicts Mary as a
highly articulate three-year old, dressed in white and already fully acquainted with her
unique destiny (Stephen Spector (ed.), N-Town Play, 2 vols EETS s.s. 11 and 12 (Oxford,
1991), vol. 1, p. 82).
78
home and family, yet the mother has also always been subject to the con-
straints of a patriarchal society which simultaneously serve to marginalise
and control her and yet render her a central figure within the domestic and
familial realm.57 This crisis of identity has again been recognised in more
modern times by Kristeva who argues that the Virgin’s dualism comes closest
to representing the lived experience of the mother within society in that she
continues to be the embodiment of both female masochism and female jouis-
sance.58 This, claims Kristeva, is the reason behind an increasing number of
churches which were dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries when there was a new tolerance of marriage and an idealisa-
tion of motherhood in particular as a means towards redemption.59 For
women, therefore, the figure of the Virgin served to forge and affirm accepted
socio-religious ideology; as Kristeva points out, then as now, the future of the
species was dependent on the self-sacrificial or masochistic work of the
mother, but such self-sacrifice could also result in endless jouissance because
of a belief in her own procreative power.60 Thus, in Julian’s empathetic repre-
sentation of the Virgin we are able to recognise the same paradox; not only
does she display a type of self-sacrificial masochism but also demonstrates a
jouissance which will later result in her transformation into triumphant Queen
of Heaven and crucial member of the salvific hierarchy: ‘ryght so he schewed
here than, hye and nobille and gloriouse and plesaunte to hym abouen alle
creatures’ (ST, 59). Through her humility, then, and her suffering – what
Kristeva would define as a specifically maternal masochism – Mary has
achieved the ultimate reward. However, whereas for Kristeva the image of
the transcendent Virgin is a coercive one ‘utilised by totalitarian powers of all
times to bring women to their side’,61 here Julian reappropriates the coercive-
ness of the image in order to manipulate and exploit it to her own textual – and
personal – advantage. In so doing, she creates a hermeneutic of the maternal
female in order to express the essentially inexpressible. As a result, Christ is
now ‘mare gloryfyed as to my syght than I sawe hym before’. As a mirror
image of his own mother’s suffering and transcendence of it, Christ’s salvific
labouring on the cross becomes the process by which he gives birth to redemp-
tion for humanity. Thus, Christ is already being absorbed into a hermeneutic
of divine motherhood, even at this early point in Julian’s writing, and such a
depiction forms a clear precedent for the passages which will represent him
explicitly as our mother in the Long Text.62
57
For a discussion of this dualism in connection with the influence of the Virgin see
Hamington, Hail Mary, p. 151. This is also addressed by Warner, Alone of All Her Sex,
p. 254.
58
Kristeva, ‘Stabat Mater’, pp. 160–85.
59
Kristeva, ‘Stabat Mater’, p. 171. On this, see also Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 144–5.
60
61
62
See in particular Long Text, pp. 93–103.
79
Blood and the Imagery of Childbirth
In the context of the Julian’s use of motherhood as interpretive and explica-

tory tool, there are two major patterns of imagery which work together to
reinforce this developing notion of motherhood as a means of understanding
Julian’s mystical perception of the word of God. The first of these is the use
of blood and the associated imagery of fluids, part of a recurring pattern
which permeates both the Short and the Long Texts; the second takes up the
theme of enclosure with reference to the womb. Both image patterns again
draw heavily on contemporary Aristotelian beliefs about the female body,
and the synonymy of blood, sweat, tears, milk and urine. According to such
beliefs, women tended to be identified with an unsealed body which was
characterised by blood-loss, lactation and weeping. It is therefore highly sig-
nificant that Julian’s suffering Christ is particularly susceptible to just such a
loss of moisture during her vision of the Passion.63 Again in the Short Text,
Julian’s vision of the crucified Christ is dominated by the shedding of his
blood, a blood-loss which she sees ‘trekylle downe fro vndyr the garlande
alle hate, freschlye, plentefully, & lyvelye’ (ST, 43). The association drawn
immediately between this bleeding and Christ’s redemptive suffering again
echoes the female masochism of the suffering mother in that it is an expres-
sion of ‘anly lovynge’ and ‘tendyr loove’ (ST, 43) – just as the labouring
mother sheds her own blood and suffers to bring her child into the world.
This is further reinforced later in the text when Julian returns to the image of
Christ’s blood-loss. Now she muses that ‘hif itt hadde bene so in kynde . . . itt
schulde hafe made the bedde alle on blode & hafe passede on abowte’ (ST,
50). Read in the context of Julian’s earlier identification with the suffering
Christ, the association drawn here between blood-loss and bed – in fact, the
bed which is currently being occupied by a woman’s own suffering body –
creates a subtext which equates Christ’s precious blood with a specifically
female blood-loss, whether ruptured hymen, menstrual flow, or blood-loss
associated with childbirth. Thus, the bleeding of Christ is depicted not in trad-
itional terms of the blood-loss associated with Christ as wounded soldier, such
as we find in the texts of Langland and other of Julian’s near-contemporaries,64
but is subtly feminised by means of its association with the sickroom and
suffering body of the woman onlooker, Julian. It therefore comes as no
surprise to find that in the equivalent passages in the Long Text Julian
63
For a useful discussion of the influence of this belief system upon women’s lives
see Robertson, ‘Medieval Medical Views’, pp. 142–67, and on the associations of fluids
p. 149. See also p. 73, n. 36 below.
64
See, for example, William Langland, Piers Plowman, Passus XVIII, for a protracted repre-
sentation of Christ as medieval knight. See also the allegory of the lady and the king in
Ancrene Wisse, pp. 199–200.
80
proceeds to develop this association more explicitly. Like the blood of child-
birth or menstruation, for example, it appears to be a woundless bleeding: ‘so
plenteously the hote blode ran oute that there was neither sene skynne ne
wound, but as it were al blode’ (LT, 19). Contrary to most popular depictions
of the bleeding Christ, the blood emerges from an open but apparently
woundless body – just as it would have done ‘if it had be so in kind’ (LT, 19).
Julian then continues by associating this blood with water (‘God hath made
waters plentivous in erthe . . . but yet lekyth him better that we take full
homely his blissid blode to washe us of synne’; LT, 19), a traditional biblical
allusion which now, however, takes on a new relevance. Not only do both
water and blood flow from Christ’s side during the Crucifixion, they flow
also from the similarly opened body of the birthing mother. Just as the
mother’s labour brings forth new life along with blood and amniotic fluid, so
Christ through his labour on the cross and his exuding of blood and water
gives birth to human redemption. In both cases too, the labouring process
brings about a bodily dryness and aridity, an image pattern which wholly
dominates Julian’s Eighth Revelation (LT, 24–31). Here she considers the
shriveling of Christ’s flesh as ‘the maste payne of his passion’ (LT, 25), a suf-
fering which is encapsulated quite simply in his dying words, ‘I threste’. Loss
of fluid and the resultant thirst, of course, are experiences which are integral
to the birth experience,65 and by linking the images of blood, water and thirst
and associating them with the labouring body of Christ, Julian presents him
explicitly as a labouring mother; in so doing she asserts a recontextualised
maternal body as central to an understanding of the redemptive process.
Moreover, the authority which she uses to validate this depiction is drawn
from her own bodily experiences of extreme suffering: ‘And I was als barane
and drye as hif I hadde neuer had comforth before bot litille’ (ST, 72). Thus
Julian again implicates both herself and the maternal female in the pattern of
imagery she chooses to employ, overlaying it upon traditional representa-
tions of a bleeding Christ and thus modifying its import. In effect, she validates
65
This has also been pointed out by Maud Burnett McInerney in an essay which focuses
on Julian’s construction of a poetics of anchoritism in her writing. ‘ “In the Meydens
Womb”: Julian of Norwich and the Poetics of Enclosure’, in John Carmi Parsons and
Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Medieval Mothering (London and New York, 1996), pp. 157–99
(p. 171). Traditional childbirth iconography frequently included images depicting the offer-
ing of wine or water to the newly delivered mother, for a selection of which see Jacqueline
Marie Mussacchio, Art and Ritual in Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and
London, 1999), especially pp. 12, 40, 43, 81 and 107. This is also corroborated by the multi-
plicity of water or wine-based herbal concoctions which the midwife is instructed to
administer to the labouring mother. See, for example, The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in
Childing: A Middle English Version Derived from the Trotula Texts, ed. Alexandra Barratt
(Turnhout and Cheltenham, 2001), in which travailing women are to be offered ‘watyre
of fenygrek’ (p. 64), ‘ysop & hiote water’ (p. 64), ‘myrre . . . in wynne’ (p. 64), ‘ptisan made
with barly dryed before & sodyn in watyre’ (p. 82). Perhaps even more pertinently here,
this text advises that a woman haemorrhaging in labour should be given ‘juce of syn-
grene with red wynne’ to arrest the blood-flow (p. 80).
81
the concept of female participation within theological discourse by means

of an inscription of a female-identified body upon the suffering and bleed-
ing Christ.
Another recurrent image in Julian’s writing is that of the womb, a specifi-
cally female image and one which was closely connected to the concept of
enclosure within an anchorhold, as we have seen.66 Like the image of Jesus as
Mother, the womb metaphor had been used before – in the image of the
Sacred Heart discussed in the context of the Helfta visionaries at the start of
this chapter, for example. However, in the hands of Julian it becomes trans-
formed from traditional topos into fundamental hermeneutic which pervades
her writing. In fact, images of enclosure in Julian’s writing begin to take on,
in the words of Maud Burnett McInerney, an ‘almost mesmeric repetition’ as
her texts progress, especially the use of the words ‘closyd’ and ‘beclosyd’ in
the Long Text:67
[T]he depe wisdam of the Trinite is our moder in whom we arn al beclosid;
the hey goodnes of the Trinite is our lord and in him we arn beclosid and he
in us. We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we
arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son
is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us. (LT, 87)
Thus, according to McInerney: ‘Julian develops the concept of enclosure

into an imagistic system which plays upon the related images of anchorhold
and womb, developing a discursive strategy that links the apophatic and the
maternal’.68 Such an imagistic system, of course, like that of motherhood, is
dependent for its import upon contemporary attitudes towards the womb
which were equally as ambivalent as those towards motherhood. On the one
hand medical texts informed their readers such things as ‘whatever super-
fluities are generated during the course of the month may be sent to this
organ, as if to form the bilge-water of the whole body; this is the nature of the
menses which women have’. On the other, the very same text could offer a
set of wholly contradictory images such as ‘this organ is also nature’s field,
which is cultivated that it may bear fruit’.69 The womb, therefore, was simul-
taneously the seat of poison and procreation, a paradox which was further
enhanced by widespread belief in the Platonic concept of an insatiable and
66
Although sceptical that Julian was an anchoress at the time of writing the Long Text,
McInerney suggests that she was nevertheless thinking like an anchoress. ‘ “In the
Meyden’s Womb” ’, p. 160.
67
McInerney, ‘ “In the Meyden’s Womb” ’, p. 157.
68
McInerney, ‘ “In the Meyden’s Womb” ’, p. 158.
69
Anatomia Cophonis (sometimes referred to the as the Anatomia Porcis because of the
Salernian practice of dissecting pigs rather than human corpses for purposes of anatom-
ical study). This text, probably composed between 1100 and 1150, comprised one of the
most important of Salernian texts. For a modern edition see G. W. Corner (ed.), Anatomical
Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 364
(Washington, 1927), pp. 48–50.
82
‘wandering womb’. Within this economy, the womb was envisaged as a dan-
gerous living animal able to wander around the body at will if not regularly
satiated by sexual intercourse and pregnancy.70 In the same way, therefore,
that Julian exploits socio-religious ambivalence towards motherhood for her
own hermeneutic purposes, so now we see her exploiting the mouvance aris-
ing from cultural ambivalence towards the womb in order to further illumin-
ate God’s love for humankind.
Perhaps one of the most memorable symbols used by Julian which is
demonstrative of this – and one which incorporates a conglomeration of her
gynaecentric imagery – is the womb-like hazelnut, which appears in both
texts. It is significant in this context that Julian introduces the image by iden-
tifying Christ once more in terms of the offices of the mother to her child,
again employing the familiar trope of enclosure: ‘He is our clotheing that for
love wrappith us, halseth us and all beclosyth us for tender love’ (LT, 7). She
then she proceeds to transform this insight into one of the most memorable
metaphors within her writing:
Also in this he shewed a littil thing, the quantitye of an hesil nutt in the
palme of my hand; and it was as round as a balle. I lokid thereupon with
eye of my understondyng and thowte: ‘What may this be?’ And it was gen-
erally answered thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ (LT, 7)
It is eminently possible that, as well as drawing on a common domestic

image here (the hazel-nut was used as a kitchen measure), Julian is also mak-
ing reference to the single reference to a nut which appears in the popular,
highly influential and erotically charged biblical poem, the Song of Songs,
with which she would certainly have been familiar.71 The relevant section of
the poem reads: ‘I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the
70
According to Plato, ‘In women . . . what is called the matrix or womb, a living creature
within them with a desire for child-bearing, if it be left long unfruitful beyond the
due season, is vexed and aggrieved, and wandering throughout the body and block-
ing the channels of the breath, by forbidding respiration brings the sufferer to extreme
distress and causes all manner of disorders; until at last the Eros of the one (the male)
and the Desire of the other bring the pair together’ (Francis Macdonald Cornford
(trans.) Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (London, 1937), p. 357). For a useful
and informative study of this particular belief in the context of iconographic represen-
tation in the Middle Ages, see Laurinda S. Dixon, ‘The Curse of Chastity: The
Marginalization of Women in Medieval Art and Medicine’, in Robert Edwards and
Vickie Ziegler (eds), Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society (Woodbridge,
1995), pp. 49–74.
71
For the religious influence of the Song of Songs and the sermons on them written by
Bernard of Clairvaux see Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner, ‘Puellae Litterae: The Use of the
Vernacular in the Dominican Convents of Southern Germany’, in Watt, Women in Their
Communities, pp. 58–9. Here Ehrenschwendtner looks at the tradition which would have
been inherited by Julian and emphasises that the widespread nature of its influence
should not be underestimated.
83
valleys, and to look if the vineyard had flourished, and the pomegranates
budded.’72 The Latin Vulgate, renders the word as nux (feminine) meaning a
‘nut’ or ‘a thing of no value’. However, within the context of the Song of Songs
the tiny nut of little value takes on an inordinate significance in its association
with the hortus inclusus which is also the location of sexual desire and its ful-
filment.73 Not only is there an abundance of nuts in the garden but the nut
with its hard and enclosed shell becomes a synecdoche for the garden itself
with all its procreative and erotic potentialities. In similar vein, the hazelnut
of Julian’s text takes up this theme of reproductive potential which the theme
of womb-like enclosure has already established in the text and, in particular,
reiterates the powerful/powerless paradox which we saw Julian draw upon
in the context of the Virgin. Not only is it ‘a litill thing’ which can lie in the
palm of the hand, but enclosed within it is ‘all that is made’ (LT, 7). When
examined in association with Julian’s other use of gynaecentric imagery, the
hazelnut encompasses perfectly all the patterns which we have seen emerge
so far. Like the womb (and like Mary and all women generally) this ‘litill
thing’ is small and intact and yet it is capable of housing within its walls
future promise and growth. It will bring forth a new tree infinitely larger than
itself and infinitely more powerful. Such was the womb of Mary which
housed the world’s salvation within it and such is the womb of those women
who will give birth to future generations of ‘evencristen’. Similarly, just as the
hazelnut is dependent on the earth for survival and fruition, so the medieval
belief system associated woman with earth and matter.74 Thus, the unborn
child is as dependent on the mother for its bodily form and survival as the
hazelnut is on the earth, and Christ was on his earthly mother. Thus, both
images – that of nut and of womb – become conflated to encapsulate the
images of enclosure which everywhere permeate Julian’s writing. The image
of womb-like enclosure, therefore, becomes another powerful hermeneutic to
facilitate understanding of Julian’s mystical insight into the immanence of
God and neatly dovetails with her identification of both Christ and the
salvific process as maternal.
72
Song of Songs 6: 11.
73
Some translations of the version in the Greek Septuagint (from which the Vulgate was
largely derived) read ‘to the garden of a nut’ and it is significant that the Greek word for
garden (kepos) is also used as the word for female genitalia in some contexts. It would
seem that the figurative link between the nut and the female anatomy is inescapable,
although the extent to which Julian was aware of that link is debatable. Nevertheless,
the procreative potential and womb-like appearance of the hazelnut and its function as
erotic image in the Song of Songs is self-evident. I am grateful to John Herbert for his
observations on this issue. For a discussion of the etymological associations of the nut
in this context see Marvin H. Pope, The Anchor Bible Song of Songs (New York, 1977),
p. 577, n. 11a.
74
It was widely believed that the female provided the matter or flesh of the unborn child,
the male the spirit. On this see Cadden, Sex Difference, pp. 24 and 121.
84
It is, of course, here that Julian becomes most radical in her conflation of
the feminine and God. Rather than leave her analogy as mere similitude, by
the time she comes to write the Long Text she has become confident enough
to extend simile to metaphor, which she then develops into her unique
assertion that, rather than being like our mother, in fact Christ is our mother.
In so doing, Julian surpasses the traditional (and primarily male) use of the
motherhood similitude and transforms it into something which is entirely
her own. Thus, we see her redefining the boundaries between male and
female experience and between the literal and the metaphorical by exposing
a commonality normally obscured by contemporary medical and essential-
ist attitudes. In Julian’s theology, God can be male and female, father and
mother (‘our fader, God almyty . . . is our moder in kynde’; LT, 94); Christ
can be son, brother, mother (‘for he is our moder, brother and savior’; LT,
94). The arbitrary lines of delineation between these categories are no longer
relevant, and the motherhood of Mary, of Christ and of God creates a unity
in which we as men, women, but primarily humans, are ‘oned’ with the
Holy Trinity. Within Julian’s theology of the maternal, just as the unborn
infant is fed with the mother’s dealbated blood,75 so Christ feeds the faithful
with his own; just as the mother encloses her child within her own flesh and
wraps it in her love, so we are surrounded by the body of Christ and the love
of the Trinity by whom we are entirely enclosed. Thus, God’s flesh is our
flesh, given to him by a woman, and through him we are ‘endlesly borne
and never shall come out of him’ (LT, 93). There is no longer any need to
fear loss, for we are one and the same: ‘for I saw full sekirly that our sub-
stance is in God, and also I saw that in our sensualite God is; for the selfe
poynte that our soule is mad sensual, in the selfe poynte is the cite of God’
(LT, 88).
Love without Condition: Reading the Maternal in the Parable

of the Lord and Servant
The parable of the Lord and Servant does not appear in the earlier Short Text,
having been suppressed on Julian’s own admission because of an initial fail-
ure to understand it (‘For the fulle vnderstondyng of this mervelous example
was not goven me in that tyme’; LT, 74). Most of those commentators who
have examined the parable have done so in the context of Julian’s general
theological insight but few have considered it in the context of her later
75
On the equivalence of fluids in medieval physiological theory see Jacquart and
Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, p. 52. See also Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 179
and 270.
85
representation of Christ as Mother, in spite of its appearing to be the catalyst

for such a representation which follows immediately on from the parable’s
lengthy exegesis. Read in juxtaposition to one another, however, it soon
becomes clear that both episodes are interdependent and rely upon a recon-
texualisation of the maternal-feminine principle which we have already seen
gathering momentum in Julian’s writing.
By the time she came to write the Long Text, of course, Julian had already
received a secondary vision in 1388 in which the meaning of not only the
parable, but of all her earlier visionary experiences had been transformed for
her.76 The parable itself was ostensibly provided as a response to the
dilemma Julian had experienced following her thirteenth revelation which
deals with the problematic nature of sin. The exegesis of this revelation is
considerably more detailed than that of any of her other revelations, point-
ing to a crisis of understanding, and much of Julian’s anxiety about it
was doubtless because many of its teachings appear to be in conflict with
orthodox Augustinian teaching on sin. According to Augustine, ‘Sinners are
ordained to punishment. This order is contrary to their nature, and is there-
fore penalty. But it suits their fault and is therefore just.’77 Augustine’s solu-
tion to the problem of human sinfulness, following on as it did from the
teachings of the Old Testament and those of Saint Paul, concentrated on the
notion of God as wrathful and vengeful, the fear of which pervaded the reli-
gious climate of the Middle Ages.78 As Denise Nowakowski Baker has
argued, the concepts of ‘wrath’ and ‘vengeance’ were traditionally associ-
ated with a masculine God79 and it is evident that, even before this Thirteenth
Revelation which brought into question for Julian the nature of sin, Julian
had been troubled by the discrepancy between this Augustinian view of
God’s response to human sinfulness and the maternal love of God for
humankind which she had perceived by means of her visionary experiences.
This is especially true since a compassionate and forgiving God was also a
central part of the teaching of the Church and her treatment of the parable
here can be seen as an attempt to reconcile an apparent paradox. Earlier in
the Long Text, for example, she reveals to us: ‘aforn this tyme often I won-
drid whi by the gret forseyng wysdam of God the begynnyng of synne was
not lettid; for than, thowte me, al shuld a be wele’ (LT, 38). For Julian, there
76
This is something which will be examined further in Chapter 6.
77
Augustine, ‘The Nature of the Good’, in John H. S. Burleigh (trans.), Augustine: Earlier
Writings, Library of Christian Classics 6 (Philadelphia, 1953), as cited by Denise
Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), p. 83. Baker examines Augustinian teaching on sin in the context
of Julian’s own insights in From Vision to Book, pp. 63–82.
78
Both Augustine and Aquinas also found the concept of a vengeful God troubling, con-
cluding that God’s punishment of humankind was not an emotional act but a rational
one. On this see Baker, From Vision to Book, p. 84.
79
Baker, From Vision to Book, p. 84.
86
is an illogicality in an apparently dispassionate punishment of sin by a God

who is depicted as possessing unbounded love for his creatures and yet who –
so taught the Church – can be ruthless and merciless in allocating endless
torment to atone for their sins. Julian is therefore at first unable to reconcile
the optimistic concept of a future well-being with the knowledge that unre-
pentant sinners were to be condemned to the fires of hell and attributes the
discrepancy to the slippage between the imperfect knowledge of the Church
(or the theologians who interpret the Scriptures) and that which she learns of
via direct mystical experience:
I understode that synners arn worthy sumtime blame and wreth; and these
ii cowth I not se in God, and there my desir was more than I can or may
tell; for the heyer dome God shewid hymselfe in the same tyme, and
therfore me behovyd neds to taken it; and the lower dome was lern me
aforn in holy church, and therfore I myte in no way levyn the lower dome.
(LT, 63)
In consequence, she is left to muse uneasily upon its apparent lack of cohe-
sion for nearly twenty years before arriving at a reconciliatory understanding.
The longevity of this dilemma is demonstrated further by a cursory allu-
sion to these difficulties in the earlier Short Text just after Julian’s vision of the
Virgin as Queen of Heaven in Chapter 13 (ST, 59). Indicating that she had
found this dilemma perplexing in the past, she attempts to gloss over the
problem in this account with the vague assertion that ‘Ihesu in this vision
enfourmede me of alle that me neded’ (ST, 60). In an attempt to disguise this
self-evident evasion, Julian defensively and self-consciously moves on to a
dramatic confirmation of her belief in the teachings of the Church: ‘and I am
hungery and thyrstye and nedy and synfulle and freele, & wilfully sub-
myttes me to the techynge of haly kyrke, with alle myne euencrysten, into the
ende of my lyfe’ (ST, 60). In a gesture which reveals a lack of confidence about
her own insights as well as alarm at the explosive possibilities of her revela-
tion, Julian anticipates possible accusations of heterodoxy and counters them
within the text before they can be levelled against her. Thus, the dilemma not
only troubles her on an intellectual and theological level, but is also the
source of a potential threat to both author and text in the form of accusations
of heretical inclinations. At a time when the Lollard heresy was regarded as
being in its ascendancy and appeared to be constituting a particular threat to
the orthodox Church in East Anglia,80 it would have been perfectly reason-
able for Julian to avoid such accusations by withdrawing into the authority
80
Norman Tanner makes this claim in The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532
(Toronto, 1984), p. 165. More recently, however, Paul Strohm has problematised this
accepted viewpoint by suggesting that Lollardy was, in fact, what he terms a ‘rhetorical
plaything’ for both Church and State (England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the
Language of Legitimation 1399–1422 (New Haven and London, 1998), p. 34).
87
of orthodoxy, as Watson has suggested,81 and indeed it seems she was well
into her fifties before she had sufficiently resolved both import and dilemma
to write down the Thirteenth Revelation in detail and confront the crucial
parable of the Lord and Servant.
On first appearance this parable has all the ingredients of familiar Hebraic
rhetoric. We are presented with the image of a typical Old Testament patri-
arch sitting solemnly in state, his long, opulent robe flowing around him. He
sits in hierarchical opposition to the lowly servant standing before him who,
we are told later, is dressed in the ragged clothes of a rural labourer (‘it semyd
be his outward clothyng as he had ben a continuant labourer’; LT, 77), and
our preconceptions tell us that this lord has complete dominion over his ser-
vant. The lord is austere in his authority, the servant responding by remain-
ing ‘aforn his lord reverently, redy to don his lords will’ (LT, 72). As befits his
subservient position, he is expecting a command and is preparing to act upon
it. We are reminded of a minion standing before an Elijah or a Solomon – the
lord’s power is steeped in absolute authority and provides us with the
entirely familiar figure of the biblical patriarch whose authority can and will
provoke terror in those subject to his hegemony. Julian, however, draws upon
and exploits our own preconceived notions of how these stories develop in
the Old Testament only to disarm us completely with her depiction of both
lord and servant. Having allowed our complacency to assert itself she pro-
ceeds to disrupt our thought-patterns by presenting us with wholly atypical
characteristics for such a powerful man: ‘The lord lookyth upon his servant
ful lovely and swetely, and mekely he sendyth hym to a certain place to don
his will’ (LT, 72). Not only is this lord both lovely and sweet in his authority,
but he is also meek in the way he proffers his commands to his servant. This
description is highly reminiscent of the epithets which Julian has used earlier
in the context of her account of the first vision of the bleeding Christ (‘This
shewing was quick and lively, and hidouse and dredfull, swete and lovely’;
LT, 11). The echoing of the terminology at the beginning of the parable thus
serves to emphasise the pre-eminence and desirability of these more passive –
and therefore more ‘feminine’ – concepts of sweetness and loveliness,
because of their earlier association with Christ.82 Elsewhere, Julian has used
similar language in her descriptions of the young Virgin, as we have seen,
which also serves to reinforce the subtle inscription of the feminine upon the
figure of the lord in the parable which is taking place here. Just as the Virgin
was ‘simple’, and ‘meke’, ‘litel’ and ‘pore’, and the suffering Christ was ‘lowest
81
See Watson, ‘Composition’, pp. 657–66, for a discussion of the influence of the Lollard
threat upon Julian’s writing.
82
The Middle English definitions offered for these terms are multifarious but both words
tend to be associated with beauty, kindness and affection. See, for example, MED defin-
ition 6a which specifically associates the term ‘swete’ with God and the Virgin . See also
definition of ‘lovely’ (4a), which associates the term with a beautiful lady.
88
and mekest, homlyest and curteysest’ (LT, 11), Julian’s use of similar termin-
ology to modify the initial representation of the lord as dominant and patri-
archal throws into relief his more feminine properties which in turn emerge
as wholly more desirable and empowering as a means of modifying his hith-
erto masculine demeanour. This is further reinforced by Julian’s later
employment of this same terminology in her fully developed Motherhood of
God narrative (to be discussed below) which follows on from the parable and
during which she outlines the qualities of what she considers to be the ideal
mother (‘This fair, lovely word “moder”, it is so swete and so kynd’; LT, 98).
Such a usage in the context of a parable of this type, however, is unusual and
serves to disrupt the hierarchies implicit within traditional binaries within
which sweetness, liveliness and loveliness have tended to be regarded as
more passive and ‘feminine’.83 In so doing, Julian releases these terms from
their binary framework and, by applying them to the figure of the lord in the
parable, renders them wholly desirable and prepares the ground for their
later inscription upon God himself in her depiction of him as divine mother.84
As the narrative proceeds, Julian’s depiction of a feminised lord gains in
momentum and enthusiasm. The lord’s reaction to his beloved servant’s
stumbling into a ditch whilst he hastens to perform his master’s wishes, for
example, is wholly devoid of the anger or disapproval which the early
description appears to anticipate and instead the lord reacts with the love and
compassion more readily associated with the maternal female elsewhere in
her texts: ‘And ryth thus continualy his lovand lord ful tenderly beholdyth
him; and now with a double cher; on outward, ful mekely and myldely with
grete ruth and pety’ (LT, 73). Instead of meting out punishment, the response
of the lord is one of empathetic love and understanding of the frailty, naïvety
and eagerness of the servant and his desire to please his master, and his reac-
tion is repeatedly presented to us by Julian in terms of the gaze of the loving
mother upon her growing child. His eyes, for example, constitute the same
paradox as does his general demeanour: although ‘his eyen were blak’, they
are also ‘faire and semely’ and, moreover, they are ‘shewand ful of lovely pety’
(LT, 75). Similarly, his motherly gaze modifies his patriarchal appearance: it is
a ‘lovely lokeing’, a ‘fair lokeing’, and ‘a semely medlur . . . [of] ruth and
pity . . . ioye and bliss’ (LT, 75). Also like the mother towards her child, the
lord recognises that he is himself implicated in the fall of his servant and bears
a measure of responsibility for his suffering. The servant has fallen as a direct
result of his love for his lord and his eagerness to please him. The lord’s
83
Linda Rose associates Julian’s disrupting of accepted binary oppositional concepts with
a recognisably ‘feminine style of writing’ in her essay, ‘The Voice of a Saintly Woman:
The Feminine Style of Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, Women and Language 16, 1 (1993),
pp. 14–17. In keeping with Cixous, Rose points out ‘the feminine side of an opposition
tends to be negative and powerless and the masculine side active and powerful’ (p. 16).
84
Toril Moi discusses the implications of patriarchal binary thought in connection with the
work of Hélène Cixous and l’écriture feminine in Sexual/Textual Politics, pp. 104–10.
89
response is therefore to reward rather than to blame because of the physical

and psychological anguish which the fall brings to the beloved servant and
because he is himself indirectly responsible for it. Addressing his servant in
the tender terms of the colloquial, his words also conjour up echoes of the
intimacies enjoyed between mother and child: ‘ “Lo, lo, my lovid servant.
What harme and disese he hath takeyn in my service for my love, ya, and for
his good will! Is it not skyl that I award hym his afray and his drede, his hurt
and his maime and al his wo?” ’ (LT, 73). The most resonant echo here, how-
ever, is not only maternal but also Christic. The initial words of the lord to his
servant paraphrase the words uttered by Christ to his ‘servant’, Julian, dur-
ing the Tenth Revelation when he ‘loked into his syde and beheld, enioyand’
(LT, 35). Gazing upon Julian and leading her understanding with the same
‘swete lokyng’, he professes to her: ‘Lo how that I lovid the’ (LT, 35). Just as
Julian’s own mother in the Short Text gazed on her daughter in her suffering,
so Christ and this lord feel the suffering of their servants and are united with
them in their hurt and confusion. The pain of the fall unites both servant and
master, in the same way as the birthing process, maternal love and the duties
of care unites mother and child in a continuous cycle of reciprocity.85 In Julian’s
perception, mother and child, master and servant, God and humanity are at
the same time one and other; they are simultaneously united and separate,
which necessarily precludes wrath or vengeance, for to inflict this upon the
other is, in fact, to impose that punishment on the self. In this context, the pain
of the servant’s fall is paramount, as was the suffering of Christ upon the
cross. The most poignant result of the servant’s fall for Julian, however, is
‘that he lay alone’. She tells us that she ‘lokid al aboute and beheld, and fer ne
nere, hey ne low, I saw to him no helpe’ (LT, 73). Her use of the first-person
personal pronoun at this point has the effect of conflating herself with the
lord as onlooker. She is now herself the loving ‘mother’ gazing on her hurt
and seemingly lost child, becoming one with the onlooking lord, united with
him in mutual motherhood. Meanwhile, in his recognition of separation and
isolation the child/servant feels abandoned and unloved. It is the primeval
fear of loss made manifest and constitutes the rematerialisation of Julian’s
very early fear of losing Christ during her illness and of her own mother’s
anguish at the prospect of Julian’s likely death. In effect, it is a type of death.
The failure of the lord/mother to reappear at this point would result in actual
death and Julian’s empathetic articulation of this is central to her interpretation
of the scene and to the parable as a whole. It is, in fact, central to the sophis-
ticated theological insights which inhere upon her eventual understanding of
this deceptively complex story. Here, however, the mother does reappear in
the guise of the lord who is now clad in a voluminous blue robe, the ‘larghede’
85
Maria R. Lichtman suggests that Julian’s non-dualist vision of the self reflects ‘the capa-
city of the womb to hold otherness and opposition within itself’ in ‘ “I desyrede a body-
lye syght”: Julian of Norwich and the Body’, Mystics Quarterly 17, 1 (1991), p. 16.
90
of which ‘betokenith that he hath beclesid in hym all’ (LT, 76). Not only does
the robe of the lord invoke the robe of Mary in its blueness86 – Mary was fre-
quently depicted as wearing blue in popular medieval iconography87 – but
the fact that it encloses within its folds all that there is, serves to reinvoke the
persistent image of the womb which pervades Julian’s writing and further
consolidates the feminisation of the lord.
One of the most crucial of Julian’s insights to emerge from her exegesis of
the parable, however, is the theological centrality within the divine schema of
unconditional love (something which Julian refers to repeatedly as ‘kinde’
love which ‘will not be brokin for trespas’; LT, 100). In order to reach this
point of understanding Julian continues to draw upon both an idealised ver-
sion of maternal love, as embodied by Christ and the Virgin, allied to a more
pragmatic and realistic version of an everyday, lived and ‘working’ love (which
was, no doubt, closer to the reality of every earthly mother). In the Middle
Ages, of course, the image of the ‘good mother’, based on stories attached to
Saint Anne and the Virgin, was a fully idealised construct, in reality unattain-
able but which had developed alongside – perhaps, even, as a counter meas-
ure to – traditional misogynistic discourses pertaining to the female body.
Conjoined with more secular images such as that represented by Chaucer’s
patient Griselda or the long-suffering Custance who in their patience and
self-sacrifice were also paradigmatic of the perfect wife and mother,88 ordin-
ary, worldly motherhood was only ever destined for failure.89 In his own
display of patience towards his fallen servant, of course, the lord appears to
be allying himself with the more idealised representation which he then
proceeds to modify because of his apparent inability to prevent the fall of the
86
New methods of creating paints and dyes were being developed at this point in the
Middle Ages and the values accorded to different colours were changing. As a result, the
hitherto problematic colour blue was taking over from red as the most popular and pres-
tigious of colours. On this see François Delamare and Bernard Guineau, ‘Les Matériaux
de la Couleur’, Beaux-Arts Magazine 189 (2000), pp. 39–44. It is also likely that the high
cost of lapis lazuli (it was more valuable than gold), which was the stone of choice for
producing blue pigment, led to the Virgin’s mantle often being depicted as blue.
87
Sarah McNamer has argued that, through its association with steadfastness, mercy, the
Virgin of the Mantle and the Regina Misericordiae, the mantle has a crucial confirmatory
effect on Julian’s feminising of God. She also recognises that ‘Julian makes the maternal
image central to the parable. And at the same time she gives mercy an integral place
within God’ (‘Exploratory Image’, p. 27).
88
For an analysis of the Virgin’s influence on medieval motherhood see Atkinson, The
Oldest Vocation, pp. 101–43. For an account of the Griselda influence, see pp. 145–8.
89
There were also a myriad of more misogynistic literary traditions within which the
mother often fell woefully short of the ideal. Many of the mothers who appear in the
Lives of the virgin martyrs, for example, are often instrumental in attempting to keep
their daughters from God. The Life of Christina of Markyate, tells us of the lengths which
Christina’s mother goes to in order to trade her daughter’s virginity to an unwelcome
suitor, resulting in a permanent rift between mother and daughter (C. H Talbot (ed.), The
Life of Christina of Markyate (Oxford, 1959)). See in particular p. 73 for the ill-treatment
of Christina by her mother, and p. 93 for details of Christina’s eventual escape from the
family home.
91
servant – something which seems to render him somewhat culpable. As a

result, Julian appears to be negotiating a merger in the figure of the lord
between the idealised concept of the mother and that of the realistic and
everyday ‘good enough’ mother who would normally choose to facilitate her
child’s development rather than inhibit it, but is not always entirely success-
ful. In this context, the lord does not prevent the fall of his servant into the
mire, neither does he go immediately to his aid, but instead gazes on with
love and compassion as the servant tries to rectify his own mistake. If we
relate this behaviour to a later analysis by Julian of what constitutes good
mothering (‘The moder may suffre the child to fallen sumtyme . . . but she
may never suffre that ony maner of peril cum to the child, for love’; LT, 100),
we see that both the lord and the mother display the same duty and desire to
ensure the growth and development of their child/servant through nurture
and guidance, and it is evident that the one narrative is entirely informing the
other here, just as the benefits of good mothering and good lordship also
inform each other. Similarly, the love of both the lord and the mother is also
entirely capable of being hard-edged. Just as the lord sits patiently awaiting
the contrition of his servant, so the mother ‘may suffre the child to . . . be dis-
esid in dyvers manners for the owen profitt’ (LT, 100). Thus, within Julian’s
economy of motherhood, the truly loving mother is the one who is capable of
admonishing her child in order to facilitate development and understanding.
By means of a mixture of love and admonishment, the child must learn to
negotiate and avoid the world’s pitfalls and transcend the difficulties of experi-
ence. The effective mother will guide the child on that journey. This, then,
is the nature of the unconditional love which Julian identifies as central to
God’s relationship with humankind, and which lies at the core of her mys-
tical revelations. Typically, however, she removes it from the realms of the ideal-
ised by relating it directly to a recognisable, everyday, flawed and human
motherhood. This she then proceeds to overwrite, firstly upon the lord of the
parable, and then upon Christ himself in terms such as: ‘for in our moder,
Criste, we profitten and encresin’ (LT, 94), soon qualified by ‘and what is that
but our very moder Iesus, he, al love, beryth us to ioye and to endles lyving’
(LT, 97). Thus, the concept of Christ’s motherhood remains clearly within a
familiar context whilst being simultaneously recontextualised and elevated
to offer an understanding of the ineffable. In the parable, therefore, by means
of its inscription of an accessible and achievable maternity upon the lord
which serves not to replace, but to modify his traditional masculine qualities,
Julian paves the way for her fully realised depiction of Christ as the embodi-
ment of unconditional maternal love which follows seamlessly on from it.
One of the primary functions of Julian’s detailed and highly complex exe-
gesis of this parable has therefore been to illustrate her insight into the cen-
trality of unconditional love within the relationship between the human and
divine, and such a reassessment and recontextualisation of the discourses of
motherhood is wholly typical of her compassionate understanding of God’s
92
love for flawed humanity and of its potential to both articulate and attain
apotheosis.
The crucial importance of Julian’s secondary vision of 1388 should now be
clear. The effect of this final revelation of love was to transform Julian’s
exegetic emphasis from that of the meaning of sin to that of unconditional,
maternalistic love as the universal principle upon which the relationship
between the human and divine is predicated: ‘Thus was I lerid’, Julian
explains, ‘that love was our lords mening’ (LT, 135). In effect, it brings about
the realisation for Julian that God is the maternal, he is the unconditional love
which counters sin, an insight, of course, which immediately necessitates the
creation of a new text to be written with new-found confidence over a
remaining lifetime. It was this insight, therefore, which was to liberate
Julian’s intellect and enable her to move on to her fully realised and entirely
unique vision of God as our mother with its intrinsic message of comfort and
optimism. This means that the parable, far from standing separately from
Julian’s theology of God as Mother, is, in fact, integral to it and provided her
with the final piece of exploratory machinery which would unlock her
unique insight into God’s love for humankind. In turn, this would allow the
maternal to become the most important tool in Julian’s hermeneutic store.
From Worldly to Spiritual: The Maternal Inscription upon the Divine
By the time we reach the culmination of the motherhood imagery at the cli-
max of the Long Text Julian’s overt representation of Jesus as mother reaches
an unstoppable momentum as her mystical insights take shape. Following
her exegesis of the parable, Julian guides us into her explicit description of
Jesus as mother with the image of our own immanence as ‘evencristen’
housed within his womb: ‘our kindly substance is beclosid in Iesus’ (LT, 90),
and later, ‘in Criste . . . our heyer partie is groundid and rotid’ (LT, 92). This
leads on to the now confident assertion that ‘he is our moder in mercy in our
sensualite takyng’ (LT, 94). As her theme progresses, Julian begins to draw
overtly on those accepted standards of maternal emotion and behaviour as
discussed previously, ascribing them to the perfect and ideal mother, Jesus.
She re-emphasises the concepts of fairness and sweetness, for example, just as
previously she had inscribed these terms upon the dying Christ and the
patient lord. Now, however, these terms are bound up with the hard work of
active mothering: ‘All the fair werkyng and all the swete kindly office of
dereworthy moderhede is impropried to the second person’ (LT, 96).
As Julian develops her analysis, so we feel her warming to her theme.
She tells us that ‘we have our beyng of him wher the ground of moderhed
begynnyth’ (LT, 95) and attributes all the endless labours and services a
mother carries out for her children to Christ. As she becomes absorbed in the
theme, Julian’s pleasure is palpable as the insights follow on one from another.
93
She begins to summarise for us what she sees as the most important services
a mother renders to her child and in this active, maternal ‘werkyng’ we can
again recognise the jouissance which Kristeva locates at the heart of mother-
hood, and in this case it is a jouissance born from a redefined and reapplied
appraisal of its relevance to God’s creation and to his cosmic plan for
humankind. Once more we are reminded of the philosophical stance of
Ruddick, who regards the work of mothering as leading to a politics of peace
which can be established as an alternative to the male aggression and mili-
tarism which tend to shape most cultures.90 The promotion of motherhood as
philosophico-theological necessity in Julian’s text therefore creates a palpable
sense of freedom from the constraints of traditional thought structures and
serves to liberate the visionary as both woman and writer as her inspired the-
ological exegesis moves on:
The kynde, loveand moder that wote and knowith the nede of hir child, she
kepith it ful tenderly as the kind and condition of moderhede will. And as
it wexith in age she chongith hir werking but not hir love. And whan it is
waxen of more age, she suffrid that it be bristinid in brekyng downe of vices
to makyn the child to receivyn vertues and graces. (LT, 98)
For Julian, a mother’s love is equally liberated and liberating. In her analy-
sis, a maternalistic, unconditional love, although utterly consistent, is not a
fixed, unchangeable phenomenon, but can move and alter as circumstances
dictate. As we have seen, it can overwrite and modify both the feminine and
the masculine which is why we find Julian at this point summing up Christ’s
maternal role with words which appear to be imbued with the patriarchal
tone of Church liturgy: ‘He kyndelyth our vnderstondyng, he directith our
weys, he esith our consciens, he comfortith our soule, he lightith our herte
and gevith us, in parte, knowyng and lovyng in his blisful Godhede’ (LT, 99).
However, in the same way as Julian inscribed upon her patriarchal lord
the modifying qualities of the maternal, so here she redresses a potential
imbalance by reverting to the tone of patriarchal religious discourse, some-
thing which is perfectly in keeping with Julian’s literary style and her
professed adherence to orthodoxy. Throughout her texts – and the Long Text
in particular – Julian takes pains to restore balance wherever there is a
possibility of imbalance and her discussion of God’s motherhood is no excep-
tion to this rule. Julian’s unique feminisation of God in no way eradicates
those masculine characteristics traditionally attributed to him, as we also saw
in the case of the lord. For example, she asserts that ‘the almyty truth of the
Trinite is our fader’ (LT, 87) and, more significantly, ‘as veryly as God is
our fader, as verily God is our moder’ (LT, 96). Having firmly established
that Jesus is indubitably our mother, Julian thus proceeds to qualify it in this
90
Ruddick, Maternal Thinking.
94
way so that the final representation is, if not androgynous, one of balance and
hybridity. Not only can God’s response to humankind now be recognised as
that expected of a paternal deity to his beloved subjects, but it is also the
expected response of a maternal God to hers. Thus she asserts the equal value
of the female experience as a means to unification and brings about a funda-
mental change within theological exegesis. Such an articulation of mystical
insight by means of the maternal feminine fundamentally subverts the inher-
ently hierarchical binary logic within language and successfully unites the
male and the female within the Godhead. In so doing, traditional binary
oppositions are ‘oned’ with each other and the female is elevated to form an
intrinsic and fully active part of theological discourse.
In conclusion, just as modern feminist commentators such as Kristeva and
Cixous have seen the bodily impact of mothers as a powerfully subversive
tool in the struggle to oppose the phallogocentric discourse of traditional
western thought, so Julian also recognised and exploited its potential as
exegetical tool and means towards establishing her own authority as inter-
preter of the ineffable love of God. By ‘writing the body’ of the maternal in
this way she lays down a challenge to traditional religious discourse and
offers as a counterbalance a fully developed theology of the maternal femi-
nine which is unique in English mystical writing. For Julian, the human experi-
ence is valid in all its forms and the male perspective is not necessarily the
definitive one. She recognises both the male and female as being integral to
the deity and, like Kristeva’s Virgin Mary, Julian’s theology ‘swallows up the
goddesses and removes their necessity’.91 Finally, Cixous could indeed have
been writing about Julian when she says:
Text; my body-shot through with streams of song; I don’t mean the over-
bearing, clutchy ‘mother’ but, rather, what touches you, the equivoce that
affects you, fills your breast with an urge to come to language and launches
your force; the rhythm that laughs you; the intimate recipient who makes
all metaphors possible and desirable; body . . . no more describable than
god, the soul or the Other; that part of you that leaves a space between
yourself and urges you to inscribe in language your woman’s style.92
91
92
Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, p. 252.
95
Discourses of Prostitution and

The Book of Margery Kempe
Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle.1
By the time Chaucer came to write these words in the context of his depic-
tion of the Wife of Bath in the late fourteenth century, the country was in the
throes of major economic and social change. The Black Death of mid-century
had brought about the loss of up to one half of the population in some areas
and had contributed to what R. H. Britnell has identified as a ‘mid-century
crisis’.2 During Margery Kempe’s lifetime this population deficit had not
recovered; on the one hand it had created a decline in the demand for certain
commodities within the market,3 but on the other, it resulted in an increase
in productivity in the urban centres to which people flocked from the rural
areas in order to find more lucrative types of employment.4 Margery
Kempe’s attempts at commercial brewing and milling are testimony to the
increased opportunities for women during this time of population decline,
which released many people into social productivity who had previously
lived on the most basic level of subsistence5 – although it is also true to say
that many of the professions still remained closed to women. Between the
1360s and early 1400s, a time when Margery Kempe was being brought up in
a relatively affluent and influential family in Bishop’s Lynn,6 the standard of
living rose considerably alongside the new commercial atmosphere in the
towns and the importance of exports in East Anglia in particular was at its
height. A preoccupation with wealth, status and material goods as charac-
teristic of urban life at this time is depicted by contemporary writers such as
Chaucer and Langland; indeed, The Canterbury Tales is saturated with the
language of commerce and the marketplace which, as Lee Patterson has
suggested, carries important implications about both audience and current
1
The Riverside Chaucer, p. 110, line 414.
2
R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 155.
3
Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, p. 156.
4
5
6
Again, for a detailed study of Margery in her socio-religious milieu, see Goodman, Margery
Kempe and Her World.
96
DISCOURSES OF PROSTITUTION AND MARGERY
social ethos.7 Margery Kempe’s own account of her preconversion vanity

during which time she claims to have valued her social status above all, serves
to verify such a social preoccupation with materialism, something also sym-
bolised by the highly fashionable clothes which she felt were desirable in order
to suitably reflect this esteemed position within society: ‘sche weryd gold
pypys on hir hevyd & hir hodys wyth þe typettys were daggyd. Hir clokys
also wer daggyd & leyd wyth dyuers colowrs betwen þe daggys þat it schuld
be þe mor staryng to mennys sygth and hir self þe mor ben worshepd’ (9).
It is, however, not only these early accounts which characterise a pecu-
niary preoccupation on the part of Margery. Although she attempts to shed
the importance of wealth and status to her as her religious vocation develops,
Margery Kempe’s writing continues to be punctuated with references to
money, reflecting a persistent anxiety present throughout the text. In spite of
a desire to adhere to a life which reflects in essence the holy poverty of the
mendicants,8 Margery nevertheless relies upon her own capital in order to
travel abroad, buy her passages across the seas, and purchase the services of
others – including the right to her own body from her husband, as we shall see.
In a discussion of the crisis of moral values at the heart of the economic
system in the Christian West, Walter T. Owensby points out that central to
biblical faith is an intrinsic condemnation of self-advancement at the expense
of others, which in turn imposes upon a Christian community the responsi-
bility of joint ownership and joint benefit of the world’s resources.9 Such a
doctrine, of course, would seem to run contrary to that of the profit economy
within a culture of Christianity and it is highly likely that Margery’s ensuing
crisis over her own worldliness and passion for the new socio-economic val-
ues was caused in part by the gulf which was developing between these val-
ues and those promulgated by the traditions of the Christian doctrine.
During Margery’s lifetime, too, the Christian Church had attributed
an increased role to purgatory within the arena of spiritual redemption.10
According to late medieval religious doctrine, the human soul would spend
many years in purgatory awaiting final judgement whilst sins were assessed.
Those left on earth could, however, bring about a remission of the purgatorial
sentence through prayers, the saying of masses and the formation of chantries,
7
Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (London, 1991), p. 323.
8
On the concept of holy poverty in the late Middle Ages see R. W. Southern, Western Society
and the Church in the Middle Ages (London, 1970), pp. 281–2. Southern asserts that although
this concept had been a part of every religious movement, the call of Saint Francis for
poverty was something entirely new, insisting upon total renunciation of all worldly goods
and to live the life of Christ literally. According to the Franciscan idea of poverty, posses-
sions were a symbol of wealth, wealth was profit and therefore evidence of corruption.
9
Walter L. Ownesby, Economics for Prophets (Michigan, 1988), Introduction, p. xvii.
10
For an overview of this see Joseph H. Lynch, The Medieval Church: A Brief History
(London and New York, 1992), pp. 298–300. For a more detailed account of the increased
role of Purgatory in the late Middle Ages see Jacques le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (London, 1984).
97
which became a popular form of endowment to commemorate friends and rela-

tives. Thus there opened up a further economic opportunity for ecclesiastics to
offer masses for remuneration which, as a result of this type of commodification,
also became subject to the rules of the marketplace. Instead of the unreliable
intercession of the saints, masses could be purchased from human mediators
and control thus returned to those left on earth. Indeed, as Margery’s reputation
as holy woman grows, there are times when she too receives payment for
prayers of intercession, a skill which will allow her to fund further travel,
escape from threatening circumstances, or even quite simply to establish her
own authority in her text. Early in her religious career, for example, she is
approached by a monk whom she recognises as having ‘synned in letthery, in
dyspeyr, & in wordly goodys kepyng’ (26). Having brought him to the point of
repentance and assured him that he would be amongst the saved, Margery tells
us that this monk ‘haf hyr gold to prey for hym’, and indeed, when she returns
to the place at a later date, ‘(he) was turnyd fro hys synne, & was mad suppri-
owr of þe place’ (27). Soon after recounting this tale of prophecy and miraculous
conversion, Margery documents another moment of physical imperilment at
Canterbury which has been occasioned by her insistent discussion of religious
matters in the presence of other monks. In order to dissipate their anger and pre-
serve her safety, she relates a story of a sinful man who hired a group of men for
a year to chastise him as part of his penance and to whom he ‘heue[n] . . . syluer
for her labowr’ (28). The significance of the financial incentive and reward here
in the context of repentance and salvation evidences the role which money had
begun to play within the redemptive process and religious ideology generally
in the early part of the fifteenth century, an ideology which Margery Kempe is
fully prepared to exploit in her relationships with her contemporaries.
Another facet of this commercialisation of the redemptive process can be
seen in the increased availability of papal indulgence offered to the faithful in
the late Middle Ages, and by the early fourteenth century it had grown to
enormous proportions.11 By the second half of the century, plenary privilege
had been extended to local churches in England and full remission for all
one’s sins could be obtained from a confessor at the hour of death.12 Thus, by
the end of the fourteenth century plenary remission had become entirely sub-
ject to the same rules of the marketplace as any other commodity; almost any-
one with the requisite finance was able to purchase remission of his or her
sins. In the words of Southern: ‘Once the bottomless treasure had been
opened up there could be no restraining its distribution’.13
11
Southern, Western Society, p. 137.
12
Southern, Western Society, p. 139. On the origins of deathbed penitence see Thomas N.
Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (New Jersey, 1977), pp. 6–9.
13
Southern, Western Society, p. 139. For a discussion of the link between commodification
and religiosity in East Anglian society and its drama, see Gail McMurray Gibson, The
Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago and
London, 1989), p. 29.
98
The Female Body as Commodity: Theory and Practice
In the context of western commercial practices, the role played by the female
body is one which has been examined by feminist theorists in recent years
and offers us a useful lens through which to examine Margery Kempe’s atti-
tude towards the trading potential of the female body. Perhaps most helpful
in this context is Gayle Rubin’s important analysis of the patriarchal sexual-
political economy.14 Drawing on the structuralist thinking of Lévi-Strauss,
Rubin examines the contribution which women as bearers of both ‘use value’
and ‘exchange value’ make to the successful continuance of the patriarchy
and to the capitalist system in particular. According to Rubin the ‘sex/gender
system is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological
sexuality into products of human activity and in which these transformed
sexual needs are satisfied’.15 Thus, she believes, women have underpinned
the stability of society, capitalism and the family because of their tradability
and their use value to that society, but in so doing they have also been com-
modified by the dominant group, placing female oppression firmly within
our social systems, rather than biology.16 In the light of Rubin’s theory, we can
perhaps see why, following her conversion and attempts to eschew the shal-
low materialism which she saw all around her, Margery’s increasingly non-
conformist attitudes to the givens in society about both her use value and
exchange value have the effect of disrupting social equilibrium and offer an
explanation as to why she often feels it necessary to persuade others and her-
self that her appropriation of alternative use value (such as pilgrim or inter-
cessor, for example) is a more valid and valuable role for her to play than that
of conventional wife and mother.
In more recent times, this issue has also been addressed by Luce Irigaray in
her examination of how the use, consumption and circulation of women allow
our social and cultural lives to exist.17 Irigaray claims that as a commodity,
woman is a dualistic entity – that is to say, she is the possessor of her own ‘nat-
ural’ body and also of a social and cultural body which is imbued with a sym-
bolic value because of its exchangeability. In Irigaray’s estimation:
The value of symbolic and imaginary productions is superimposed upon,

and even substituted for, the value of relations of material, natural, and cor-
poral (re)production.18
14
Gayle Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’, in Rayna
Reiter (ed.), Towards an Anthropology of Women (New York and London, 1975),
pp. 157–210.
15
Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women’, p. 159.
16
Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women’, p. 175.
17
Irigaray, ‘Women on the Market’, in This Sex which is Not One, pp. 170–91.
18
Irigaray, ‘Women on the Market’, p. 171.
99
This exchangeable body, therefore, and its potential for common ownership,
reflects masculine values and its subjectivity is therefore controlled by men.
In the context of marriage and/or the onset of maturity, however, women
cease to possess any exchange value and become relegated to mere use value.
Again, according to Irigaray:
This means that mothers, reproductive instruments marked with the name
of the father and enclosed in his house, must be private property, excluded
from exchange . . . As both natural value and use value, mothers cannot cir-
culate in the form of commodities without threatening the very existence of
the social order.19
Certainly, in the case of Margery Kempe, the early descriptions of her ill-
ness and maternity as examined in Chapter 1 reflect the violent transition
between the two positions of value, a transition which Irigaray terms ‘the ritu-
alised passage from woman to mother’ which can only be accomplished ‘by
violation’.20 It is also her contravention of her ‘use value’ and her adoption of
a high-profile independence as if she were still the possessor of ‘exchange
value’, which confounds her peers and the authorities and makes her ultim-
ately elude effective categorisation. In the absence of a satisfactory space
which the transgressive Margery can legitimately occupy, she is therefore sub-
ject to the same patriarchal pigeonholing which was applied to a whole
panoply of ‘transgressive’ women, and which leads her on a number of occa-
sions to be categorised as ‘common woman’ or whore.
In an analysis of the role performed by the prostitute in society, Irigaray
also suggests that the prostitute’s body becomes more useful to society the
more it is used by it.21 Moreover, she regards prostitution as ‘usage which is
exchanged’; in other words, the qualities of the prostitute have value ‘only
because they have been appropriated by man, and because they serve as the
locus of relations – hidden ones – between men’.22 Irigaray concludes that the
prostitute is therefore a woman whose nature has been ‘used up’ by society
whilst continuing in its exchangeable use value, permitting her to be nothing
but another ‘vehicle amongst men’.23 Yet, in spite of her consideration of the
prostitute as one who is explicitly condemned by the social order but also
implicitly tolerated, Irigaray fails to recognise the potential of this position
for the disruption of hegemonic masculinist values from within by means of
the deliberate setting up of a tension between determinedly coexisting use
value and exchange value within one body. It is just such a tension which
19
20
21
Irigaray, ‘Women on the Market’, pp. 186–7.
22
23
100
Margery Kempe enthusiastically embraces and nurtures in order to exploit

the monetary values of her day and the expectations of her audiences, as shall
be demonstrated.
By the time Margery was operating in the late Middle Ages commercial
prostitution in Europe had become a significant aspect of a burgeoning
urban socio-economic life.24 In the century between 1350 and 1450, many
European cities appear to have institutionalised prostitution, providing
either designated areas for prostitutes to operate within, or sanctioning
buildings which were to operate as brothels.25 As one important study of
the region of Languedoc in France reveals, by the mid-fourteenth century
most of even the smaller towns in the region had established official loca-
tions for prostitution,26 suggesting a certain degree of tolerance of the prac-
tice amongst urban authorities on the Continent, at least. In England, the
situation appears to have been somewhat different with different town
authorities demonstrating varying levels of proscription and tolerance. In
this context, P. J. P. Goldberg concludes that those centres of prostitution in
England which were most like brothels – the Southwark stews in London,
for example – were never fully institutionalised like some of their
European counterparts; instead, they tended to be informal and private
locations where women congregated to sell sex in a disorganised and hap-
hazard way when need required.27 There is also evidence to suggest that,
whilst officially condemning prostitution, the medieval Church, was also
prepared to tolerate it as a preferable activity to fornication.28 In the late
thirteenth century, for example, the relatively liberal theologian, Thomas
Aquinas, had warned that a proliferation of sexual abuses would be the
result of any uniform prohibition of prostitution.29 In a treatise on kingship
written in about 1266 widely attributed to Aquinas, prostitution is repre-
sented as a necessary evil which helps to avoid worse transgression:
‘Remove the sewer and you will fill the palace with ordure; similarly with
the bilge from a ship; remove whores from the world and you will fill it
24
For a comprehensive study of the practice of prostitution in the Middle Ages, see Jacques
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution (Oxford, 1988). See also Ruth Karras, Common Women:
Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York and Oxford, 1996), for an exam-
ination which attempts to bridge the gap between the lived experience of the prostitute
and contemporary representations of her.
25
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, p. 59.
26
Leah Lydia Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in
Languedoc (Chicago and London, 1985), p. 38.
27
P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Pigs and Prostitutes: Streetwalkers in Comparative Perspective’, in
Katherine J. Lewis, Noel James Menunge and Kim. M. Phillips (eds), Young Medieval
Women (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 172–93. See also Karras, Common Women, pp. 14–24
and 135–6 for a discussion of the type of legislation which was drawn up to counter pros-
titution in England. Karras asserts that although laws prohibiting prostitution were
common in England, they were never very effective (p. 14).
28
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, p. 160.
29
Otis, Prostitution, p. 23.
101
with sodomy’.30 In another highly popular and influential work, the Summa
Theologiae, Aquinas demonstrates the same tolerant attitude towards pros-
titution as the provider of some positive benefits: ‘tolerari possunt vel
propter aliquod bonum quod ex eis provenit vel propter aliquod malum
quod vitatur’31 (they (prostitutes) may be tolerated on account of some
good that results or some evil that is avoided). It would seem, therefore,
that by the fourteenth century urban prostitution had become a practice
which was at the same time reviled for its inherently evil embodiment of
basic human lustfulness and yet tolerated as a lesser evil than the corrup-
tion of respectable women – and men – by other predatory men in search
of regular and contractual sex.32 It is, of course, also highly significant that
prostitution was enjoying a period of social and ecclesiastic tolerance at
the same time as the market economy was burgeoning, particularly in the
new urban areas where there lived greater numbers of women than
men.33 Indeed, it would appear that trading commercially on the body
formed part of the ‘new opportunities for women’ which Britnell
recognised as having opened up in the urban centres during the period in
question.34
As it was used in the late Middle Ages in England, the term ‘whore’ not
only designated a woman who accepted money for sex but seems also to
have been applied to any woman whose sexuality was considered to be
outside the control of a man. Whether commercial prostitute, adulteress,
lover of a priest or even sexually active unmarried woman, any woman
who was seen to be shared by men and who was therefore ‘common’ to
them all was likely to be branded as whore.35 In the persona of the whore,
therefore, was conflated a myriad of sexually ‘transgressive’ women, and it
was just such women who were deemed dangerous because of their dis-
ruption of a homosocial bonding between men – a bonding which is predi-
cated on male ownership and control of female use value and exchange
value, as we have seen. Threatened by the disruptive behaviour of the sexu-
ally transgressive woman and her potential for imposing her own value
upon her body in order to exchange it where she will, patriarchal society
30
De Regimine Principum ad Regem Cypri, in Opera Omnia (Parma, 1864), vol. 16, p. 281, as
cited in Karras, Common Women, p. 185, n. 7. Although there is evidence to suggest that
these words may wrongly have been attributed to Aquinas, they were
nevertheless disseminated as his words in the writing of others throughout the late
Middle Ages.
31
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. and trans. T. Gilby (London, 1964–76), 2a2ae, XXXII, 10:
11, p. 73.
32
This is something which is corroborated by the findings of Karras, Common Women,
pp. 32–3.
33
Miri Rubin, ‘Religious Culture in Town and City: Reflections on a Great Divide’, in David
Abulafia et al. (eds), Church and City 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 3–22 (p. 21).
34
See p. 9, n. 5.
35
Again see Karras, Common Women, especially pp. 70–6.
102
therefore attempts to contain and control it by means of a hegemonic strategy

of interpellation. In this context, the recent findings of theorist Judith Butler
can again prove useful. Drawing on Altusserian notions of how the subjects
of any given society are interpellated by its ideologies and institutions, Butler
has examined the ways in which abusive naming and labelling possess
the power to inflict damage on an individual or groups within society.36 For
Butler the speech act of ‘injurious naming’ renders the addressee out of
his/her own control and establishes him/her as occupying a socially subor-
dinate subject position to the speaker who has taken control by this act of
naming.37 The result is a re-enforcement of the subject’s social constitution
and a bringing into line of the ‘aberrant’ behaviour.38 The relevance to my
argument here, of course, is that the effect of this interpellative subjection is
ambiguous. On the one hand it humiliates and demeans, on the other it brings
the addressee into being, realising what Butler has termed, ‘a certain possi-
bility for social existence’.39 Such ambiguities within patriarchal interpellative
practices therefore constitute the site of a lacuna, or ‘blind-spot’40 which can
be turned to the woman’s own social advantage, allowing her a potential for
social existence which would otherwise be denied her under the rules of the
patriarchy.41
Male fears regarding the female ability to exploit such ambiguities is
demonstrated in much of the secular literature of the later Middle Ages
and in The Book of Margery Kempe in particular.42 Time after time we find
representations of women who are quick to exploit the blind-spots at the
heart of patriarchal thinking in an attempt to achieve for themselves a
measure of personal empowerment. In the Canterbury Tales, for example,
Chaucer presents us with a variety of women who engage in transactional
sex to varying degrees, be they wives exchanging sex for husbandly
favours as in ‘The Shipman’s Tale’,43 or commercial prostitutes like the
wife in ‘The Cook’s Tale’ who, in spite of running a shop ostensibly to earn
her living, nevertheless ‘swyved for hir sustenance’.44 It is, however,
Chaucer’s exuberantly insouciant Wife of Bath who displays the most
36
Butler, Excitable Speech.
37
Butler, Excitable Speech, p. 4.
38
39
40
This is a term adopted by Irigaray in her essay on the absence of symbolic representation
for women in culture which results in perpetually ‘amputated desires’ if it remains unex-
ploited. See her essay, ‘The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry’, in Speculum of the
Other Woman, pp. 13–129 (p. 124).
41
Irigaray, ‘Women on the Market’, p. 186–7.
42
On this type of exploitation, see Karras, Common Women, p. 130. See also pp. 88–95 for a
discussion on what secular literature from this period can tell us about public attitudes
towards sexuality.
43
The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 203–8.
44
The Riverside Chaucer, p. 86, lines 4421–2.
103
celebratory – or, from a male perspective, perhaps, reprehensible – willingness

to trade sex for power and advancement. In her own words:
And therefore every man this tale I telle,

Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle;
With empty hand men may none haukes lure.
For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure,
And make me a feyned appetit;
And yet in bacon hadde I nevere delit.45
As Laurie Finke has demonstrated in a highly productive Marxist-feminist

reading of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, rather than envisaging
marriage as a means to social production and procreation, the Wife of Bath
has instead exploited to the limit its in exhaustible potential for the accu-
mulation of property and capital, and power.46 For Alisoun, marriage is
primarily a financial transaction in which she trades her body for eco-
nomic advantage, and any sexual pleasure to be gained is a fortuitous by-
product. Her use of the word ‘profit’, therefore, not only takes on a literal
meaning in the text, but is also imbued with a highly relevant metaphoric-
ity in its suggestion of a subtext of sexual satisfaction.47 It is just such a
subtext of a sexual economy predicated on a personal deployment of
the female body which we will observe in Margery Kempe’s account of her
own struggle for bodily and spiritual autonomy and, if the words of
Chaucer’s Manciple can tell us anything, they corroborate society’s anx-
iety that in every woman lurks a potential whore, regardless of her social
status:
Ther nys no difference, trewely,

Bitwixe a wyf that is of heigh degree,
If of hir body dishonest she bee,
And a povre wenche.48
Nor were biblical women extraneous to such projected anxieties in contem-

porary popular representation. In the East Anglian play from the fifteenth-
century N-Town cycle, for example, which focuses on the biblical narrative
of the Woman Taken in Adultery (whose protagonist was frequently con-
flated with Mary Magdalene),49 an imaginative series of violently sexual
45
The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 105–22 (p. 110), lines 416–18.
46
Laurie Finke, ‘ “All is for to selle”: Breeding Capital in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale’, in Peter G. Beidler (ed.), The Wife of Bath (Boston and New York, 1996), pp. 171–88.
47
For a discussion of how Alisoun ‘consents to the abuse of her own sexuality’, see Delany,
‘Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Evans and
Johnson, Feminist Readings, p. 85.
48
The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 282–6, lines 212–15 (p. 284).
49
On this see Susan Haskins’s detailed study of Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalen: Myth
and Metaphor (New York, 1993), pp. 26–7.
104
interpellations are hurled at the adulterous woman by the authoritarian

scribes and pharisees:
SCRIBA: Come forth, þu stotte, com forth þu scowte!

Com forth, þu bysmare and brothel bolde!
Com forth, þu hore an stynkynge bych clowte!
How longe hast þu such harlotry holde?
PHARISEUS: Com forth, þu quene, com forth, þu scolde!
Com forth, þu sloveyn, com forth, þu slutte!
We xal the teche with carys colde
A lytyl bettyr to kepe þi kutte.50
In the same cycle, too, even the young, virginal Mary, Mother of God, is accused
of infidelity and betrayal by Joseph when he discovers her pregnancy on his
return from his travels:51
JOSEPH: That semyth evyl, I am afrayd.

Þi wombe to hyhe doth stonde.
I drede me sore I am betrayd,
Sum other man þe had in honde.52
As familial representative of the patriarchy, Joseph is quick to assume Mary’s

explanations to be lies and proceeds to judge her according to society’s cyni-
cism about the steadfastness of women, rather than relying upon his own
knowledge of her as blameless individual. Most pertinently here, however,
his use of the phrase ‘in honde’ can be seen to incorporate not only its literal
meanings ‘to take possession of physically’ or ‘to bring under control’, but also
its more figurative meanings of ‘to pay directly’ or ‘to pay in ready money’.53
In this sense, Joseph is not only accusing his wife of adultery but is at the
same time intimating that she is both common woman and paid whore.54
The concept of harlotry as being synonymous with the behaviour of the
sexually indiscriminate woman is also borne out in contemporary court
records where significant numbers of women seem to have been prosecuted
as whores who were not, in fact, commercial traders in sex at all,55 suggest-
ing that in England at least, the remunerative aspect of prostitution was
50
The N-Town Play, vol. 1, p. 255.
51
The N-Town Play, vol. 1, pp. 123–30. For an examination of the representation of the Virgin
in the N-Town plays, see J. A. Tasioulas, ‘Between Doctrine and Domesticity:
The Portrayal of Mary in the N-Town Plays’, in Watt, Women in Their Communities,
pp. 222–45.
52
The N-Town Play, vol. 1, p. 124.
53
Both of these definitions are cited in MED under ‘hond(e)’, 2a and 1b (g).
54
Chaucer also makes full use of both these meanings when he puts the same words into
the mouth of his Wife of Bath in connection with her relationship with her first three hus-
bands: ‘But sith I hadde hem hoolly in mine hond’, The Riverside Chaucer, p. 108, line 211.
55
This aspect of prostitution is examined by Karras in Common Women, pp. 13–31. See
also p. 131.
105
not in itself considered a significant moral issue and merely constituted an

advantageous by-product of what was perceived as a flawed female ontol-
ogy.56 The labelling of a woman as whore, as these male-authored and fic-
tional examples clearly demonstrate, was therefore primarily a sexualisation
of her aberrant behaviour rather than being an economic slur, and as such
constituted an interpellative attempt to contain the threat posed to the patri-
archal and homosocial status quo by this act of female sexual independence.57
‘Þei clepyd hir Englisch sterte’: Strategies of Disruption
The sexualising of unacceptable female behaviour within patriarchal dis-

course is everywhere attested in The Book of Margery Kempe, and Margery is
quick to recognise in its ambiguous logic not only a potential for agency but
also its provision of a powerful textual trope. On several occasions, for example,
Margery takes full advantage of the sexual vilification directed at her by
strategically overplaying its ability to transform her into suffering and mis-
understood subject. In this way she redeploys her own sexuality to allow it
to incite utterance of the male speaker’s own moral blindness and the preju-
dices of society which he embodies, and also to facilitate the author’s depic-
tion of herself as the wronged and much-maligned visionary woman who is
marginalised or excluded by an unenlightened society. Moreover, such a
depiction of an inscribed social marginality throws into relief a privileged
relationship with God which necessitates and legitimises an occupation of the
liminal spaces at the boundaries of the acceptable whilst living within the
heart of society. Thus, Margery’s treatment of her own sexuality in the Book
becomes part of a personal and narrative strategy which will lead eventually
to some measure of social autonomy and literary empowerment.
In this context, the commodification of Margery’s sexuality constitutes a
dominant discourse from the outset of her narrative, initially resting uneasily
alongside those discourses of motherhood already examined. The resultant
tension is something which not only characterises Margery’s relationships
with many of her contemporaries throughout her documented life, but is also
fundamental to the unique relationship which she forges with her divine
lover – Christ. It is also entirely characteristic of her problematic relationship
with her largely bewildered husband who finds his wife increasingly resis-
tant to his sexual advances, in spite of their having at one time enjoyed a
satisfying and enjoyable sexual relationship. On Margery’s own admission,
56
On the female as ontologically flawed being, see, for example, Cadden, Meanings of Sex
Difference, p. 161 and 268–9. See also my Introduction, p. 9.
57
Karras, however, points out a common association made in the Middle Ages between
greed and lust which converged in the figure of the prostitute (‘Holy Harlots: Prostitute
Saints in Medieval Legend’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, 1 (1990), pp. 3–32 (p. 6)).
106
‘in hir hong age [she] had ful many delectabyl thowtys, fleschly lustys, & inor-
dinat louys to hys persone’ (181). However, within a few months of her reli-
gious conversion, sexual contact with her husband becomes utterly abhorrent
to her, so much so that the ever-supportive Christ tells her that he will slay
John Kempe if he will not eventually agree to a chaste marriage (21). These
matrimonial and sexual tensions reach a crescendo and explode into narra-
tive climax during the account of the couple’s return from York where Margery
tells us they had been ‘for gostly helth’ (22). Although they have already been
living chastely for eight weeks, possibly in preparation for the pilgrimage
they have undertaken, or else because she has recently given birth to her last
child, Margery is distressed to find renewed pressure put upon her by John
to restore their physical relationship. Such is her anguish – possibly her anger
too – that John intends to reclaim his conjugal rights58 that she tells him she
would prefer him to die: ‘ “I had leuar se how be slayn þan we schuld turne
ahen to owyr vnclennesse” ’ (23). Needing to retaliate quickly, John resorts to
predictable insult when articulacy fails him, confronted as he is by a vehe-
mently determined and confidently manipulative Margery. Attempting to
undermine her socially acceptable role as his wife, her concomitant
respectability and her situational control, John tells her, ‘He arn no good wyfe’
(23). With this conventional insult and all its implications of sexual inad-
equacy, John Kempe attempts to subject and shame his wife, regain control
over her body and relocate her firmly back within the social order which she
appears to be eschewing. Of course, the appellation here of ‘bad’ wife serves
conversely to illustrate what the ‘good’ wife should be: one who, in true
Pauline fashion, is prepared to follow instruction and adhere to the code:
‘Wives, be subject to your husbands, as it behoveth in the Lord’.59 This, of
course, would naturally include sex on demand in fulfilment of the marriage
debt.60 For Margery to be a ‘good’ wife in this context, however, she would
have to trade her body without desire for the dubious gains of her husband’s
approval and goodwill. In effect, she would have to prostitute herself, sinking
down the scale of acceptable female sexual expression into that of the whore
or the ‘common woman’ with her husband as perpetual client. This reading
is further corroborated by the fact that the episode is recounted directly fol-
lowing a remarkable lyrical profession by Christ of his own devotion to
Margery at the end of Chapter 10 where he assures her: ‘I am in þe, and
þow in me. And þei þat heryn þe pei heryn þe voys of God’ (23). In the light
58
The tensions arising from theological attitudes for men and women in marriage are dis-
cussed by Georges Duby in Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1994), pp. 29–32.
59
Colossians 3: 18. See also 1 Corinthians 7: 1–16 for further Pauline teaching on marriage.
For a study of the contribution of Paul’s writing to the idea of marriage in the Middle Ages
see Christopher N. L. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1994), pp. 48–51.
60
For a discussion of sexual attitudes within marriage see Michael M. Sheehan, ‘Sexuality
and the Married State’, in James L. Farge (ed.), Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval
Europe: Collected Studies (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 297–306.
107
of these words, with all their implications of both spiritual and sexual satis-
faction and exclusivity, for Margery to comply with John Kempe’s definition
of a good wife would create in her an adulteress of the worst order – that is
the fornicating, adulterous wife of Christ himself. Such a strategic placing of
these two nuptial narratives alongside each other – Christ’s loving affirm-
ation and John’s frustrated defamation – serves, therefore, to offer a critique of
social attitudes towards marriage, and the required sexual compliance of wives
in particular. John’s attempt to bring his wife under control by labelling her
in this way is thus doomed to failure by Margery’s exploitative treatment of
it and he is forced into renegotiating his relationship with her in a transaction
which is described in terms fully worthy of the marketplace. Attempting to
retain control within the transaction, John Kempe imposes three conditions
on his wife before he will agree to consent to a chaste marriage, conditions
which ironically serve to link sexuality and economics in a highly functional
way: ‘ “My fyrst desyr is þat we xal lyn stylle togedyr in o bed as we han do
befor; þe secunde þat he schal pay my dettys er he go to Iherusalem; & þe
thrydde þat he schal etyn & drynkyn wyth me on þe Fryday as he wer wont
to don” ’ (24). With Christ as mediator, Margery agrees to two out of the three
of these conditions: she will eat and drink with him on a Friday and she will
pay off all his debts before departing for Jerusalem. On no account, however,
will she lie again with him in her bed and, in a skilful textual closure, she pro-
ceeds to invert and parody the conventional sexual exchange expected of her
within matrimony. Now, instead of trading her body for her husband’s
approval and goodwill she becomes its own beneficiary and buys back John’s
right of access to her:
‘Grawntyth me þat he schal not komyn in my bed, & I grawnt how to qwyte
howr dettys er I go to Ierusalem. & makyth my body fre to God so þat he neuyr
make no chalengyng in me to askyn no dett of matrimony aftyr þis day whyl
he leuyn, & I schal etyn & drynkyn on þe Fryday at howr byddyng.’ (25)
Thus, in Margery’s newly defined matrimonial sexual economy it is John

who purchases financial security from his wife, paid for by the withdrawal of
his sexual persona from their marriage. John capitulates, evidently happy
with the arrangement and they kneel down together beneath a wayside cross
to give thanks before sharing a celebratory meal ‘in gladnes of spyryt’ (25).
What we have therefore witnessed is the injurious speech of John Kempe
being entirely appropriated by his wife and ‘returned’ to him in a different
form, serving to disrupt and negate its original effects.61 Hence the ‘bad’ wife
metamorphoses into a now redefined ‘good’ wife who saves her husband not
only from social and financial embarrassment but also from heavenly censure
61
On the efficacy of ‘subversive reiteration’ as a strategy see Butler, Excitable Speech,
pp. 14 and 19.
108
for his impulse towards continued ‘vnclenennesse’ and heedless concupis-

cence. The whole episode therefore constitutes a type of sexualised eco-
nomic transaction in reverse. Not only does it remain one of mutual
benefit but, more importantly, will allow Margery Kempe to regain the free-
dom of her body by linking it herself to that most effective of negotiating
tools – money.
Discourses of prostitution and the trading of bodies are evidenced at other
strategic points in the narrative, and on other occasions Margery actively and
performatively embraces her own subjection to interpellation in order to dis-
rupt the expectations of her audience and throw into relief what she regards
as her misunderstood subjectivity as holy woman. At the beginning of her pil-
grimage to Jerusalem, for example, Margery is again subject to injurious
speech and labelled a ‘bad woman’, this time by her fellow travelers who
have taken great exception to her overt piety and her perpetual allusion to
spiritual matters (61–2). Their treatment of her deteriorates from intense ver-
bal abuse to physical isolation and rejection and at one point they remove her
maidservant from her company for the fear that she too will be labelled a
‘strumpet’ for having been in Margery’s company. The word ‘strumpet’, of
course, incorporates notions of the debauched or unchaste woman, the har-
lot or the common woman, again containing within its various definitions a
wide range of female sexual behaviour.62 The origins of the word are unclear
but one suggestion has been that it originates from the Middle Dutch term
‘strompen’, meaning to stride or stalk.63 The sexual connotations of ‘stride’
are obvious and the image of the stalker would appear to fit in not only with
the medieval idea of a woman as sexually insatiable whose seductive nature
lures the male into sexual temptation, but also with the image of the money-
minded marriageable woman as pursuer of the unsuspecting male, as epito-
mised by Chaucer’s Wife of Bath or the young women of his fabliaux.64 This
unilateral reaction to Margery by the company again implies a sexualisation
of what they regard as a socially transgressive behaviour. In her refusal to
talk of anything but spiritual matters she has impinged upon the company’s
hedonistic abandon and has disrupted their homogeneity. They also fear her
independent behaviour will contaminate the other women in the company
and when their attempts to contain it by means of verbal insult fails, they
inscribe upon it a specifically sexual transgressiveness, once again demon-
strating society’s reliance on the sexual slur as a means of controlling the
aberrant woman. Margery thus becomes the recipient of the most extraordin-
ary treatment at their hands, a treatment which some critics have read in
62
MED, ‘strumpet’, 1a.
63
Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (London, 1966).
Similarly, MED entry for ‘stomperen’ (1b) defines it as ‘to walk clumsily’ or ‘to stagger’.
64
See, for example, ‘The Shipman’s Tale’, in The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 203–8, and ‘The
Merchant’s Tale’, pp. 154–68.
109
terms of a Bakhtinian expression of the grotesque.65 Certainly it would seem

that in her retelling of this episode Margery is representing her own body in
these terms. However, in another example of Butlerian ‘subversive reiter-
ation’, Margery’s literary treatment of this incident serves to transfer the
overdetermined and grotesque inscription back upon the bodies which are so
intent on abusing her. Graphically she recounts the attempts of this company
to consolidate their imposed identity of strumpet upon her by forcing her to
wear a torn, white, apron-like garment – a ‘sekkyn gelle’ – which is so short
that it reveals her legs to the knee (62). It is likely that this ‘sekkyn gelle’
would have carried connotations of prostitution because of its etymological
link with ‘gill’, a common term of female sexual derision, and because it is
inappropriately revealing parts of her body and making them thoroughly
accessible to all the onlookers.66 Moreover, both Margery’s body and her per-
sonal space have been invaded for the enforcement of the wearing of this gar-
ment, which renders her yet another version of the ‘common woman’ who
appears to have been thoroughly taken ‘in honde’ by the company. They now
deem her to be dressed appropriately for this role and this material manifest-
ation of her aberrance further justifies their common disparagement of her.
The torn and curtailed garment, of course, constitutes a parody of the modest
yet ambiguous garment of white linen which Christ has previously asked
Margery to wear and which she will adopt permanently whilst in Rome on
her return journey from Jerusalem (92). By means of its parodic imposition
upon her here, however, the company attempts to inscribe upon Margery the
identity of the hypocritical, would-be-virgin whore67 but in fact ends up fore-
grounding its own ungodliness. The end result, therefore, is the emphasis of
Margery’s own Christian humility and an acerbic critique of the cruel limita-
tions of her ‘pharisaic’ accusers. Moreover, Margery then proceeds to docu-
ment how she is forced to sit at the bottom of the table in an inversion of the
honour which would be attributed to a visiting holy dignitary – a bishop, for
65
According to the findings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass.,
1965), the female body was paradigmatic of the open, accessible and grotesque body within
medieval culture. See, for example, p. 339: ‘it swallows and generates, gives and takes’. For
a discussion of such grotesquery in connection with the aging body see Sarah Kay, ‘The Old
Body in Medieval Culture’, in Kay and Rubin, Framing Medieval Bodies, pp. 161–86.
66
This reading is supported by Meech’s observation that, according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, the etymology of ‘gelle’ links it to the word ‘gylle’, a possible extension of
‘gill’ or ‘jill’, a term of sexual contempt applied to a woman. The Book of Margery Kempe,
p. 286, n. 62/16–17. Alternatively, in her analysis of the prostitutes of Southwark in the
late Middle Ages, Karras has pointed out that these regulated women were prohibited
from wearing aprons and suggests that Margery’s imposed garment can be seen as a par-
ody of the ecclesiastic, apron-like garment of a bishop (Common Women, p. 157, n. 39).
67
Barbara Hanawalt points out in her essay, ‘At the Margin’s of Women’s Space in
Medieval Europe’, in Edwards and Ziegler, Matrons and Marginal Women, pp. 7–8, that the
imposing of dress codes upon women was another way of confining and controlling
them. She then proceeds to discuss dress codes imposed upon prostitutes in European
cities during the Middle Ages.
110
example. Such a positioning further transforms her into a figure of fun and
ridicule, indeed into a type of grotesque Pope Joan figure,68 embodying all
society’s fears of the disruptive powers of the common whore as well as the
perceived obscenity of the would-be woman priest.
Karma Lochrie’s interpretation of this incident injects it with unlikely
humour in a reading which responds to Margery’s self-representation here
as God’s ‘holy fool’ as an incitement of her readership to share in the merri-
ment of her detractors as well as in the anguish and humiliation experienced
by herself.69 Although Lochrie claims to resist a strong Bakhtinian reading
because of its failure to take into account the implications of gender, never-
theless she relies heavily on his study of the role of laughter and the
grotesque in the medieval world for her interpretation.70 For Bakhtin, extra-
institutional folk licentiousness such as the Feast of Fools demonstrated soci-
ety’s reliance upon the figure of the clown to create a laughter which in turn
would help to dissipate what he terms the ‘mystic terror of God’.71 Although
it is likely that it was just such a type of extra-institutional licentiousness
which Margery’s particularly vocal brand of religious piety was disrupting
for her fellow pilgrims, and why much of their vindictive behaviour towards
her revolves around the meal table,72 on re-examination, Margery’s self-
denigration at this point in her text is more devoid of humour than Lochrie’s
quasi-Bakhtinian interpretation assumes. Nevertheless, she is accurate in her
assessment of the gendered nature of the pilgrims’ treatment of Margery’s
body as being central to an accurate interpretation of this disturbing
episode. Far from depending on her reader’s sense of amusement here as
Lochrie suggests, however, Margery appears to be drawing upon the intensely
68
According to medieval legend Pope Joan’s sex remained hidden until the time when she
gave birth on the street during a papal procession. A brief allusion to the legend can be
found in Newman, From Virile Woman, pp. 238–9. See also David J. Madison, ‘The Popess
Who Never Was’, Mississippi Folklore Register 19, 1 (1985), pp. 31–5, and Steven M. Taylor,
‘Martin le Franc’s Rehabilitation of Notorious Women: The Case of Pope Joan’, Fifteenth-
Century Studies 19 (1992), pp. 261–78.
69
Lochrie, Translations, p. 156.
70
On the role of holy laughter in the Middle Ages, and in particular the tradition of the
risus paschalis, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, pp. 71–5. For his analysis of the Feast
of Fools, see pp. 78–82. For Lochrie’s reading of this see Translations, pp. 156. and 161.
For an alternative examination of the role of holy laughter in medieval writing, see Stephen
Metcalf, ‘Inner and Outer’, in The Later Middle Ages, pp. 108–71 (pp. 138–9).
71
Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 90. The Feast of Fools was eventually banned by the
medieval Church and moved outside into the marketplace and the taverns, where,
according to Bakhtin, it ‘became one of the most colourful and genuine expressions of
medieval festive laughter’ (p 78).
72
For a discussion of the importance of the feast motif to the grotesque and carnivalesque
see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, pp. 278–303. For an analysis of the licentiousness of
the meal-table, see Margaret Healy, ‘Monstrous Tyrannical Appetites: “& what wonder-
full monsters have there now lately ben borne in Englande?” ’, in McAvoy and Walters,
Consuming Narratives, pp. 157–69. Here Healy examines the power structures embedded
in the motif of the feast and its display of conspicuous consumption.
111
emotive and gendered image of the whore or ‘common woman’ which she
then proceeds to inscribe hyperbolically upon her own body in order to dis-
rupt the company’s interpellative strategy and again turn it back upon the
speakers themselves. Thus she succeeds in disrupting the assumptions of
both her fellow pilgrims and her readers and wrests from them control over
her situation, her body and the textual reconstruction of both. In this highly
public performance of the company’s interpellative abuse of her, Margery
disrupts and dissipates its efficacy as controlling mechanism because it is
re-enacted at her own pace and according to her own script. The end result is
that she is allied in the mind of the reader with the lowly, wretched and
needy in society, a position which, paradoxically, will serve to elevate her.
Conversely, her detractors are allied to the arrogant, the self-interested and
the self-inflated, a position which ultimately serves to derogate them in the
text. Indeed, this is something which is represented even more explicitly
soon afterwards in the narrative when the ‘good man’ of the hostelry where
the company is lodging at Constance proceeds to make much of the abused
Margery, feeding her from his own plate, in spite of the fact that she has been
made her sit in the most lowly position at the table (62). Once again Margery
empowers herself, translating the text of her denigrated body into a manipu-
lation of the responses of her readers and thus disrupting the intended
effects of her sexual vilification. Such an intensely gendered performance of
the role which has been imposed upon her is the source of another fissure
through which Margery Kempe as subject passes, taking her audience with
her and leaving behind her tormentors to be defeated by their own gendered
inscriptions.
One of the most sinister and threatening incidences in which Margery is
designated as whore takes place at Leicester during a later pilgrimage to the
north of England in 1417. In an episode which serves perfectly to illustrate
the weight of both secular and ecclesiastic dictates about suitable behaviour
for women, Margery is arrested and ridiculed by the mayor who names her
as ‘a fals strumpet, a fals loller, & a fals deceyuer of þe pepyl’ (112). In his
equating of the terms ‘strumpet’ and ‘Lollard’, the mayor lays bare the primary
fears invoked by women generally, but particularly those invoked by women
who overtly transgress the boundaries of established socio-religious proscrip-
tion. As a self-fashioning group, and as one also fashioned by others,73 the
Lollards had set about creating a new identity for themselves which would
supplant the old religious order and establish them in opposition to every-
thing they abhorred – which included the misuse of authority.74 The potential
independence of the ‘common woman’ as similar ‘self-fashioner’ was equally
disruptive to the patriarchal socio-religious order, as we have seen, and in
73
See p. 87, n. 80.
74
On this see Shannon McSheffery, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities,
1420–1530 (Pennsylvania, 1995), p. 10.
112
this context, for the mayor of Leicester at least, Margery’s unconventional

behaviour can only mean one thing – she must be in religious terms a heretic
and in secular terms a whore. Thus the two terms become synonymous within
the patriarchal semantics adopted by this man and, as a result, Margery is
passed on to the steward of Leicester to be dealt with by him. However,
unable to make any of his accusations of heresy adhere because of Margery’s
reasonable – and entirely orthodox – verbal responses to his accusations, the
steward resorts to the now familiar sexualisation of her transgressiveness in
order to bring her under control in what he deems as the appropriate man-
ner: ‘Than þe Steward toke hir be þe hand led hir into hys chawmbyr & spak
many fowyl rebawdy wordys vnto hir, purposyng & desyryng, as it semyd
hir, to opressyn hir & forlyn hir’ (113). Here the steward proceeds to brand
Margery as sexually available in order to restore her to her rightful position
as subservient and objectified ‘other’ and to justify his abusive treatment of
her. When even this sexual inscription upon Margery fails to subjugate her in
spite of her very evident fear of the situation, the steward moves on from try-
ing to control her with ‘fowyl rebawdy wordys’ to an attempt upon her body
itself: ‘seyng hir boldenes þat sche dred no presonyng, he strogelyd wyth hir,
schewyng vnclene tokenys & vngoodly cuntenawns’ (113). For the steward,
Margery’s display of courage, defiance and lack of appropriate deference to
him as an authoritative male paradoxically signifies a woman out of control.
His solution is to attempt to force upon her his own masculine control by
means of the act of rape, and in so doing inscribe upon her the subjectivity of
whore. As she is labelled by him, so she will also be treated by him in this
ultimate act of interpellative naming and defining, and the man is only
restrained by her timely invocation of her own divine gifts which she is at
pains to tell him come ‘of þe Holy Gost & not of hir owyn cunnyng’ (113).
Driven into confusion by Margery’s unconventionality, the steward’s final
response – which echoes appropriately the confusion displayed by John
Kempe during his own negotiations with Margery – articulates the disrup-
tion of his male authority: ‘Eyþyr þu art a ryth good woman er ellys a ryth
wikked woman’ (113). Such a resort to what is now becoming a cliched articu-
lation of those patriarchal binaries used to classify women, not only under-
mines the authority of the steward’s interpellative strategy but by means of
its overdetermined representation also effects his defeat in the text by its
foregrounding of his own moral inadequacy. Such a treatment of male pre-
sumption on Margery’s sexual availability continues to surface at frequent
intervals throughout her text, suggesting that the dividing-line between the
subjectivity of whore and that of holy woman is very thin indeed and yet the
location of a subtle lacuna ripe for authorial exploitation. It is, therefore, such
a fragile and permeable boundary which offers Margery Kempe the oppor-
tunity to move in and out of these subject positions at will, a movement
which constitutes both a strategy of protection and a means towards self-
authorisation.
113
Some critics such as T. W. Coleman have suggested that Margery’s sexual

anxieties and her frequently articulated fear of rape is a result of ‘sexual aber-
rance’ on her part, and evidence of a more general neurosis.75 However, as we
have seen previously, male aggression towards Margery as a transgressive
woman is often sexualised in the course of an attempt to control her behav-
iour, and such sexual aggression as an integral component of patriarchal
repression becomes the subject of an important critique within the Book. As a
single woman travelling alone, even in her old age, Margery’s sexual status
continues to be challenged and interrogated by those men with whom she
comes into contact, providing further evidence of its strategic importance
within the Book as a whole. This is never more apparent than when as a sex-
agenarian she finds herself abandoned and isolated on mainland Europe
having impulsively accompanied her widowed daughter-in-law back to her
home in Germany from England. Rendered lame by a foot injury, and having
contravened the advice of her confessor, Margery’s greatest difficulty is find-
ing travelling companions who will tolerate her singular behaviour and
compromise their own safe passage home by taking into account her tardi-
ness. Whilst one companion ‘went so fast þat sche myth not folwyn wythowtyn
gret labowr & gret disese’ (233–4), others abandon her altogether (240).
Following her expulsion from a monastery near Aachen for her uncontrol-
lable sobbing when viewing the Sacrament (235–6), as night falls Margery’s
situation becomes dire. Not knowing where or with whom she might stay the
night, in a multilayered section of narrative Margery tells of how she is
approached by a group of priests who, instead of offering her solace and
protection as their position would demand, sexualise her predicament and
presume upon her sexual availability and commonality (236). As an unaccom-
panied woman who is attached to no man, her solitude and vulnerability ren-
der her available to them for their sexual purposes. The preconceived and
reductive notions of suitable female behaviour displayed by these
priests attempt to remove from Margery her individuality and inscribe upon
her their own abusive desires. Hence she is addressed by them with ‘many
lewed wordys’ (236) and labelled as ‘Englisch sterte’ – a word used on the
Continent to insult both men and women, its literal meaning probably deriv-
ing from the Anglo-Saxon ‘steorte’ meaning ‘tail’, alluding to a commonly
told myth that the English had tails beneath their clothing.76 The sexual con-
notations here are evident, particularly in the context of the lewdness of the
75
Coleman, English Mystics, p. 158.
76
For information on this word and its usage see The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 345,
n. 236/29–30. See also Klaus Bitterling, ‘Margery Kempe and English “sterte” in Germany’,
Notes and Queries 43 (241), 1 (1996), pp. 21–2. Bitterling contests this origin of the word,
suggesting instead that it derives from the Middle High German word for a vagabond or
tramp, ‘sterzer’. However, from the context in which the word is used in Margery
Kempe’s text, it would appear to be closely associated with the priests’ sexual advances,
suggesting the former more vulgar etymology rather than that suggested by Bitterling.
114
priests and the ‘vnclenly cher & cuntenawns’ (236) which they exhibit
towards Margery. Significantly too, this is a behaviour which is highly rem-
iniscent of a former textual representation of sexually aggressive ecclesiastics
and appears to be the threatened manifestation of one of Margery’s greatest
fears. During the days of her sexual temptation and torment when her gift of
tears had been removed from her, Margery had been plagued by lewd visions
of naked and sexually active priests whom she feared would cause her to be
‘comoun’ to them all (144–6). Now, years later, those priests have materi-
alised in reality before her when she is old and most vulnerable and thus
serve a variety of purposes in the text. On one level they underscore the
hypocrisy of the established elite, especially as Margery herself has only
recently been branded a hypocrite by the monks near Aachen because of her
excess of tears (235). On another level, they serve to highlight the injustice of
the female position in society which renders her subject to male commodifi-
cation and transformation into object to be passed between them and used by
each of them in turn, according to their own desires. In view of the fact that
sexual liaison between priests and whores was commonplace in the late
Middle Ages,77 this passage also serves to reinforce the text’s underlying criti-
cism of those servants of God who fail to live up to the privileged position
bestowed upon them by socio-religious ideology.78 At this point, therefore,
Margery’s self-depiction as potential whore or ‘common woman’ functions
textually as a catalyst for the examination of the hypocritical position held by
many men in the established Church. Through her self-representation as
potential whore, Margery provides a focus for the critique of patriarchal atti-
tudes towards women within contemporary culture, suggesting that the trap-
pings and labels which bestow power and authority upon the male subject
are nothing more than a screen behind which baser tendencies are allowed to
operate. This criticism is reinforced by the fact that help comes not from a
new, protective male but, as so often happens in the narrative, from another
woman – in this case the owner of a hostelry who provides Margery with
some female companions and somewhere to sleep (236). This woman’s pro-
fession and position within society, of course, would also be an ambiguous
one. Women who kept taverns were not considered wholly respectable79 and,
like Margery, lay on the margins of social acceptability. Yet, this is where
Margery’s support lies, creating a subtle and acerbic subtext at this point in
the narrative. Here, Christian values are adhered to by the women labelled
by society as being of dubious virtue, again re-emphasising the singular lack
of Christian charity displayed by the priests who were supposed to embody
it. The following day Margery is rescued by a group of people whose identity
77
Karras, Common Women, pp. 77–8.
78
For a discussion of Margery’s subtextual criticism of the Church and its hierarchy of
‘holy men’ see Staley, Dissenting Fictions, pp. 105–8.
79
Karras, Common Women, p. 72.
115
pushes traditional meanings of fellowship to its limits and throws into relief
the hypocritical ‘fellowship’ of both pilgrims and priests which Margery has
had to endure previously. Although highly vulnerable and needy themselves,
it is a group of vermin-ridden beggars which offers Margery both company
and protection. Moreover, in order to rid themselves of their vermin they are
compelled to strip naked at intervals, as Margery is at pains to point out: ‘hir
felaschep dedyn of her clothys, &, sittyng nakyd, pykyd hem’ (237). In the
same way as she identifies with their poverty and humility, however, so the
symbol of their lowliness – this infestation by body lice – is transferred to her
by association: ‘& þerfor sche thorw hir comownyng had part of her vermyn’
(237). In spite of her narrowly veiled revulsion for their physical degradation,
nevertheless, Margery enrolls them in the narrative in support of her own
humility and the nakedness of these people, although troubling for her too,
is rendered synonymous with and indistinguishable from their vulnerability
and spiritual purity. They are both literally and spiritually free from the type
of trappings which dress up and disguise the abusive behaviour of the las-
civious priests whose own potential nakedness is fundamentally more threat-
ening and abhorrent than the innocent shedding of clothes by these
essentially unthreatening beggars. In this scenario even their dirt, lice and
fleas are represented as an honest contamination in the face of the corruption
lurking beneath the religious veneer of the priests. Thus, the subtext of this
section asserts the transcendent goodness of both beggar and common
woman, both of whom cast into relief the corruption of the powerful priest-
hood and the patriarchal attitudes which they represent. Throughout this
episode and those examined previously, Margery’s textual positioning of her-
self is firmly in the role of the common woman, serving both to underline the
antipathy and misunderstanding of society towards her and to offer an acerbic
critique of masculine abuses of power. Thus her role as figurative whore
conflates with that of holy woman, both of whom are in some sense common
to humanity and who, in their humility, are intrinsic to the redemptive
process, as we shall see. The success of such a conflation reflects Margery
Kempe’s ability to break down the boundaries which have been imposed
upon her from without and to offer a new, reconstructed self which asserts a
variety of female subject positions as being of equal value for achieving direct
access to God.
‘[S]che stode in þe same place þer Mary Mawdelyn stode’:

The Whore and the Holy Woman
The figure used most consistently by Margery Kempe in an attempt to recon-

cile her own sexual history with a desired subjectivity as holy woman is the
sexually experienced and yet entirely redeemed Mary Magdalene. Allusions to
this most renowned of biblical whores not only punctuate Margery’s text but
116
her ubiquitous presence is also manifested by means of a subtle inscription

upon Margery’s own body. Such a textual and subtextual insistence upon the
presence of the Magdalene therefore serves to consolidate, underscore and
validate the compatibility of sexuality and holiness which Margery then pro-
ceeds to establish as authoritative strategy within her text.
Surprisingly, most modern commentators have failed to recognise the full
significance of the early reference to Mary Magdalene made by Margery’s
amanuensis in the closing sentence of the first draft of his Proem to the trea-
tise (6). Most of those who have commented on it have done so in the context
of what they interpret as Margery’s conventional imitatio of the Magdalene as
best placed of the saints to represent the author’s sense of fallen self.80
However, Margery’s identification with Mary Magdalene is a much more
complex and multivalent an appropriation of that persona than allowed for
by the simple concept of imitatio, and the introduction of this so-called ‘harlot
saint’ into the narrative by Margery’s scribe as an introit to the onset of
Margery’s own account offers an apologia not only for Margery’s experiences
but for the very act of writing itself.
The scribe announces that his struggle to interpret and continue what the
first amanuensis had initiated was finally won when he began his writing ‘in
þe her of owr Lord a m.cccc.xxxvj on þe day next aftyr Mary Maudelyn aftyr
þe informacyon of þis creatur’ (6). This temporal placement of the inaugur-
ation of Margery’s text provides a specific context for Margery’s opening
account which deals with the abjection resulting from the loss of her virgin-
ity, her first experience of maternity and her unexpiated sin which I examined
in Chapter 1. This has the effect of anchoring the entire account within the
context of female concupiscence as well as providing a firm point of reference
for the text as a whole. From the outset it is Mary Magdalene as the patron
saint of both prostitutes and contemplatives81 who will oversee the narrative,
provide sponsorship for Margery’s lived and written lives, and who, by
80
See, for example, Suzanne Craymer, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation of Mary Magdalene
and the Digby Plays’, Mystics Quarterly 19 (1993), pp. 173–81, for a sustained examin-
ation of the role this saint plays in the life of Margery. The main drawback to Craymer’s
evaluation, however, is that she is anachronistic in her assumption that Margery Kempe
may have been directly influenced by the Digby play’s representation of Mary
Magdalene. Since the play originates from the late fifteenth century, this would be an
impossibility. It is, however, more likely that the same type of devotional practices which
influenced the Digby playwright also exerted an influence upon Margery. See also, Susan
Eberley, ‘Margery Kempe, St. Mary Magdalene and Patterns of Contemplation’,
Downside Review: A Quarterly of Catholic Thought 368 (1989), pp. 208–33. Susan Haskins
also points out Margery’s identification with Mary Magdalene in Mary Magdalen, p. 176.
In addition, Haskins also draws the link between female mysticism and prostitution as
‘having both emerged from the new urban society’, p. 176. For a discussion of this see
Chapter 4, p. 146.
81
Marjorie M. Malvern, Venus in Sackcloth: The Magdalene’s Origins and Metamorphosis
(Illinois, 1975), p. 84; Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 253. For an account of the Magdalen’s
patronage of houses for repentant whores, see Haskins, Mary Magdalen, pp. 171–3.
117
implication, will guide the responses of the hitherto recalcitrant amanuensis,

allowing him to respond to Margery’s feminine discourses of sexuality and
prophecy, as we shall see.
As Ruth Karras has illustrated in her examination of the popularity of the
harlot saints in the late Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was probably the
most popular saint in all of medieval Europe after the Virgin Mary.82 Rising
to popularity in the twelfth century, by the fourteenth century her feast day
had become one of the greatest festivals of the Church year.83 Without a doubt
this was enhanced by the medieval Church’s new emphasis on penitence and
confession following the Gregorian reforms and the Fourth Lateran Council’s
edict of 1215 which made annual confession to a priest compulsory for the
faithful.84 In medieval consciousness, the Magdalene was a composite figure
of penitence in whom were conflated three of the well-known New Testament
figures. Firstly, there was Mary of Magdala who had been possessed by seven
devils which Christ exorcised from her.85 It was this Mary who was the first
to see the risen Christ and who thus took on the role of ‘apostless’ to the apos-
tles.86 This Mary later became confused with Mary of Bethany, sister to
Martha and Lazarus and was renowned for preferring to listen to the teach-
ings of Christ whilst her sister busied herself with more active and domestic
chores.87 No doubt, this aspect of the Magdalene, too, had a marked influence
upon Margery Kempe in her desire to abjure the domestic and commonplace
in order to contemplate Christ’s Passion.88 Finally, there was also some con-
fusion between these two Marys and the sinful woman who came to Christ
and washed his feet with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee.89 It was
primarily the characteristics of this latter woman (who remains unnamed in
the New Testament)90 which were to inscribe themselves upon this multi-
layered figure in medieval consciousness and, in keeping with the misogynistic
code inherited from the Church Fathers, the biblical vagueness of her sins was
translated into sexual transgression.91 Significantly too, on no occasion in the
82
Karras, ‘Holy Harlots’.
83
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 132.
84
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 133. On this practice see also Tentler, Sin and Confession,
pp. 20–2.
85
See Luke 8: 2.
86
See Mark 16: 9; and John 20: 17–18. Margery’s identification with Mary Magdalene in this
capacity is discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 186–8.
87
Luke 10: 38–42.
88
Society’s suspicion of Margery’s abjuring of traditional domesticity is demonstrated dur-
ing her travels in the north of England. On one occasion Margery is pursued by the
women of Hessle in Yorkshire and threatened by their distaffs. On arrival at Beverley, the
men there tell her to ‘go spynne & carde as oþer women don’ (129).
89
See, for example, Luke 7: 37–8.
90
Saint John attributes this action to Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, recounting it as
having taken place at their home in Bethany (John 12: 1–7).
91
Karras, ‘Holy Harlots’, p. 18. See also Haskins, Mary Magdalen, pp. 14–18 for an account
of the sexual associations of these women’s ‘sins’.
118
New Testament is Mary Magdalene depicted as a commercial prostitute

but, as we have seen from contemporary records, that term was very loosely
applied to any woman in the Middle Ages whose sexual morality fell short of
the dictates of the Church, and it was therefore hardly surprising that trad-
ition would translate the female sinner into a woman who traded her body
for sex. In addition to this, the Magdalene’s role as common whore in public
consciousness was further exacerbated by her confusion with another of the
popular harlot saints, Saint Mary of Egypt.92 Like Mary Magdalene, Mary of
Egypt spent years of dissolute living before a conversion which ultimately
resulted in a life of severe asceticism in the desert. However, the various
extant Vitae of this particular Mary (such as we find in de Voragine’s account
in The Golden Legend, for example)93 are emphatic about her activities as com-
mercial prostitute, trading her body to sailors in order to pay for her passage
by ship to the Holy Land.94 It follows, therefore, that by the time the popu-
larity of the Magdalene legend reached its height in the late Middle Ages, it
bore very little resemblance to canonical biblical depictions of the saint.
However, as a ‘paradigm of the feminine’,95 this prostitute saint, in her cap-
acity as essential and sinful Everywoman, offered an unique opportunity to
the medieval woman for a renunciation of the legacy of Eve through repen-
tance and proclamation of the risen Christ, as well as providing her with the
possibility of a similar apotheosis.96
An examination of popular thirteenth- and fourteenth-century hymns
which feature Mary Magdalene prominently also attests to the all-pervading
popularity of this saint during this period.97 Joseph Szövérffy has illustrated
how the language and content of hymns adhere very closely to the pattern of
changes and developments in the cult of medieval saints and those composed
to celebrate Mary Magdalene are no exception. In many instances in the
hymns of this period composed to celebrate the saint it is her penitence which
is emphasised rather than her sinfulness; she is, for example, frequently
referred to as ‘Maria poenitens’ (penitent Mary), or else her transcendence
is glorified by her transformation into ‘lux serena’ (shining light) and ‘stella
92
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 108. For an account of the legend of Mary of Egypt and an
analysis of her relevance to the Mary Magdalene story see Karras, ‘Holy Harlots’,
pp. 6–10. See also Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: Studies of Repentance in Early
Monastic Sources (Oxford, 1987), pp. 35–56, for a translation of the Latin Vita of Mary of
Egypt.
93
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 1, pp. 227–9.
94
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 1, p. 227.
95
This is a phrase used by Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 32.
96
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 32. See also p. 160 for the assertion that the composite figure
of the Magdalene came to represent womankind in general.
97
This survey of the medieval hymns which feature Mary Magdalene has been made by
Joseph Szövérffy in ‘ “Peccatrix Quondam Femina”: A Survey of the Mary Magdalene
Hymns’, Traditio 19 (1963), pp. 79–146. For this survey Szövérffy has used the collection
of medieval hymns found in G. M. Davies and C. Blume (eds), Analectica Hymnica Medii
Aevi, 55 vols (Leipzig 1886–1922).
119
radiosa’ (radiant star).98 Most pre-eminent, however, are those labels which
allude directly to her sinful past. She is very often referred to as ‘peccatrix’
(sinner), sometimes as ‘femina infamis’ (infamous woman)99 or ‘meretrix
impudica’ (unchaste whore),100 and one hymn in particular takes this even
further in its identification of the unfathomable depths of womanly sinfulness:
Tu es stella radiosa
Diu tamen nebulosa,
Obducta caligine
Et peccatrix appellata,
Supra modum deformata
Facta membrum Satanae.101
You are a shining star, for a long time obscured by fog, however. Seduced by
moral darkness and called ‘the sinner’, deformed beyond measure, you
formed a limb of Satan.
In attributing here the very worst characteristics of womankind to Mary

Magdalene, the ostensible effect, of course, is to create a contrast with her later
conversion experiences and apotheosis, which become further elevated.
Moreover, unlike the wholly unique Virgin, Mary Magdalene’s ontological
inheritance was that of all women, and her particular route to sainthood was
available to other repentant women in a way that the Virgin’s was not.
As Joseph Szövérffy has illustrated, in spite of the apparent rigidity of the
hymn tradition and format, medieval hymns appeared to conform to changes
and reconfigurations of public attitudes towards medieval saints,102 as well as
echoing patterns, symbols and phrasing found in homiletic literature and legends
of the period.103 From the evidence of the Magdalene hymns it is therefore
possible to ascertain that both her gender-specific sinfulness and glorious tran-
scendence was being offered readily to faithful female followers within the
Church of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and that she offered a colour-
ful, human and – more importantly – attainable example for them to follow.
In the context of Margery Kempe, one of the very few commentators to recog-
nise the importance of the influence of the figure of Mary Magdalene upon the
writer has been Suzanne Craymer.104 In her analysis of some of the ways in
which Margery manipulates the legend of this saint to suit her own purposes,
Craymer also astutely points out that Margery’s early self-representation
as egotistical hedonist taking pride in her prestigious parentage in
98
115 (1) as cited by Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 92.
99
100 (7), as cited in Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 92.
100
2 (4a), cited in Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 92.
101
115 (2), cited in Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 115.
102
Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 85.
103
Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 139.
104
Craymer, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation’.
120
Bishop’s Lynn and her passion for ostentatiously fashionable attire draws
heavily on Middle English representations of Mary Magdalene which, in turn,
had been influenced by de Voragine’s version of her life.105 According to de
Voragine, her beauty and wealth led to such personal corruption ‘that her
proper name was forgotten and she was commonly called “the sinner” ’.106
Osbern Bokenham too, writing his version of Mary Magdalene’s Life in the
middle of the fifteenth century,107 would also emphasise Mary’s exceptional
beauty and social advantages:
She of naturys yiftys had þe souereynte

And passyd alle wummen in excellent bewte,
For, as it semyd to yche mannys syht,
Feyrer þan she no wumman be myht.108
Thus, in her attempt to gain a reputation for beauty and social graces, Margery
Kempe similarly receives ‘mech velany’ (9) from her contemporaries, some of
whom ‘seyden sche was acursyd’ (10), and the failure of her business ven-
tures is seen by her accusers (and herself in retrospect) as God’s punishment
for her arrogance and self-absorption: ‘[She] thowt it weryn þe skowrges of
owyr Lord þat wold chastyse hir for hir synne’ (11). More significantly, at this
time Margery is also incited by a church acquaintance to embark upon an
adulterous liaison with him (14–15). Whilst having invited Margery’s response
to his advances, this man nevertheless rejects her and proceeds to inscribe
upon her the vilification incited by the common whore: ‘sche was ouyr-
comyn, & consentyd in hir mend, & went to þe man to wetyn yf he wold þan
consentyn to hire. And he seyd he ne wold for al þe good in þis world; he had
leuar ben hewyn as smal as flesch to þe pott’ (15). Craymer’s interpretation of
this episode recognises it simply as providing Margery with an oppor-
tunity to identify with Mary Magdalene.109 However, its significance is more
complex than this interpretation would allow for. Margery’s treatment of the
episode constitutes experimentation with the legend of the Magdalene as
hermeneutic in order to investigate the triadic process through which the self
is eliminated and rediscovered in the process of redemption. Firstly, the
innate self is lost to worldly vice, to ‘pride’ and ‘pompows aray’ (9) in order
to facilitate the self-imposed identity as desirable seductress. This, in turn,
leads to an act of naming on the part of others in response to this altered iden-
tity. The ‘self’ which is acceptable to God, however, can only be released from
the tyranny of this imposed identity by means of a figurative death followed
105
Craymer, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation’, p. 174.
106
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, p. 375.
107
Mary S. Serjeantson (ed.), Osbern Bokenham: Legendys of Hooly Wummen, edited from MS.
Arundel 327, EETS o.s. 206 (London, 1938), pp. 136–72.
108
Bokenham, Legendys, p. 148.
109
Craymer, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation’, pp. 175–6.
121
by rebirth into a holier, more self-critical and self-aware life. Bokenham

recounts Mary Magdalene’s initial loss of self in the following terms, echoing
and embellishing de Voragine’s earlier narrative:
So comoun she was, þat ful pytously

Hir name she lost, for of foly
So in þe cyte was sprungyn hir fame,
That ‘Marie þe synnere’ þei dede hir name.110
Clearly, Margery’s use of contemporary accounts of the saint in her own self-
representation at this early stage is already more than a mere act of imitatio.
In documenting her own adulterous impulses, what she refers to as ‘hir owyn
vnstabylnes’ (15), and subsequent humiliating rebuff, Margery draws upon
the lost identity of Mary Magdalene and her reinscription as ‘comoun’ by
others, telling us of herself, ‘[She] was labowrd wyth horrybyl temptacyons
of letthereye . . . ny al þe next her folwyng’ (16). In effect, she merges with the
Magdalene in an act of becoming, and the despair she documents when self-
awareness beckons is indistinguishable from that popularly attributed to the
Magdalene on the moment of her conversion.
In her study of the influence of Mary Magdalene upon Margery Kempe,
Craymer anachronistically considers the likelihood that the Digby Mary
Magdalen had a significant influence upon Margery’s self-representation in
her narrative,111 based upon Jacob Bennett’s argument for the likely prov-
enance of the Digby Mary Magdalen as having being Bishop’s Lynn, Margery’s
home town.112 As Carole Meale and others have demonstrated, however,
Craymer’s argument falls down since the Digby play postdates The Book of
Margery Kempe by at least six decades,113 although there does seem to be
some evidence to suggest that there may well have been some kind of play
cycle, now lost, being performed at Lynn during the time when Margery
110
Bokenham, Legendys, p. 148.
111
Craymer, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation’, p. 173. The Digby Mary Magdalen play is extant
in MS Digby 133, fol. 95r–145r and has been edited by Donald L. Baker, John L. Murphy
and Louis B. Hall Jr, Digby Plays, EETS o.s. 283 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 24–95.
112
Jacob Bennett, ‘The Mary Magdalene of Bishop’s Lynn’, Studies in Philology 75, 1 (1978),
pp. 1–9. Similarly, Gail McMurray Gibson has argued for East Anglia as having been one
of the main, if not the main centre of English drama during the fifteenth century in The
Theatre of Devotion, pp. 31–2.
113
Carole Meale, ‘ “This is a deed bok, tother a quick”: Theatre and the Drama of
Salvation in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (eds), Medieval
Women: Texts and Contexts in Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, 2000),
pp. 49–67 (p. 59). The Digby Mary Magdalen editors consider that the play predates
the extant manuscript, which they date as 1515–25 (Digby Plays, p. xxx). They lay
down a date in the 1490s as the likely date of the play’s composition (p. xl). See
also Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 204–5, and, ‘Staging Conversion: The Digby
Saint Plays and The Book of Margery Kempe’, in S. Riches and Sarah Salih (eds),
Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London,
2002),pp. 121–34.
122
was operating.114 What emphasis was placed on the character of Mary

Magdalene, if any, remains unknown, however. Much less speculative, how-
ever, is the likelihood that Margery and her husband attended the perform-
ance of the Corpus Christi cycle of plays whilst at York in 1413. Evidence
suggests that the cycle was performed on Corpus Christi day that year and
Hope Emily Allen has ascertained that it was the day afterwards – that is to
say ‘a Fryday on Mydsomyr Evyn’ in 1413 (23) when Margery and her hus-
band left the city on foot. Since the pageant would have taken over most of
the urban centre during its performance, it is unlikely that it had escaped
their attention. Indeed, as Meale demonstrates, Margery’s meditation on the
crucifixion whilst in Rome (80) bears strong affinities with the York crucifix-
ion pagent,115 suggesting that popular drama – and the York cycle in partic-
ular – did play some role in helping to craft the more performative aspects of
Margery’s representations. It is, therefore, tempting to speculate that
Margery may have been immersed in the workings of medieval drama;
indeed much of her other visionary Passion narratives with their extensive
use of direct speech and affective vocabulary116 take on the immediacy of
dramatic representation:117
And anon aftyr þe creatur was in hir contemplacyon wyth Mary Mawdelyn,
mornyng & sekyn owr Lord at þe graue, & herd & sey how owr Lord Ihesu
Crist aperyd to hir in lekenes of a gardener, seying, ‘Woman, why wepist
þu?’ Mary, not knowyng what he was, al inflawmyd wyth þe fyre of lofe,
seyd to hym ageyn, ‘Sir, hyf þu hast awey my Lord, telle me, & I xal takyn
hym ahen.’ Þan owr merciful Lord, hauyng pite & compassyon of hir, seyd,
‘Mary’. And wyth þat word sche, knowyng owr Lord, fel down at hys feet
& wolde a kyssyd hys feet, seying, ‘Meyster’. (197)
The dramatic implications of this passage are further enhanced by Margery’s

own participation in them. From the outset she is present and active and
when Christ speaks it is no longer clear to which of the women he is address-
ing his question. The scene’s authenticity is established by the witness of the
assertion ‘þe creature . . . herd & sey . . .’ and by the fact Margery is herself
conflated with the figure of Mary Magdalene; in effect, both her tears and the
Magdalene’s are one and the same. The dialogue, although highly reminis-
cent of Scripture, has the immediacy of the fifteenth-century vernacular and
we are left with the sense of Margery Kempe’s mystical participation in the
114
Meale, ‘ “This is a deed bok” ’, p. 52. Meale also points out that there is evidence dating
from 1384–5 of a Corpus Christi play having been performed in Bishop’s Lynn (p. 52).
115
Meale, ‘ “This is a deed bok” ’, p. 52.
116
Again, Gibson points out the close connection between Margery’s language in this
Passion narrative and elsewhere and that of the Meditationes, commenting, ‘when Margery
sounds most like herself she is, in fact, most like the Pseudo-Bonaventure’ (Theatre of
Devotion, p. 49).
117
See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 187–97.
123
original drama through its textual and dramatic re-enactment. By means of

this dramatic medium, Margery is therefore able to normalise her behaviour
and experiences and render them utterly appropriate within the frame of
legitimate performance. This is nowhere more evident than in the case of
Margery’s performances of weeping which constitute the source of so much
vilification by her contemporaries:
[S]che had . . . repentawns of hir synne wyth many byttyr teerys of com-
punccyon & parfyt wyl neuyr to turne ageyn to hir synne, but raþar to be
deed hir thowt . . . Þan fel sche half i dyspeyr. Sche thowt sche wold a ben
in Helle for þe sorw þat sche had. (15–16)
Such tears and expressions of despair are well documented in most of the
Mary Magdalene legends and are implicit in the weeping and sobbing
already examined in the context of Margery Kempe’s identity as Mater
Dolorosa.118 The Magdalene’s tears, in fact, serve to externalise her new and
lasting identity as reformed whore and become iconographically cotermin-
ous with her tears of sorrow at the foot of the cross and with her role as lover
of Christ. Her tears not only single her out and separate her from the rest of
humanity, but also paradoxically reunite her with that same humanity by
representing the sorrow of the sinful and potentially redeemable Everywoman.
Thus her tears become part of the language of salvation and as such help
Margery to articulate her own perceived special status as redeemed sinner
and lover of Christ. It is therefore her tears which, like the Magdalene, render
her both holy whore and holy woman. In this context, such a multivalent per-
formance of grief provides the potential in Margery’s own life for self-definition
in terms of redeemed femininity – whether through motherhood or
through recontextualised expression of sexuality – and constitutes a female-
identified language with which to bargain with the Almighty for the souls of
other sinners. In words which display uncanny echoes of Julian of Norwich’s
own concerns about the tensions between the nature of sin, divine retribution
and redemption, Margery firmly links femininity, contrition and salvation
within the topos of the weeping woman:119
Hyf I myth as wel, Lorde, heuyn þe pepyl contricyon & wepyng as þu heuyst
me for myn owyn synnes & oþer mennys synnys also & as wel as I myth
heuyn a peny owt of my purse, sone xulde I fulfille mennys hertys wyth
contricyon þat þei myth sesyn of her synne. I haue gret merueyl in
118
Meale considers Margery’s performances of grief whilst in Jerusalem to be more an imi-
tation of the Magdalene rather than a traditional imitatio Mariae (‘ “This is a deed bok” ’,
p. 59). My own reading is that Margery is undertaking a dual imitatio in these instances,
something which I argue in the interpretative essay included in my abridged translation
of the Book (Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed. and trans.), The Book of Margery Kempe: An Abridged
Translation (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 105–26).
119
See, for example, Long Text, pp. 38–9.
124
myn hert, Lord, þat I, whech haue ben so synful a woman & þe most
vnworthy creatur þat euyr þu schewedist þi mercy onto in alle þis werlde,
þat I haue so gret charite to myn euyncristen sowlys þat me thynkyth, þou
þei had ordeynd for me þe most schamful deth þat euyr myth any man
suffyr in erde, het wolde I forheuyn it hem for þi lofe, Lord, & han her
sowlys sauyd fro euyrlestyng dampnacyon. And þerfor, Lord, I schal not
sesyn, whan I may wepyn, for to wepyn for hem plentyuowsly, spede hyf
I may. (141–2)
The key importance of Margery’s weeping, then, is its potential to re-enact

female biblical precedent and to create an appropriate affective response in
her own audience. In the same way as the tears of the Virgin and of Mary
Magdalene have provoked both identification and conflation, so Margery
engages in a fully embodied Corpus Christi-like performance with full
stage instructions and special effects to be watched and experienced by her
audience. In effect, she performs her own sexuality alongside that of Mary
Magdalene, transforming it into a central component of the redemptive process.
The Song of Songs and the Two Faces of Eve
Although postdating Margery’s own representations of the Magdalene, in a

scene which appears to be unique in medieval drama, the Digby Mary Magdalen
play depicts the dissolute Magdalene as lying recumbent in a garden, lan-
guidly awaiting the arrival of a tardy lover. In a pose reminiscent of early
fourteenth-century representations of the Soul receiving her Lover in the
mystical marriage bed,120 this Mary Magdalene tells her audience:
I wll restyn in þis erbyr

Amons thes bamys precyus of prysse,
Tyll som lover wol apere,
that me is wont to halse and kysse.121
The echoes from the biblical Song of Songs here are inescapable where the
Shulamite, long interpreted as an allegory of the soul or Bride of Christ,122 lies
120
See the highly erotic image of the Soul receiving the long-awaited Bridegroom in the
Rothschild Canticles, MS 404, fol. 66 (Beineke Library, Yale University), as reproduced in
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 193.
121
Digby Mary Magdalen, p. 76.
122
For an account of the Christian exegetical history of the Song of Songs, see Marvin H.
Pope (trans.), The Anchor Bible Song of Songs (New York, 1977), pp. 112–29. See also Ann
Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (New York, 1990) and Neil Mancor, ‘Tradition
in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons On the Song of Songs’, Reading Medieval Studies 21,
pp. 53–67. For an important full-length study of the western tradition of the Song of Songs,
see Ann E. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity
(Philadelphia, 1990).
125
in a garden awaiting her bridegroom.123 Later, the bridegroom/Christ will

tell her:
My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.

Thy plants are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruits of the
orchard.
Cypresses with spikenard.
Spikenard and saffron, sweet can and cinnemon, with all the trees
of Libanus, myrrh and aloes with all the chief perfumes.
The fountain of gardens: the well of living waters, which run with a
strong stream from Libanus.124
In representing Mary Magdalene in this way prior to her conversion (and

drawing heavily on the popular Golden Legend for his source material),125 the
Digby playwright not only emphasises the overtly erotic way in which she
was traditionally considered to live her life but, more importantly, through its
allegorical potential, it acts as a pointer towards her approaching role as holy
woman, sponsa Christi and apostless to the apostles.126 As if in anticipation of
this type of representation, Margery’s own spiritual role and her highly phys-
ical relationship with Christ as established during her first vision of him in
her postnatal sickroom is also essentially a marital alliance, one which becomes
increasingly intense, erotic and Magdalene-like as her confidence in her own
sanctity increases. The marital imagery of her narrative which culminates in
her mystical marriage to the Godhead in Rome whilst she is returning from
Jerusalem has often been glossed over as part of what is regarded as Margery’s
characteristically naïve literalisation of the more abstract concepts inherent in
the mystical experience.127 In her study of the influence of the biblical Song of
Songs upon the thinking of the Middle Ages, for example, Ann Astell sug-
gests that Margery shows no real sense of affinity with the language of the
Song, unlike Richard Rolle whom Astell claims saw the psalter and the Song
as an extension of one another, becoming in effect, one song.128 This attitude
towards Margery and her Book falls into line with a reductive tradition which
compares her to the more canonical mystics such as Rolle, usually to her detri-
ment. Yet, in her Book, Margery acknowledges both a literary and intellectual
123
Song of Songs 1: 2–4. This link has also been pointed out by Salih, ‘The Digby Saints
Plays’, p. 127.
124
Song of Songs 4: 12–15.
125
Baker and Murphy consider the Golden Legend version of Mary Magdalene’s life to be
the play’s main source (The Digby Plays, p. xl).
126
This is an aspect of Mary Magdalene which Haskins examines in Mary Magdalen,
pp. 55–94. See also Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 204–5 and my own discussion of the
Magdalene as apostless in Chapter 5, pp. 186–8.
127
Bynum points out that commentators have been over-hasty in their dismissal of
Margery’s use of erotic imagery as being ‘simply a case of an uneducated woman taking
literally metaphors from the Song of Songs’ (Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 44).
128
Astell, The Song of Songs, p. 107.
126
debt to Rolle’s Incendium Amoris (143 and 154), a work which he was writing
alongside his psalter and which, as Hope Emily Allen points out in her edi-
tion of Rolle’s English writings,129 enjoyed great popularity and seems to
have been used as the orthodox psalter up until the Reformation.130 Far from
being uninfluenced by the Song of Songs tradition, Margery, in her over-
whelming appropriation of the Magdalene’s identity as sponsa Christi and the
deeply erotic imagery she uses to document her physical encounters with
Christ, illustrates her appreciation of a tradition to which Rolle also belonged
and which, in turn, allegorised and then reliteralised the Song of Songs in its
exegetic emphasis. Astell has also asserted that this reliteralisation of the text
of the Song of Songs reached a climax in the works of Richard Rolle,131 par-
ticularly in his repeated use of imagery and metaphors connected with fire,
representing the ardour of mystical love. Likewise she comments on Rolle’s
fusion of the carnal and the spiritual in his search to discover meaning which
resulted in a wealth of allusions to sensory stimuli – sounds, tastes, smells –
all of which also characterise the sensual imagery of the Song of Songs.
Similarly, Nicholas Watson has categorised Rolle’s ardour for Christ as a ‘bold
fearlessness’ and an ‘aggression’ which enables him to single-mindedly
embrace Christ and ignore the criticism of the world.132 Such an analysis of
Rolle, of course, is highly pertinent to Margery Kempe’s own relationships
with Christ and her contemporaries, and the link between them is readily
apparent in areas of Rolle’s commentary on the psalms in his English Psalter.
For example Psalm 56 reads: ‘exurge gloria mea, exurge psalterium et cythara.
Exurgam diluculo.’ Rolle first translates this extract as ‘Rise my ioy, rise
psauteri and harp. I sal rise in þe dawynge’, following which he proceeds to
explain, ‘Þat es, Jhesu, þa is my ioy, make me to rise in ioy of þe sange of þi
lovynge, in mirthe of þi lufynge’, followed by, ‘Jhesu be þou my ioy, al melody
and swetnes, and lere me for to synge þe sange of þi lovynge’.133 Given
Margery’s professed interest in Rolle’s writing, it is hardly surprising that
such imagery finds its way into her own writing to help her verbalise her own
similarly transcendent passion for Christ. Whereas we can readily recog-
nise in Margery’s writing what appear to be direct appropriations from Rolle,
such as the ‘melodye so swet & delectable’ (11) which she hears as a young
woman before her lasting conversion, or her experiences of ‘þe fyer of lofe
(which) qwenchith alle synnes’ (89), there is nothing to suggest that Margery’s
understanding of these concepts is merely literalistic, naïve or corporeal. What
129
Hope Emily Allen (ed.), English Writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Oxford, 1931;
repr. 1988).
130
Allen, English Writings, p. 3. For a discussion of the influence of Rolle upon Margery see
Lochrie, Translations, pp. 114–21. For a detailed analysis of Rolle’s commentary on the
Song of Songs, see Watson, Invention of Authority, especially pp. 222–56.
131
Astell, The Song of Songs, p. 107.
132
Watson, Invention of Authority, pp. 154 and 159.
133
Allen, English Writings, p. 15.
127
we find is that these experiences are channelled through her body and its
very human responses and transformed, as in the case of her motherhood,
into a much more complex and spiritual hermeneutic. No sooner has she
insistently defined this example of a Rolle-esque calor in terms of how it feels
within her own body, then she moves on to document Christ’s explanation of
its mystical import, how it evidences the presence of the Holy Spirit within
her and, therefore, her union with God. This intellectual processing of her ini-
tially corporeal and affective material is entirely typical of the way in which
Margery operates, just as we witnessed in her ability to transform and intel-
lectualise her own motherhood and in her appropriation of the label of har-
lot for her own spiritual and textual purposes.
This is nowhere more evident than in the overtly erotic passages for which
Margery has often been ridiculed and denigrated. Critics have often scorned
Margery’s apparently literal appropriation of Christ as a sexual partner to
supplant her earthly one and, in consequence, she has often been denied any
valid mystical insight at all.134 Yet, on re-examination of these passages in their
context it is possible to interpret them in a very different light. The first, appear-
ing in Chapter 36 soon after Margery’s mystical marriage to the Godhead in
Rome, documents the first encounter with Christ following that union, as
well as functioning as a textual consummation and affirmation of her new
status as sponsa Christi. Now it is Christ who is articulating physical desire for
his spouse, Margery, telling her to ‘take me in þe armys of þi sowle & kyssen
my mowth, myn hed, & my fete as swetly as thow wylt’ (90). Earlier he has
told her, ‘most I nedys be homly wyth þe & lyn in þi bed wyth þe’ (90), and
in both these extracts we hear articulated clearly echoes of the opening verses
of the Song of Songs which depict the Bride awaiting the Bridegroom who has
been away too long: ‘Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy
breasts are better than wine’.135 Skilfully, though, Margery attributes to Christ
the words which inscribe upon her the sexual longing of the bride, thus free-
ing her from any taint of the former lechery which has haunted her own sex-
ual responses. Christ tells her, ‘Dowtyr, thow desyrest gretly to se me and þu
mayst boldly, whan þu art in þi bed, take me to þe as for þi weddyd husbond,
as thy derworthy derlyng . . .’ (90). In another passage towards the end of
Book 1 (213), he again inscribes upon Margery not only the identity of his
physically desired spouse, but also overtly that of the Shulamite who is
134
See Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 396, n. 21, where she erroneously interprets
Margery’s rejection of her husband’s sexual advances as being because she found him
‘unsatisfactory’. However, Margery makes it quite clear in her narrative that John
Kempe is a considerate man who is loyal and supportive of her, in spite of her abjuring
of sexual contact with him. See p. 32, ‘for he was euer a good man & an esy man to hir’.
On occasions Christ, too, reminds Margery how lucky she is to have a husband who was
willing to release her from the marriage debt; see for example p. 212, ‘ “þu art meche
beholdyn to me þat I haue houyn þe swech a man þat wolde suffryn þe leuyn chast” ’.
135
Song of Songs 1: 1.
128
‘as any lady in þis werld [who] is besy to receyue hir husbonde whan he comyth
hom & hath be long fro hir’ (213). Not only does Margery demonstrate an
acute awareness of the language of the Song of Songs, but also its legitimising
effect upon human desire and eroticism through its allegorical potential.
Thus, her own encompassing arms are those of a sexually aroused and specif-
ically human woman but at the same time are ‘þe armys of [her] sowle’ (90).
Moreover, the permission that Christ has granted her in response to her
desire to kiss his feet as well as his head and mouth is inescapable in its evo-
cation of Margery as the new Mary Magdalene who, because of her washing
of Christ’s feet with her tears of contrition her anointing of them with oil, has
always been associated with that part of his suffering body.136 In the extended
Passion narrative towards the end of Book 1 (187–97), the Virgin gives leave
to Mary Magdalene to kiss the feet of the dead Christ after the Deposition
(193). Margery also makes much out of the fact that the risen Christ refuses to
let Mary Magdalene kiss his feet when she meets him in the garden, announ-
cing that ‘hyf owr Lord had seyd to hir as he dede to Mary, hir thowt sche
cowde neuyr a ben mery’ (197). We note here that Margery, pulling rank
again, has earlier been given permission to monopolise the feet of the risen
Christ with the kisses of her own mouth (90). Thus, again, she succeeds in val-
idating this highly erotic response to Christ’s body through associating it
with – indeed, surpassing – the legitimised post-conversion desire of Mary
Magdalene, and in so doing reinscribes herself as both physical lover of
Christ and allegorically significant bride of the Song of Songs.
This particular aspect of Margery’s identification with the Magdalene can
therefore be recognised as being of crucial importance to her validation
process and her attempt to come to terms with the sexual impulses and
responses which have tormented her periodically. She displays a growing
awareness in her book of the liberating potential within an achieved balance
between the corporeal/literal and the spiritual/allegorical and it is the com-
posite and complexly alluring figure of Mary Magdalene who constitutes the
figurehead of these possibilities. In a final confirmation by Christ of Margery
as sponsa Christi in which the carnal and the spiritual, the literal and the
metaphorical rest in perfect balance, he reassures her:
‘I knowe þe holy thowtys & þe good desyrys þat þu hast whan þu receyuyst
me & þe good charite þat þu hast to me in þe tyme þat þu receyuyst my pre-
cyows body into þi sowle, and also how þu clepist Mary Mawdelyn into þi
sowle to wolcomyn me’. (210)
The multivalence of the language here, imbued as it is with ambiguity and

doubles entendres, testifies to a far more sophisticated and controlled mysticism
136
For an overview of this type of iconographic representation of Mary Magdalene, see
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, particularly pp. 189–205.
129
than has been attributed to Margery, lying at the heart of which is a redirected
and alternative performance of the socially prescribed identity of common
woman and daughter-of-Eve harlot who, through the example of Mary
Magdalene and the grace of Christ, has been able to transform her own sexu-
ality into an expression of mystical love. Thus we see how Margery has
finally effected her escape from her alliance with Eve as taught her by
medieval socio-religious ideology. In one late medieval Magdalene hymn,
Eve and Mary Magdalene are balanced against one another in juxtaposition,
asserting the inherent link between them as messengers and sexual exploiters
of men:
Prior Eva
fuit olim
mortis nuntia.
Et tu prima
nuntiasti
vitae gaudia.137
The former Eve was once a messenger of death. And you first announced
the joys of life.
These simple lyrics reveal how the Magdalene, rather than being the messen-
ger of suffering and death as she was in her former role as harlot, has escaped
the bonds of Eve to re-establish herself as the messenger of hope and ever-
lasting joy. So too Margery, through the interplay and performance of the literal
and the allegorical within her textual representation of her own life is able to
establish both a link and a contrast with her fallen foremother. Ultimately,
then, she is able to transcend the implications of her own sexuality through
her gendered re-enactment and recontextualised performance of its connota-
tions. This, in turn, will lead to and inform her final and lasting role as wise
woman and seer who, like Mary Magdalene, will become the apostless who
will fulfil Christ’s prophecy that ‘be þis boke many a man xal be turnyd to me
& beleuen þerin’ (216).
137
2: 9a-9b as cited by Szövérffy, ‘ “Peccatrix” ’, p. 126.
130
‘Hyf thowe be payede,’ quod oure lorde,

‘I am payede’: Hermeneutics of the Holy
Whore in Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich’s negotiation of contemporary sexual attitudes towards

women is an aspect of her writing which has been largely overlooked, in spite
of the fact that so much has been written about her perception of God as
specifically maternal. One possible reason for this oversight is that her status
as an anchoress (and, by implication an a-sexual or desexualised religious)
has acted as a modern-day screen to such investigations. Or, perhaps, the now
largely rejected theory that she was a nun at Carrow prior to enclosure has
also been thoroughly internalised by modern commentators, leading them to
treat her writing as a wholly disembodied corpus. Indeed, a consistent focus
upon Julian’s re-envisioning of God as mother has had the effect of dominat-
ing or even obscuring alternative discourses and hermeneutics of the female
body in her writing. This chapter, therefore, will attempt to address this
absence by investigating the extent to which the concept of a sexualised
female body, in its capacity as commodity to be used, bestowed and/or traded
with, is utilised by Julian as a means of explicating her vision of God’s divine
covenant with humankind. In so doing, it will also attempt to address the
question of whether Julian’s writing demonstrates an internalisation of contem-
porary attitudes towards the female body, or if her ubiquitous use of it as a
referent reveals a subtle rechannelling of such attitudes into a means of con-
temporising and expressing her perception of God’s love for humanity.
Julian and the Body: A Critical Overview
There is much in Julian’s writing to suggest that she was just as aware as
Margery Kempe of the potential of the female body and contemporary atti-
tudes towards it as commodified entity to yield up discourses with which to
construct a further hermeneutic of the feminine, both as exegetical tool and as
a means towards authority. Indeed, this is something which has been recog-
nised in part by Nicholas Watson who argues for Julian’s deployment of
social models of female activity in order to facilitate for her readers a deeper
131
understanding of her mystical insight and theology.1 In his essay Watson

addresses Julian’s use of commonly held beliefs about women as they emerge
in her Passion narrative, particularly the notion of woman’s inconstancy and
inconsistency. Examining Julian’s refusal to relinquish her visionary
encounter with the crucified Christ in order to contemplate God in his heaven
(ST, 55; LT, 28), Watson demonstrates how Julian refutes a commonly held
belief in the ‘doubleness’ and untrustworthiness of women. The passage in
question reads as follows in the Long Text, and is worth quoting in full:
Than had I a profir in my reason as it had be frendly seyd to me: ‘Loke up

to hevyn to his Fader.’ And than saw I wele with the feyth that I felte that
ther was nothyn betwix the crosse and hevyn that myght have desesyd me.
Either me behovyd to loke up, or else to answeren. I answered inwardly
with al the myghts of my soule and said: ‘Nay, I may not, for thou art my
hevyn.’ This I seyd for I wold not; for I had lever a ben in that peyne til
domysday than to come to hevyn otherwyse than by hym; for I wiste wele
that he that bonde me so sore, he sholde onbynde me whan that he wolde.
Thus was I lerid to chose Iesus to my hevyn, whome I saw only in payne at
that tyme. Me lekyd no other hevyn than Iesus, which shal be my blisse
whan I come there. (LT, 28)
In keeping with the increased identification of religious women with the

humanity of Christ during this period, a form of devotion considered less
prestigious and therefore more appropriate for the female,2 Watson recognises
Julian’s choice to remain with Christ as being a gendered one, prioritising as
she does the humanised Son above his deified Father (‘Me lekyd no other
hevyn than Iesus’; LT, 28).3 In so doing, Watson argues, Julian both conforms
to cultural assumptions about women as more suited to the inferior type
of devotion and yet, through her act of choosing and constancy, refutes the
less complimentary assumptions at the same time. Again, according to
Watson:
Julian . . . accepts the social models which define proper female activity, but
does so in a way which fundamentally shifts (in some respects even inverts)
those models by resisting both the passivity and the low prestige tradition-
ally associated with them.4
In spite of this assertion, Watson still remains somewhat tentative in his exam-
ination, falling short of suggesting that women such as Julian may have been
1
Watson, ‘Remaking “Woman” ’.
2
Watson, ‘Remaking “Woman” ’, p. 7. For a definitive examination of this form of devo-
tion in the lives of medieval religious women see Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption,
especially pp. 151–79.
3
In similar vein, Margery Kempe attempts to resist allegiance to the Father, preferring to
remain in relationship with Christ. See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 86–7.
4
Watson, ‘Remaking “Woman” ’, p. 7.
132
HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLY WHORE IN JULIAN
conscious of the literary possibilities contained within cultural attitudes

towards them in order to delineate a space for personal expression and the
achievement of authority. Resting his case with an analysis of Julian’s refuta-
tion of a single aspect of medieval anti-feminist discourse, Watson fails to
acknowledge the issues of female sexuality and fleshliness which this dis-
course necessarily incorporates. In spite of this shortfall, Watson’s analysis
provides a highly useful springboard for a more detailed examination of
Julian’s use of attitudes towards a sexualised female body in her writing, how
she adapts and exploits these attitudes and to what ends.
Insight into this aspect of Julian’s writing has also been provided by
Elizabeth Robertson who has identified the importance of the female body in
a general sense within Julian’s texts.5 Focusing on contemporary medical trea-
tises which tended to reduce woman to the realm of disparaged body,
Robertson argues that popular notions of female ontology resulted in issues
of female sexuality and the body becoming central problematics for women
contemplatives and mystics.6 Like Watson, however, Robertson’s conclusions
are rather more tentative than the early line of argument in her essay would
suggest, leading her to sum up somewhat inconclusively: ‘it is important to
recognise that Julian’s approach carries with it at least her initial acceptance
of the age’s misogynistic views of the nature of her body’.7 In similar vein,
Robertson later hazards that those hyperbolised ‘feminine’ traits evidenced
within other female-authored texts (some of which I have already examined
in the context of Margery Kempe) ‘makes them gendered and . . . at least
destabilises those categories’.8 Although both Robertson’s and Watson’s find-
ings remain inconclusive, they do succeed in identifying a crucial area of
instability or slippage in such texts – something which this present chapter
will concern itself. Such slippage, I will argue, is not only brought about by
tensions between medieval ideologies and belief systems, but also by the dis-
crepancy between ideological stances and personal experience and thus pro-
vides an ideal site for a redefinition of both a sexualised and commodified
female body to emerge in Julian’s writing as another primary hermeneutic.9
Perhaps the only commentator to date who has focused directly on Julian’s
use of the experiences of her own female body in her writing is Maria R.
Lichtman who, in a short study, suggests that Julian’s bodily experiences can
be recognised as constituting an ‘epistemology of the Divine’.10 For Lichtman,
5
Robertson, ‘Medieval Medical Views of Women’.
6
Robertson, ‘Medieval Medical Views of Women’, p. 149.
7
8
9
For an assessment of Julian’s possible acquaintance with medical writings see Alexandra
Barratt, ‘ “In the Lowest Part of Our Need”: Julian and Medieval Gynecological Writing’,
in McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 239–56.
10
Maria R. Lichtman, ‘ “I desyrede a bodylye syght”: Julian of Norwich and the Body’,
Mystics Quarterly 17, 1 (1991), p. 12.
133
Julian’s response to her own body provides the means through which she
reaches a thoroughly grounded experience of God who is embodied within it,
and ultimately it is through the medium of this female body – a body which
Julian sees as being as paradigmatically human as that of the male or that of
a male-female Christ – that she is allowed the perception of ‘God in and as
body’.11 Similarly, Lichtman recognises that this holistic approach to the
embodiment of theological insight is predicated on bodily suffering, which in
turn gives rise to a ‘feeling-minded-body’.12 However, in spite of a ready
acknowledgement that ‘Julian’s experience of the body . . . informs nearly
every dimension of her book’,13 Lichtman similarly overlooks the extent to
which that body is also a sexualised body, in spite of her conclusion that
‘Julian’s is clearly a feminine spirituality’, born out her own bodily experi-
ence.14 The remainder of this chapter, therefore, will argue for Julian’s grow-
ing and eventually firm acceptance of her own sexual – and fleshly – body, an
acceptance which will become central to her exegetical process.
The Flesh, the Body and the Abject
The previous chapter served to determine the extent to which Margery

Kempe was able to reappropriate her own female sexuality in order to trans-
form a culturally negative and proscriptive view of women into an expression
of authority, autonomy and, eventually, the production of a voice. So too in
Julian’s texts, the author’s gradual reappraisal and acceptance of the fleshly
and sexualised female body which, when allied to the maternal, eventually
provides her with a more encompassing hermeneutic for the interpretation
and expression of the complexities of divine love. Moreover, as I have sug-
gested, the efficacy of such a hermeneutic is dependent ultimately on an
exploitation of the fissure between how women such as Margery Kempe and
Julian of Norwich may actually have experienced their bodies and what they
were told about those bodies by contemporary ideologies.15
From the medical and anatomical perspective, the highly popular
Aristotelian and Galenic beliefs about woman, of course, focused on her ‘inher-
ent’ promiscuity (sexual or otherwise) which was formulated by a belief in
her physical incompleteness as ‘deformed’ male, and her naturally cold and
11
Lichtman, ‘ “I desyrede a bodylye syght” ’, p. 17.
12
13
14
15
Again, Lichtman identifies the link Julian draws between the female and a God-informed
sensuality lying at the heart of humanity and her unusual treatment of it: ‘in her incar-
national affirmation of the self as God-informed sensuality, Julian brings to the fore-
ground a principle of the body much neglected in the patriarchal tradition’
(‘ “I desyreded a bodylye syght” ’, p. 17).
134
wet constitution.16 It followed that she experienced an enhanced and ultim-

ately insatiable sexual appetite as a result of the desire for continual union
with the heat of the inherently hot and dry male. Such medical theories,
of course, fed seamlessly into the biblical myth of Eve’s corrupt sexuality,
producing a legacy of assumptions regarding women and their untrustwor-
thy bodies – assumptions which were everywhere both explicitly and impli-
citly incorporated into contemporary literature. Ancrene Wisse, for example,
makes explicit how sin can enter the heart of a woman through the senses,
asserting that even her uncontrolled gaze can promote sinful activity – as it
did, indeed, in the case of ‘cakele’ (cackling) Eve (‘Eve þi moder leop efter hire
ehnen. from þe ehe to þe eappel’ (Eve your mother leapt after her eyes; from
the eye to the apple)).17 Elsewhere, the author draws on the assumption that,
like the biblical Dinah, who went out to ‘bihalden uncuðe wummen’ (look at
foreign women)’, and as a result ‘was imaket hore’ (was made a whore),18 a
woman who cannot control her gaze and who becomes too sociable is just as
likely to be rendered a whore.19 In fact, even the compassionate anchoress is
in danger of being transformed into a type of whore if she concerns herself too
much with altruistic pursuits (‘Forschuppet of ancre to husewif of halle. Godd
wat swuch feaste maked sum hore’ (God knows, this sort of feast makes
whores of some)).20 For this author at least, the sensuality of the imperfect
female body is a dangerous site of corruption and provides a highly perme-
able residence housing the potential whore within.
Such attitudes were fed by what Karma Lochrie has identified as the
Augustinian notion of the ‘fissured flesh’.21 According to Augustine who, in
turn, was deeply influenced by the Pauline concept of ‘flesh’ as synecdoche
for general flawed humanity,22 the flesh was all that caused human will to
rebel against God and formed the basis of human concupiscence. The body’s
role in this severance between humankind and God was merely that of facili-
tator for fleshly rebellion – something brought about by the Fall when the
first humans, Adam and Eve, learnt to indulge their own desires rather than
those of God.23 The result of this rebelliousness was a continual struggle
16
See Introduction, p. 9. A useful overview of such attitudes is to be found in Ian Maclean,
The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical
Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 8–9.
17
18
19
Ancrene Wisse, p. 32. For the biblical account of Dinah’s rape and subsequent vilification
see Genesis 34: 1–31.
20
21
Lochrie, Translations, especially pp. 19–23. For a useful biographic and thematic overview
of Augustine see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation
in Early Christianity (New York, 1998, repr. London, 1990), pp. 387–427.
22
Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, 7 vols, vol. 4, trans. Philip
Levine (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1966), XIV: ii, p. 263, discussed by Lochrie,
Translations, p. 19.
23
Brown, Body and Society, p. 418.
135
against the impulses of the ‘flesh’ and the human concupiscence which had
led to this irrevocable fissuring of soul and flesh. Thus, for Augustine, the
‘flesh’ was not ultimately synonymous with the body; indeed, he regarded
the relationship between body and soul as essentially a harmonious one,
albeit constantly jeopardised by the impulses of the unruly flesh which were
aided by the body’s sensual nature. As Lochrie points out, however, Augustine’s
notion of ‘fissured flesh’ is often explicated and interpreted in highly gen-
dered terms. For example, elsewhere Augustine likens the unruly flesh to the
disobedient wife who must be both loved and chastised by the husband (who,
as a man, remains allied to the ‘spirit’): ‘caro tamquam coniunx est . . . ama et
castiga’ (your flesh is like your wife . . . love it and rebuke it).24
It was this type of feminisation of the flesh, taken up enthusiastically by
later medieval theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, for example,25 which
helped to identify women further with the ontological fissuring of body and
soul, offering a further corroboration for what was regarded as her own inher-
ently natural ‘doubleness’. However, as Lochrie’s study clearly demonstrates,
this set of beliefs also provided a site of ideological instability which was ripe
for exploitation by the female mystic, not only as fleshly embodiment of the
fissure between body and soul but also as someone who experiences God and
his fleshly embodiment, Christ, directly through her own female body, appar-
ently reconciling the ‘fissure’ as she does so. And here, perhaps, we can see in
play the potential slippage between the fundamentally different ways in which
women may have experienced their own bodies from those ‘experiences’
which were imposed ideologically upon them from without. In this capacity,
Lochrie asserts:
The association of woman with flesh also puts their desire to imitate Christ
in a different position from the equivalent male desire. In other words . . .
the gendered ideology . . . rendered those equivalent actions fundamentally
different . . . Men begin from a position of the spirit, and this makes all the
difference.26
Moreover, that ‘difference’ which Lochrie is identifying is evidenced in the texts

under scrutiny here by their female authors’ tendency to overwrite the ortho-
dox line on the interrelationship between spirit, flesh and body using a series of
hermeneutics pertaining to a redeemed female body for authority.
If we recall the examples just cited from Ancrene Wisse, for example, it is
evident that its male author is dealing with the discourse of contemptus mundi
(in which the flesh is seen as the seat of corruption and has to be kept firmly
24
Augustine, Enarationes in Psalmos, ed. D. Eligius Dekkers and Iohannes Fraipoint, CCSL
40 (Turnhout, 1956) 16, p. 2037, as cited in Lochrie, Translations, p. 19.
25
For a brief overview of Bernard’s contribution to the debate see Lochrie, Translations,
pp. 20–3.
26
136
under control by means of a bodily asceticism and the redirecting of the will
towards God) in a radically different way from Julian, as will be demon-
strated further. This more traditional expression is also to be found in the
anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, written in about 1370, which identifies the
human body explicitly as the location of worldly degradation and corruption
which feeds the corruptness of the flesh: ‘For alle bodely þing is sogette vnto
goostly þing & is reulid þerafter & not ahensward’.27 For this author too, the
human body is the site of sin which has caused its unruly flesh to solidify into
a festering lump; moreover, as he tells his readers in no uncertain terms, it is
‘none oþer þing bot þi-self’.28 Other writers are even more emphatic in their
depiction of the female body as especially paradigmatic of the corrupt flesh of
humanity, or else, as we saw in the case of Augustine, they make use of specif-
ically female-associated terminology to construct their discourse. One of the
most scathing of meditations of this type – and one which continued to
inform religious attitudes towards women well into the late Middle Ages –
was that manifested in the writing of Odo of Cluny in the tenth century who
famously envisions woman as ‘saccus stercoris’ – a sack of filth or excrement –
which then becomes synecdochal for the corrupt flesh itself:
All beauty consisteth but in phlegm and blood and humours and gall. If a
man consider that which is hidden within the nose, the throat, and the belly,
he will find filth everywhere; and, if we cannot bring ourselves, even with
the tips of our fingers, to touch such phlegm or dung, wherefore do we
desire to embrace this bag of filth itself.29
The image of the body as a sack of excrement can be traced back as far as John
Chrysostom in the fourth century who, writing in the context of sex and mar-
riage, identified the licentious populace of the city of Antioch as being the
‘devil’s garbage tip’, and the ‘devil’s manure’.30 By the later Middle Ages, how-
ever, this type of analogy tended to be a feminised one and it is a similarly
gendered discourse of the corrupt female body as synecdoche for the corrupt
flesh which also leaves its traces in the writing of Richard Rolle towards the
middle of the fourteenth century – and in a text, incidentally, which we know
had a marked influence upon Margery Kempe, as we have seen:
Species uero mulierum multos decipit, cuius concupiscencia, corda

eciam iustorum quandoque subuertit, utque spiritu inceperant, in carnem
27
The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, EETS o.s. 218 (London, 1944), p. 113.
28
The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 73.
29
J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patriologia Latina, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–6), vol. 133, col. 556. This is a pas-
sage cited and discussed by G. G. Coulton in Five Centuries of Religion, 3 vols (Cambridge,
1923), vol. 1, p. 528.
30
John Chrysostom, Homiliae Duodecim in Corinthios and Homiliae in Epist. I ad Corinthios as
cited in Brown, Body and Society, pp. 313 and 314. For an overview of John Chrysostom’s
attitude towards the body see pp. 305–22.
137
terminentur. Caue ergo ne ita in principio bone conuersacionis cum mulieris

pulchritudine colloquium habeas, quod inde sumpto uenenose delectacionis
morbo, ad perferendam et implendam mentis immundiciam scienter
deceptus et uecorditer ab inimicis deuictus traheris . . . specie quoque
alliciente propter carnis infirmitatem, uoluntas tua in eis ultra modum poteris
delictari.
Womanly beauty leads many astray. Desire for it can sometimes subvert even
righteous hearts, so that what began in spirit ends up in flesh. So beware of
entering into conversation with a woman just because she is lively. You will
be caught by the poisonous disease of pleasure, and dirty thoughts . . . and
the weakness of your flesh can beguile your will beyond measure.31
Again we find an identical discourse being utilised by the Ancrene Wisse

author who intensifies its gendered connotations in his own dualistic explica-
tion of the female body for his initial audience of female recluses:
Amid te menske of þi neb. þat is þe fehereste deal. bitweonen muðes

smech. & neases smeal. ne berest tu as twa priue þurles? Nart tu icumen of
ful slim? nart tu fulðe fette. ne bist tu wurme fode?32
In the middle of the glory of your face, which is your most beautiful part,
between the mouth’s taste and the nose’s smell, do you not bear two toilet
holes, as it were? Are you not come of foul slime, are you not a vat of filth,
will you not be worm’s food?
In the minds of such writers, salvation was always jeopardised by the unruly
flesh, and in medieval discourse, as these extracts clearly demonstrate, the
flesh eventually took on a synonymy with the female and her dangerously
seductive body. Moreover, it was a body which could not only corrupt men
from without but also the woman herself from within.
If we now return to Julian, we find, in contrast, that her attitude towards
the human body is far more relaxed, compassionate and almost wholly
devoid of this traditional treatment of the contemptus mundi trope. In fact, for
Julian, the body – and the feminised body in particular – along with its vul-
nerable flesh is a reflection of nothing less than the beauty of creation and pro-
vides an apt symbol of God’s love for humankind. This attitude, as we have
seen, is nowhere more evident than in Julian’s empathetic and compassionate
treatment of the suffering body of Christ and its maternal propensities.
Moreover, by means of its association with the female body, its procreative
potential and its blood-losses, this depiction serves to exploit the fissure
between flesh and spirit and allow the female who traditionally occupies that
space and whose flesh Christ has taken on himself via the Virgin (‘blissid
kinde that he toke of the mayd’; LT, 9), to emerge as the equally ‘fleshly’ agent
31
Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, ed. and trans. Clifton Walters (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 136.
32
Ancrene Wisse, pp. 142–3.
138
of redemption. In so doing, Julian demonstrates that the female body, far from
being emblematic of permanent severance from God, can, in truth, be read in
a different way by those who possess it as productive of salvation and as
ultimately unificatory (‘And I saw no difference atwix God and our sub-
stance, but as it were al God’; LT, 87).
This is further attested to in one extraordinary passage which appears in
only two of the extant manuscripts containing witnesses to Julian’s revela-
tions: the so-called Paris manuscript which contains a version of the Long
Text, and the Westminster manuscript containing a redacted version of the
Long Text (and probably based on the Paris version).33 This passage, which
has evidently been excised from both the Sloane manuscript versions of
the Long Text34 and is absent from the only extant Short Text witness,35
serves to illustrate most lucidly how far Julian deviates from the type of vili-
fication of the human body as adjunct to the corrupt flesh so common in
the writing of her contemporaries; furthermore it demonstrates how
her mystical insight into a loving God’s immanence in all things is to be
understood:
A man goyth vppe ryght, and the soule of his body is sparyde as a purse
fulle feyer. And whan it is tyme of his nescessery, it is openyde and
sparyde ayen fulle honestly. And that it is he that doyth this, it is schewed
ther wher he seyth he comyth downe to vs to the lowest parte of oure
nede.36
Julian’s depiction here of the act of human defecation in such delicate terms
is unprecedented in medieval literature which tends to depict it in terms of
the abject.37 Similarly, most contemporary figurative and colloquial usage of
the word ‘purse’ is in the context of male genitalia.38 Indeed, as we might
33
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Anglais no. 40. This is the manuscript used for the
edition by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, this choice being a source of contention
amongst other scholars who have commented on its apparently amateurish construction.
For a brief overview of this debate see Ritamary Bradley, ‘Julian of Norwich: Everyone’s
Mystic’, in William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval
England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 139–40. The so-called ‘Westminster redaction’ can be
found in London, Westminster Archdiocesan Archives MS. I will embark upon a discus-
sion of this version in Chapter 6.
34
London, MS British Museum Sloane 2499; London, MS British Museum Sloane 3705.
35
London, MS British Museum Add. 37790.
36
Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings, pp. 306–7.
37
Compare, for example, Margery’s treatment of a defecating bear in a story which she
delivers to the ecclesiastical court at York during a trial for heresy. Here the bear becomes
a symbol for priestly hypocrisy and corruption which transforms the ‘blooms’ of virtu-
ous living into wordly sin and corruption (The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 126–7). See also
her description of her doubly incontinent and senile husband for another use of defeca-
tion as abjection (p. 181).
38
Michael Camille examines the use of the purse as a sexual pun in The Medieval Art of Love:
Objects and Subjects of Desire (London, 1998), pp. 64–5. Here Camille claims ‘the purse is
one of the most charged signs in medieval art’ (p. 64).
139
expect, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath uses the word as a catch-all term with which
to allude to the physical (and pecuniary) prowess of her various husbands:
I have wedded fyve, of which I have pyked out the beste,
Bothe of here nether purs and of here cheste.39
Similarly, an earlier usage in Jean de Meun’s Le Roman de la Rose explicitly
associates the ‘purs’ with the penis and testicles:
Ainz qu’il muirent puissent il perdre
E l’aumosniere e les estalles
Don il ont signe d’estre malles!
Perte leur viegne des pendanz
A quei l’aumosniere est pendanz!40
May they (those men who deliberately misconstrue Nature) suffer before
their death the loss of their purse and testicles, the signs that they are male!
May they lose the pendants on which the purse hangs.
Use of the word ‘purs’ in connection with the anus, however, is rare. In fact, one
of the only other instances in which the word is used in this context41 is to be
found in a relatively obscure manuscript which contains a late fourteenth-
century English translation of an anatomical treatise written by Henri de
Mondeville who, the manuscript tells us, was ‘þe kyngis chef maister surgian
of ffraunce’.42 In this treatise, which tends to consider the human body as para-
digmatically male, the allusion appears in the context of an anatomical descrip-
tion of the anal muscles: ‘He haþ twoward his neþer ende foure lacertis þe
whiche openeþ þe Ers and closiþ as a purs is opened & schittiþ wiþ his
þwongis’. Although patently referring to the bodily act which facilitates defe-
cation, this anatomical account does not display the delicacy and aesthetics
which we have seen in Julian’s own treatment of the same subject, but the
author’s use of the purse image does succeed in imposing upon the description
a type of necessary functionality which rescues it from the realm of the abject.
In Julian’s text too, any sense of abjection is countered further by the
author’s depiction of the body as being specifically ‘vppe rygth’ (upright),
something which invokes resonances of the Cloud author’s assertion that ‘it
schulde figure in licnes bodily þe werke of þe soule goostly’,43 and that walking
39
40
Ernest Langlois (ed), Le Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris at Jean de Meun, Société
des Anciens Textes Français, vol. 5 (Paris, 1927). The English translation is taken from
Charles Dahlberg (trans.), Romance of the Rose (Princeton, 1971), p. 324, lines 19,666–70.
41
MED does not record the word being used in this context at all. It does, however, indi-
cate use of the term to denote haemorrhoids in some instances. See definition 4b.
42
MS Wel. 564, 46r, col. 1. This manuscript, dating from the early 1390s, was the subject of
an article written in 1896 by a previous owner, Joseph Frank Payne (1840–1910), phys-
ician to St Thomas’s Hospital, ‘On an Unpublished English Anatomical Treatise of the
Fourteenth Century and Its Relation to the “Anatomy” of Thomas Vicary’, British Medical
Journal (1896) 1, pp. 200–3.
43
The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 113.
140
upright is wholly appropriate so that the gaze can be directed towards heaven
without impediment. More pertinently, however, at this point Julian would
seem to be engaging with some of the rhetoric often found in those texts ini-
tially directed specifically at women. For example, in Hali Meiðhad, written by
a male author in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century to persuade
women against sexual activity and marriage in favour of a life of holy virgin-
ity, the audience is told: ‘þu . . . art i wit iwraht to Godes ilicnesse, ant iriht ba
bodi up ant heaued toward heouene, forþi þet tu schuldest þin heorte heouen
þiderwart as þin ertage is, ant eorðe forhohien’44 (you . . . are created as a
rational being in God’s image, and made erect, both body and head raised
towards heaven, so you should lift your heart to where your heritage is, and
despise the earth). Here the term ‘eorðe’ is used specifically to refer not only to
the earth beneath the woman’s feet but also figuratively to the ‘fulðe’ (filthi-
ness) to which he has formerly been alluding (‘Al þet fule delit is wið fulðe
aleid’).45 This filthiness, of course, is the corruption of the flesh incited by the
sexual act which, in this author’s estimation at least, reduces the woman to the
level of ‘witlese beastes, dumbe ant broke-rugget, ibuhe toward eorðe’ (witless
beasts, dumb and hunchbacked, bending towards the earth) who know no bet-
ter.46 The echoes between this treatment of the abject and Julian’s own are res-
onant here (although it is unlikely that she would have been familiar with this
particular text whose inaccessible language seems to have made it obsolete by
this stage).47 However, instead of forming part of a misogynistic diatribe or one
of self-loathing, what we find is Julian transforming the potentially abject body
into an expression of God’s love for a genderless (or even multigendered)
humankind, even at the moments of its most pressing necessities. Again she
seems to be exploiting the point of weakness, the inconsistency or the fissure
within traditional treatments of the abject (female) flesh and its body and ally-
ing it to a further lacuna which now emerges between its rhetorical represen-
tation in male-authored texts and Julian’s own experience of it. For Julian, the
physical body and the abject – specifically here its waste matter (what she
refers to as its ‘soule’)48 – rather than being representative of the excesses of the
44
Hali Meiðhad, ed. and trans. Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, in Medieval Prose for
Women (Oxford, 1990), p. 22.
45
Hali Meiðhad, p. 22.
46
Hali Meiðhad, p. 22.
47
Although diachronic linguistic shifts would probably have made the early Middle
English inaccessible to a fifteenth-century audience, we do find similar sentiments in
Ancrene Wisse, a text which continued to be revised and adapted for contemporary audi-
ences well into the sixteenth century. For a discussion of anchoritic culture in the context
of a wider cultural milieu, see Bella Millett, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in
Renevey and Whitehead, Writing Religious Women, pp. 21–40.
48
This word is glossed by Colledge and Walsh as ‘undigested food’, A Book of Showings,
p. 306, n. 35. Nicholas Watson, however, contends that the word refers to ‘the body’s
nourishment’ and derives from the Old French ‘saoulee’ meaning ‘satiated with food and
drink’ (‘Conceptions of the Word’, p. 86, n. 2). Whichever definition we prefer to accept,
however, a similar concept of waste is incorporated within it.
141
foul flesh, are more a reflection of the beauty of creation and, in particular, the
human soul (significantly also denoted as ‘soule’ in Julian’s text), rather than
something to be disparaged, denigrated and transcended. The body, in effect,
is something to be glorified in since it demonstrates the workings of God’s infin-
ite love for humankind, whether in the system of bodily digestion and waste
elimination, the physically demanding work of the servant, the life-long min-
istrations of the mother or the salvific sacrifice of a maternal God. In her treat-
ment of it here, therefore, an ultimately non-dualistic and defecating body
becomes a unified and fine, delicate material – celestial even – as, indeed, is the
decaying matter held within it, along with its now synonymous and homo-
phonic counterpart – the human soul. Thus, a traditionally abject body is ren-
dered one with the human soul as a reflection of God’s glory, his compassion
and love for a humankind which incorporates the flesh of both the fallen male
and the female, both Adam and Eve. Moreover, in the same way as the soul
will eventually return to its maker by divine decree, so too the ‘soule of the
body’ is returned to the earth whence it came by means of a similar divine
decree. In this way, Julian’s insight rejects the possibility that God could
despise any part of humanity, even those abject parts which humanity despises
about itself – which, of course, rhetorically, at least, included the female as para-
digmatic of the dangerous flesh which was often accorded synonymy with
human excrement because of the perceived incontinence of its appetites, as we
have seen.
Julian’s non-dualist attitude to the body as exemplified in this extract
would therefore suggest at least an acquaintance with the surprising toler-
ance to the human body shown by other medieval commentators, in particu-
lar the influential commentator, Thomas Aquinas. Rejecting the problematics
of a pain–pleasure and flesh–body dichotomy, Aquinas recognises the pleas-
ures inherent in those two most insistent of human impulses, eating and
sexual activity.49 In this context, Aquinas asserts the dual role of body and will
in his call for temperance rather than abstinence, firstly because they ‘sunt
magis nobis naturalis’ (are so profoundly natural to us),50 and secondly
because they ‘sunt necessaria ad vitam hominis’ (are about things highly
needful for human life).51 In her defence of the abject body and vilified flesh,
Julian therefore appears to be engaging with such Thomist liberalism in this
extract, especially in her suggestion that God could not possibly disdain any
need which ‘to oure body longyth in kynde’52 – which, of course, includes both
defecation as the result of the intake of food, and sexual activity, both of which
are implicated in the use of the fine purse image. Aware that overindulgence
49
See Aquinas’s teachings on temperance in Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, XLIII, trans. Thomas
Gilby, OP (London and New York, 1963), qu. 141–54.
50
Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae XLIII, qu. 141, art. 7, pp. 28–9.
51
Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae XLIII, qu. 141, art. 5, pp. 20–1.
52
Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings, p. 307.
142
in both these activities can lead to sin, Aquinas nevertheless concedes that
excess of indulgence and pleasure is not always spiritually threatening and
can, in fact, provide the most sublime expression of divine love. Thus, the acts
of consumption and of intercourse possess the potential to represent the life
of virtue and of beauty. For Aquinas, the aesthetic and the ethical are intrinsic-
ally linked and pleasure invoked by the beauty of food and human (het-
ero)sexual love is predicated upon the need for individual survival and can
be redirected to the glory of God. In this context then, and in view of wide-
spread belief in the sexual insatiability of the female which was foregrounded
in most discussions of the body, it is also possible to read Julian’s ‘fine purse’
passage not only as comprising a subtly confident Thomist defence of the
workings of the human body, but also as a subtle vindication of disparaged
female body in particular because of its traditional association with the cor-
rupt and unruly flesh – in the metaphorical terminology of the Hali Meiðhad
author, ‘eorðe’.
This suggestion is further substantiated by the equal applicability of the
image of the fine purse to depict the opening vagina or the womb of the
female which in turn permits the expulsion of the menses or of new human
life. Although this usage is rare in medieval writing, nevertheless in the trans-
lated de Mondeville anatomical text, there are several examples of the image
of the purse being employed as a euphemism for the female sexual organs
and, moreover, the author appears to assume its common usage as euphemism
in this context: ‘Þe secunde doctrine . . . schal treten of Ossium, þat is to seie,
þe cheste or þe purs of þe cod or ballokis. The balloc coddis ben official mem-
bris . . . and of wommen it is y-callid a purs for curtesie’.53 Similarly, elsewhere
in the same manuscript, and in keeping with the Aristotelian ‘one-sex’ model
discussed previously, we find the womb directly compared with the male tes-
ticles, using the same purse image: ‘þe self matrice is as þe Osse or bursa tes-
ticulorum, þat is to seie, þe balloke cod of a man’.54 However, the most explicit
connection between the female sexual organs and the opening purse drawn
by this author is to be found in a more extended passage which concerns itself
with the anatomy of the vagina and the womb which are ‘i þe same maner as
ben þe rose leeues or þa þe rose leues be fully sprad or ripe and so þei beþ schett
togideris & constreyned riht as a pursis mony, so þat no þing may passe out
of it but þe urine aloone til þe tyme com of childynge’.55 In spite of the rarity else-
where in the use of this image in an explicitly female context, the employment
53
MS Wel. 564, fol. 45r. col. 1. My emphasis.
54
MS Wel. 564, fol. 41r. col. 1. Again, I am grateful to Monica Green for pointing me
towards the sixteenth-century text known as The Boke Mad [by] a Woman Named Rota, in
which a prolapsed womb is described as ‘hangeynge downe lyke a greatt purs’ (Glasgow,
Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 403 (V.3.1), an. 1544). Although this usage dif-
fers from Julian’s in that it is an analogy of appearance rather than of function, it is likely
that its ability to be opened or closed is informing the author’s use of the simile.
55
MS. Wel. 564, fol. 42r, col. 2.
143
of the purse simile in this manuscript on a number of occasions (and particu-

larly its alliance with the rose – that ubiquitous symbol of the female genitalia
and sexuality in medieval literature, and particularly tales of courtly love)
serves not only as effective explicatory device, but also imbues the description
with the same sanitised delicacy as does Julian’s own use of it, suggesting that
Julian could well have been familiar with this type of medical usage and
recognised within it a potential for incorporating the feminine within what
seems to have been primarily a masculine image in its deployment else-
where.56 Thus, in its potential to be associated with love, beauty and the ‘rose’
of female sexuality, as well as in its underlying association with the womb,
Julian’s use of the word ‘purs’ can be read in terms of its being an image of
tenderness, sexual expression and protection and part of a hermeneutic which
feeds into that of divine motherhood, as examined in Chapter 2. In this sense,
it constitutes the most pertinent and multifaceted of images for inclusion within
Julian’s own text and it would seem likely that Julian was exploiting the
mouvance within a variety of colloquial and figurative associations of the purse
with aspects of the human body, both male and female, and thus characteris-
tically problematising traditional notions of gender and body–soul separation.
This claim is further substantiated on turning to a later depiction of an
apparently abject body in Julian’s Long Text. Here we are presented with the
vision of a dead body, again connected to the earth on which it is lying:
which body shewid hevy and ogyley, withoute shape and forme as it were
a bolned quave of styngand myre. And sodenly out of this body sprang a
ful fair creature, a little childe full shapen and formid, swifie and lively,
whiter than lilly, which sharpely glode up onto hevyn. And the bolnehede
of the body betokenith gret wretchidnes of our dedly flesh, and the little-
hede of the child betokenith the clenes of purity in the soule. (LT, 105)
Whilst Benedicta Ward reads this vision as evidence of the likelihood of

Julian’s having been a mother and perhaps even having lost a child during the
plague,57 when read in the context of the defecating body previously exam-
ined, its import becomes more apparent. Rather than comprising a traditional
body–soul duality and therefore compromising what we have seen as Julian’s
tendency towards unity, this extract actually serves to corroborate and inten-
sify the sense of body-and-soul unity which overwrites her discourses of the
flesh and which is characteristic of her thinking. This is achieved in spite of an
apparent contrast being set up between the ‘ful fair creature’ and the ‘hevy
and ogyley’ body from which it emerges. The contrast however, is not one of
56
As Barratt convincingly argues in her essay ‘ “In the Lowest Part” ’, it is likely that Julian was
familiar with Middle English gynaecological and obstetrical treatises (p. 239). Moreover, she
asserts that ‘if we . . . read Julian beside or even against such (medical) texts, she will con-
tinue to surprise and enlighten us’ (p. 255). If this was indeed the case, then it is entirely pos-
sible that Julian had come across the use of the purse simile in this context.
57
Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, pp. 24–5.
144
duality but one of metamorphosis which retains unity within movement as the
body alters between one state and another.58 In keeping with God’s teaching
in the book of Genesis, this body, like the ‘soule’ of the previous passage is
now returning to its maker via the earth from whence it came.59 In this con-
text, what we have here is a decaying body which, in its apparent abjection,
is actively returning to its essence – the earth. In so doing it is releasing via a
process of metamorphosis the spotless soul (in itself the essence of God, as we
have seen) to the glory of heaven. In this way, the embodied soul returns to
its maker clothed in a redeemed body now free of the constraints of the
flesh in a representation which therefore aligns itself with the earlier repre-
sentation and adheres to an Augustinian notion of eventual body and soul
(re)union.
The episode of the defecating body, therefore, when considered in the con-
text of Julian’s propensity to inscribe the feminine upon the traditionally mas-
culine – as in her Motherhood of God narratives, for example, or the parable
of the Lord and Servant – serves to complicate and thus break down trad-
itional images of and attitudes towards the gendered body in a way which is
far more inclusive and has the effect of incorporating humanity in its entirety
into her vision of salvation. In this instance, therefore, we see Julian making
initial use of body imagery more commonly associated with the concupiscent
female but then apparently masculinising it by means of the allusion to the
purse/testicles (‘saccus stercoris’). This image, however, becomes ultimately
unstable because of its possible association with the female vagina or womb
and its interplay between images and meanings, male and female categories.
Thus, Julian not only constructs another effective and accessible hermeneutic
by inscribing the feminine upon the masculine and offering up another male-
female body with which to explicate her vision of God’s love for humankind;
she also simultaneously rescues the feminine from the realm of the tradition-
ally abject by interrogating the validity of that category itself.
Saints and Sinners: Sex and the Redemptive Female
It is becoming evident from this analysis that Julian’s texts are beginning to
demonstrate a certain sanguineness about the human body and its fleshliness
(and the female body and its fleshliness, in particular) as a result of her abil-
ity to release it from the rigid binaries which tended to contain it, something
which becomes particularly marked in the Long Text, as we shall see. A further
58
The concept of metamorphosis and its importance within the western literary tradition
is examined in some depth by Caroline Walker Bynum in Metamorphosis and Identity
(New York, 2001).
59
See Genesis 3: 19: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth
out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.’
145
point of slippage which enables this release lies in the potential of the body
(and, within a patriarchal society, the sexually marked female body in particu-
lar) to act as an object of exchange or as bargaining tool between men, as
both Rubin and Irigaray have argued.60 However, arguably within such an
exchange is the capacity for a woman to herself reap and redefine the benefits
of bestowing her body where and how she chooses, not to mention any
concomitant financial gain which might also be reaped. In Julian’s texts,
therefore, we see this type of discrepancy provide an opportunity for the rep-
resentation of a bodily trading which will prove to be of benefit to the whole of
humankind in its capacity to purchase the love of God.
It is therefore significant that, just as we saw in the case of Margery Kempe,
Julian (who was, of course, writing in the same geographical and newly
urbanised area and as a product of the same socio-religious climate) draws
similarly on the figure of redeemed prostitute, Mary Magdalene, to lend
authority to her writing. Indeed, she tells us that one of her early desires was
to ‘have beene that time with Mary Magdalene and with other that were
Crists lovers’ (LT, 3). As a pious and spiritually ambitious young woman,
Julian had obviously identified with Mary Magdalene, both as sinner and as
saint – something we might expect of a young woman with ambitions of
becoming the lover of Christ – and when she comes to writing, the Magdalene
in her role as announcer of the risen Christ, provides a suitable anchor for this
daring act of female literary and mystical self-expression. As patron saint of
both prostitutes and contemplatives during the late Middle Ages, Mary
Magdalene stands, of course, as appropriate icon for an age which witnessed
both the flowering of female mysticism alongside an increase in commercial
prostitution within the new culture of urbanisation within which both Julian
and Margery were operating.61 Susan Haskins has posited that both these pri-
marily urban phenomena came about as the result of a specifically female
reaction to the huge increase in wealth within the towns – the one group
actively embracing the opportunity of sharing in that wealth, the other deter-
minedly eschewing its worldly appeal.62 However, it seems to me that its
primary significance is more a question of a recognition of an increased oppor-
tunity for female agency within this new, money-centred society. For both
groups of women – contemplatives and commercial prostitutes – the changes
in society would have allowed for the adoption an active socio-economic or
socio-religious position simultaneously at the heart of society and on its mar-
gins which would enable them to exploit the type of ‘blind spots’ created by
this duality and create for themselves a measure of personal autonomy. Thus,
both Julian and Margery, as holy women and writers in possession of bodies
60
See my discussion of this in the previous chapter, pp. 99–101.
61
On the parallel growth of mysticism and prostitution in urban centres see Haskins, Mary
Magdalen, pp. 173–88.
62
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p. 176.
146
with which to trade, demonstrate an awareness in their texts of the potential

of this dual subjectivity to provide them with both empowerment and author-
ity – or at least create an ambivalent space from which to speak and be heard.
As a result, both writers draw heavily on the idea of the tradable female body
which, in the case of Julian, reconfigures itself within what can be read as a
discourse of divine ‘prostitution’, serving ultimately to disrupt and dispel
those commonly held beliefs about women and their threatening sexuality
and bodies.
Such an assertion is further corroborated by Julian’s identification with
another popular saint – this time early in the Short Text. The young Saint
Cecelia, whose three death-wounds Julian admires so much as a young woman
(ST, 40) was one of the early virgin martyrs so beloved by pious women
within the medieval Church. It remains the case, however, that the import-
ance of Julian’s allusion to this saint in the Short Text and the fact of her
expulsion from the Long Text has remained largely overlooked in critical
commentary.63 Susan Hagan is one commentator, however, who has set out a
case for Cecelia’s initial inclusion by Julian and subsequent excision in the
Long Text as being of crucial relevance to our understanding of Julian’s devel-
opment as an author.64 On reappraisal, it seems likely that for Julian the story
of Cecelia’s life was thematically even more multivalent at this early point in
her writing career than even Hagan’s analysis would suggest. Indeed, I sug-
gest that, like the legend of Mary Magdalene, it offered Julian not only a het-
eroglossic discourse from which she was able to extract a validation of the
female voice and the sanctity it proclaimed (and, by implication, her own
voice and status as mystic) but also one which asserted the female body as
sexual signifier as providing a useful exegetical tool.65
In spite of her adherence to the traditional image of the saintly virgin,
Cecelia was in fact married, although she did succeed in establishing a life of
celibacy with her young husband.66 Interestingly, however, in spite of her
adherence to this topological virginity, Cecelia is not depicted as asexual or
63
Nicholas Watson comments on Julian’s reference to Saint Cecelia in the context of
fourteenth-century reactions to the concept of women preachers in ‘Composition’,
pp. 651–2. Another commentator who makes note of Julian’s identification is Benedicta
Ward, who asserts the appropriateness of Julian’s admiration for the type of piety
exemplified by Cecelia in ‘Julian the Solitary’, pp. 22–3.
64
Susan K. Hagan, ‘St. Cecelia and St. John of Beverly: Julian of Norwich’s Early Model and
Late Affirmation’, in McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 91–114. Hagan is
the only commentator to date who devotes any significant space to the relevance of
the allusion to this saint in the Short Text. See in particular Hagan’s assertion that
‘St. Cecelia . . . provides Julian with historical affirmation of woman’s value as a voice
for Christian wisdom in the face of skeptics and nay-sayers’, p. 108.
65
For an essay which uses current postcolonialist theory to negotiate the conflict between
the apparent victimhood of the virgin martyr and the empowerment which it can also
render her see Robert Mills, ‘Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?’, in Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans
and Sarah Salih (eds), Medieval Virginities (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 187–213.
66
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 2, pp. 318–23.
147
even desexualised as we might expect. As with many of the virgin martyrs, or

indeed the harlot saints like Mary Magdalene who equally captured public
imagination,67 Cecelia’s sexuality is highly animated – albeit redirected towards
an angelic bridegroom figure and reconfigured as a spiritual passion. As
Cecelia informs her young husband in de Voragine’s account: ‘I have as my
lover an angel of God, who watches over my body with unceasing vigi-
lance’.68 Elsewhere in the legend, Cecelia’s sexuality is similarly absorbed into
the discourse of conversion as she adopts the role of earthly and womanly
procuress of men ripe for conversion to Christianity, reportedly bringing over
four hundred people to conversion with words fully imbued with the trans-
actional language of the marketplace: ‘I am not losing youth but exchanging
it, giving up clay and receiving gold . . . If someone offered you a gold piece
for a copper, would you not accept it readily? God indeed, gives back to us a
hundred for one’.69 Within such an economy, Cecelia offers up as exemplar
her youthful body to be exchanged for payment in ‘gold’, that is to say the
love of Christ. In encouraging others to do the same, Cecelia renders Christ as
ideal and common love-object of them all – their lover-in-common – and it is
for him that they will proceed willingly to trade their own bodies and undergo
execution. Meanwhile, Cecelia’s own apotheosis is achieved only after a scald-
ing in a bath, the infliction of three grievous wounds to her neck in the
attempt to sever it from her naked body, and a Christ-like absorption into suf-
fering which lasts for the requisite three days. It is of no coincidence, there-
fore, that the boiling water in which Cecelia is submerged has no effect on her
highly visible, excessive and icy female body, the ontological coldness of
which can only be countered by the passionate calor of union with her divine
lover, Christ. It is Chaucer, in his retelling of this tale in his ‘Second Nun’s
Tale’ who specifically emphasises this aspect, suggesting that he was also
aware of the ironic protection offered to Cecelia by her inherently icy
female body:
The lone nyght, and eek a day also,

For al the fyr and eek the bathes heete
She sat al coold and feelede no wo.
It made hire nat a drop for to sweete.70
Because of the efficacy of Cecelia’s feminine resistance to their tortures, her

persecutors eventually have to resort to the phallic blade and dismemberment
in order to effect her execution; but even this figurative rape is a botched by
the male executioner and she finally bleeds to death in suitable Christic fashion
from the three wounds inflicted upon her. Thus, this highly gendered execution
67
On the harlot saints see Karras, ‘Holy Harlots’.
68
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, p. 319.
69
De Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 2, p. 322.
70
148
unites her forever with her divine spouse and her concomitant martyrdom
validates the redemptive potential of an exchanged and penetrated female
body.
Julian’s allusion to Saint Cecelia is therefore likely to be more than mere
reference to a saint whom we would expect have been popular with a con-
ventionally pious young woman. This legend, with its multiplicity of coinci-
dental discourses of female sexuality, bodily trading and their potential for
validating the female speech act (Cecelia is, of course, a particularly vocal
woman whose voice not only brings about salvation for others, but also accel-
erates her own death and sanctification), will offer Julian encouragement in
her own search for a suitable hermeneutic of the female to explicate her own
personal experiences of God and justify her articulation of it. It is therefore
probable that for this writer, who was herself about to utter the unutterable
and risk the vilification or worse of her contemporaries, the endorsement of
Saint Cecelia and her alliance with Mary Magdalene announce loudly to her
audience a variety of consciously constructed precedents which facilitate a
redemption of the female body as paradigmatic site of a traditionally prob-
lematic sexuality.
The Female Body as Commodity: Recontextualisation
Julian’s strategic and personally defined use of her own female body along-
side those of her role-models is everywhere apparent from the onset of her
narrative. At the beginning of the Short Text, for example, Julian depicts her-
self as active agency, invoking upon herself the affective experience of illness
(‘a wylfulle desyre to hafe of goddys gyfte a bodelye syekenes’; ST, 40). Not
content with outlining the details for us, Julian appears keen to emphasise a
pious assertiveness here, symptomatic of her youthful enthusiasm and
energy. She continues emphatically:
And I wolde þat this bodylye syekenes myght have beene so harde as to the
dede, so that I myght in the sekenes take alle my ryghtynges of halye kyrke,
wenande myselfe that I schulde dye; and that alle creatures that sawe me
myght wene the same, for I wolde hafe no comforth of no fleschlye nothere
erthelye lyfe. In this sekenes I desyrede to hafe alle manere of paynes bode-
lye & gastelye that I schulde have hyf I schulde dye, alle the dredes & tem-
pestes of feyndys & alle manere of othere paynes safe of the owhte passynge
of the sawlle, for I hoped that it myht be to me a spede when I schulde dye,
for I desyrede sone to be with my god. (ST, 40)
Julian’s repeated use of the first-person subject position and personal pro-
noun renders this passage highly subjective and assertive. It becomes a ren-
dition of a script she has written herself within which she becomes the main
protagonist and producer of the action. God takes on a mere bit-part in Julian’s
149
dramatic conception, becoming object to the repetitively subjective assertions,

‘I wolde’, and ‘I shulde’. Like de Voragine who controls the pace in his account
of the martyrdom of Cecelia, Julian controls her own anticipated quasi-
martyrdom, and we detect her laying down for divine perusal the terms of her
negotiation, terms which are firmly rooted in the most immediate and mater-
ial commodity she has to trade with – her female body. It will be God’s deci-
sion whether or not to respond in the appropriate terms to the offer of this
physical trade-off (‘hyf it be thy wille that I have itt, grawnte itt me’; ST, 40). For
Julian, however, the reward which she envisages will be a clarified awareness
of how Christ’s body suffered for humankind and an opportunity to partici-
pate herself in that suffering through this act of imitatio Christi.
In her essay speculating on Julian’s knowledge of gynaecological texts,
Alexandra Barratt points out that suffering and pain was considered to be
inherent to the female condition.71 Barratt also points out that the specifically
female suffering involved in gynaecological ailments and childbirth was con-
sidered necessary for the continuation of human life – an expression not only
of Eve’s legacy but also representative of both Christ and the Virgin who were
also born to suffer. Thus, female suffering occupied a similar multivalent site
of slippage as did the fleshly female, from where such suffering could be read
in terms of both punishment and redemption and even at this early point in
Julian’s writing we see her taking up such an ambivalent position in her treat-
ment of her own body. Not only that, but even prior to her mystical experi-
ences she appears to have been quite familiar with the concept of trading on
the resource of her own body. Thus, she readily imposes a ‘condicyon’ on God
for the granting of her request for illness – even to the point of identifying the
optimum moment for it, that is the time when she would have reached ‘threttye
heere eelde’ (ST, 40). This, of course, coincides with the exact age of Christ
at the start of his ministry which, in turn, heralded his inexorable journey
towards his own Passion and death. Moreover, we discover that this bargain
which Julian strikes with God is fulfilled to the letter when she has just passed
the requisite age, following which she becomes dangerously ill (ST, 41). There
is no doubt at this point that Julian’s overt substitution of her own suffering
body for Christ’s, along with her emphasis on the correlation between their
ages, has the effect of overlaying Christ’s body with a female-identified suf-
fering, even at this early point in the Short Text. Through its merging with
Julian’s own body, the body of Christ metamorphoses into a female-associated
site of negotiation, a primary commodity of exchange and a feminised route
to salvation. Thus, Julian’s mystical experiences which follow are incorporated
within an economy of the female body which renders it a tradable commodity
from the outset, something which is wholly in keeping with the socio-economic
climate of her day in which women were frequently regarded as sexual
71
Barratt, ‘ “In the Lowest Part” ’, p. 242.
150
commodity (as illustrated in the previous chapter in the context of Margery

Kempe), and one which will continue to have a marked influence on her
depiction of Christ in both texts.
Although the mutual benefits of the transaction which Julian envisages
both for herself and for Christ are ostensibly metaphysical, nevertheless
Julian’s means of explication is firmly rooted in the language of the physical –
as we witnessed in the case of the ‘fine purse’ passage and that of the decay-
ing body. The fact, of course, that the location of Julian’s trade-off with God is
her own bedroom also bears multiple suggestions; not only does it conjour up
intimations of sexual intimacy which relies, in part, on the bed imagery but it
is also heavily imbued with an invocation of the love-bower of the biblical
Song of Songs.72 Later too, as we have seen, Julian envisions her bed as blood-
soaked, and there are aspects of her depiction of her prone body lying beneath
that of the suffering Christ on the animated cross which also bear the eroti-
cised resonances of the bride of the Song of Songs awaiting the embrace of her
heavenly bridegroom – something which will later be parodied in Julian’s
encounter with the fiend, as we shall see.
Julian’s treatment of her mystical encounter with Christ with its sexual and
nuptial overtones has a lot in common with traditional Jewish exegesis of the
Song, with its far more positive attitude towards eroticism and its resistance to
the type of allegorical interpretation which predominated within the Christian
tradition.73 We have no evidence, however, to suggest that Julian was familiar
with this tradition, although as Cynthia Kraman points out, ‘Jews continued to
live and write in the Christian world, and their views were persistently
hovering . . . within it’.74 Nevertheless, the correlation does demonstrate how far
Julian’s reading of the Song as subtly evidenced here diverges from mainstream
western interpretive tradition. Similarly, her well-documented use of the topos of
humility in the Short Text can similarly be read as an engagement with the
notion of the weak and concupiscent female as being a potentially transcendent
72
The Song of Songs is characterised by the Shulamite (soul) languishing in her bed whilst
awaiting the arrival of her bridegroom (Christ), as we saw in the previous chapter. See,
for example, Song of Songs 3: 1: ‘In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth:
I sought him, and found him not.’ See also 1: 15: ‘Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and
comely. Our bed is flourishing.’
73
In an analysis of the Jewish tradition of the Song of Songs, Cynthia Kraman has exam-
ined how this highly popular poem became an expression of hieros gamos in Jewish exe-
gesis, asserting that it fed directly into the Christian tradition via Rashi Shlomo
(1040–1105), whose eleventh-century commentary was considered definitive. Cynthia
Kraman, ‘Communities of Otherness in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale’, in Watt, Women in
Their Communities, pp. 138–54 (p. 144). Kraman also points out that for Judaism, mar-
riage provided a sacred model in which the body was both created and possessed by
God. Celibacy was an alien concept within this ideology, and sexual love within mar-
riage was considered a reflection of God’s fecundity and omnipotence. Earthly marriage
in the Jewish exegesis of the Song is consequently far more polysemic and multidirec-
tional than the highly allegorical interpretations of the Christian tradition (p. 145).
74
Kraman, ‘Communities of Otherness’, p. 140.
151
and redemptive agency. For example, at one point she announces to her readers
‘fulle gretlye I was astonnyd for wondere . . . that y had that he (Christ) wolde
be so hamelye with a synfulle creature lyevande in this wrecchyd flesche’ (ST,
43). Julian’s use of the ambiguous ‘hamelye’ here – a word which was, in certain
contexts, associated with sexual intimacy as well as conveying the more frequent
meaning of friendliness or familiarity75 – both augments the concept of her own
sexualised body as being desirable to Christ whilst de-eroticising it at the same
time and thus removing some of its more problematic associations. Julian’s
amazement here is therefore not only a result of the singularity of the mystical
experience which is unfolding before her eyes but, more significantly, that Christ
(among whose lovers she has desired to be included, alongside the sexually
transgressive Mary Magdalene, as we have seen) should overlook what she
terms her ‘wrecchyd flesche’ because of the bargain she has managed to strike
with him by means of that same flesh and its wretchedness in its sexuality and
suffering. Thus, from the outset, Julian links the divine gift of redemptive illness
with her own perceived female ontology as ‘leud, febille, & freylle’ (ST, 48),
which in turn, becomes a metonym for the suffering flesh of Christ himself. Such
mutual abjection can therefore be read as a tropological representation of divine
love and reciprocity, something which Julian will recognise years later after a
secondary visionary experience in 1388 as ‘our lords mening’ (LT, 135), and it is
a revelation which is brought to her to no small degree by means of a personal
exegetical reading of her own female body, its suffering and fleshly impulses
and its potential to act as explicatory tool.
It is, of course, possible to argue that the sexual connotations of Julian’s
encounter with Christ are entirely orthodox within the tradition of female mys-
ticism in which she is located. One could even add that the highly erotic imagery
used to depict the nuptial mysticism of some of her Continental precursors such
as the Flemish beguine, Hadewijch of Brabant76 or, in the English tradition, even
Richard Rolle, for example,77 renders Julian’s treatment of mystical union sub-
dued or inconsequential. As a result, what we find taking precedence in Julian’s
75
MED ‘homli’ 2e. For another example of the use of this term within a sexual context see The
Book of Margery Kempe, p. 90: ‘For it is conuenyent þe wyf to be homly wyth hir husbond’.
76
For a concise summary of what is known of Hadewijch’s life and writing career and
some extracts from her poetry, see Carolyne Larrington, Women and Writing in Medieval
Europe: A Sourcebook (London and New York, 1995), pp. 242–8. See also J. Reynaert,
‘Hadewijch: Mystic Poetry and Courtly Love’, in E. Kooper (ed.), Medieval Dutch Literature
in Its European Context (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 208–25; and Bernard McGinn (ed.), Meister
Eckhart and the Beguine Mystic: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and
Marguerite Porete (New York, 1994).
77
The erotic and bridal imagery of Richard Rolle’s Melos Amoris in particular has been exam-
ined by Sara de Ford, ‘Mystical Union in the Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle’, in Marion
Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers read at Dartington Hall,
July 1980: Exeter Symposium 1 (Exeter, 1980), pp. 173–201. For a detailed study of mystical
sex for women in the Middle Ages, see Karma Lochrie, ‘Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies’,
in Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCraken and James A. Schultz (eds), Constructing Medieval
Sexuality, Medieval Cultures vol. 11 (Minneapolis and London, 1997), pp. 180–200.
152
writing is not the sensual or overtly erotic discourses of her precursors, but an
emphasis on the body as a desirable, valuable and God-given commodity which
can be used as a means of purchasing a mutual and reciprocal love. In this econ-
omy too, sexuality plays only a part and is by no means the measure of that
body. Such a modification of traditional paradigms of nuptial mysticism is in
itself deeply unconventional, and imbues the relationship between lover and
beloved with a pragmatism which it is tempting to attribute to an authorial
awareness of the economic utilitarianism of contemporary urban life. This was,
after all, a primary concern, albeit from differing perspectives, of a number of
Julian’s contemporaries including Langland and Chaucer as well as Margery
Kempe.78 Similarly, Julian’s narrative of mystical consummation is just as mater-
ial, pragmatically simple and downplayed, accompanied as it is by the out-
pouring of Christ’s blood and the loud female utterance at the moment of union:
Ryght so both god and man the same sufferede for me. I conseyvede treulye &
myghttyllye that itt was hymselfe that schewyd it me withowtyn any meet,
and than I sayde, ‘Benedicite Dominus’. This I sayde reuerentlye in my
menynge with a myghtty voyce. (ST, 43)
The release of Christ’s blood along with the female voice in this moment of
spiritual ‘orgasm’ as mystical knowledge floods in again diverges from trad-
itional treatments of eroticised union. Instead, it forms a trope for the relin-
quishing of doubt and anxiety and makes way for the later narratives of
motherhood and ultimately the birth of the mystical text. Most importantly, it
serves as a validation of the sacredness of a unified body (and Julian’s own
female body as its representative) and a vindication of human corporeality
generally, a theme which gains in power and momentum as Julian’s confi-
dence in her own insights and her means of accessible exegesis develop.
Sexuality and the Fiendish Encounter
Another area of Julian’s writing which is shot through with more overt dis-
courses of sexuality is her account of two encounters with the fiend endured
whilst she is paralysed by her illness. Once again, critical commentary has
tended to overlook how these depictions of what amounts to an attempt at
demonic rape are used by the author to throw into relief the positive and pro-
ductive qualities of Christ and Julian’s own responses to him. Just as we saw
78
For insight into a pragmatic approach to love and marriage in the fifteenth century, see
the letters of the Paston family, particularly those which react to John Paston II’s prema-
ture desire for marriage. Particularly interesting are those which allude to Margery
Paston’s clandestine marriage to one of the Paston servants, Richard Calle (Norman
Davis (ed.), The Paston Letters (Oxford and New York, 1983), no. 83 (pp. 174–5) and
no. 84 (pp. 181–3)). For a letter sent by Calle to Margery Paston following their enforced
separation after betrothal, see no. 85 (pp. 178–80).
153
in The Book of Margery Kempe how the author continually seeks to establish a
contrast between Christ as beautiful young lover, and the imperfections and
limitations of any worldly lover, so too in Julian’s writing we find the repre-
sentation of the fiend’s assaults established as a counterbalance in order to
throw into relief the desirability of the heavenly lover and mother, Christ. One
of the few commentators to actively grapple with the sexual nature of Julian’s
encounter with the fiend to date is Jay Ruud,79 whose argument, although ini-
tially engaging with recent feminist analysis of Julian’s writing, nevertheless
tends towards a more androcentric reading of the text. Ruud begins his inves-
tigation with the claim that ‘the majority of [Julian’s] imagery surrounding
God is masculine’,80 an assertion which fails to take full account of the more
subtle and skilful layering of gendered imagery and palimpsestic representa-
tion of both male and female characteristics so typical of much of Julian’s
writing which this present study is attempting to identify. Although Ruud
sets out to demonstrate that both God and the humanised Christ are femi-
nised by Julian by means of an employment of a courtly discourse (for example,
‘he kepeth us mytyly and mercifully in the tyme that we are in our synne
and monge all our enemies that arn full fel upon us’; LT, 125),81 he does not
adequately resolve the inherent contradiction in his argument which sees the
tension between the courtly lover, Christ, and the masculine figure of the
fiend in terms of ‘direct masculine competition’,82 in spite of the ‘feminising’
effect of the courtly discourse. Ruud thus identifies these episodes as being
the site of a masculine struggle-to-the-death to win possession of the prostrate
body of a traditionally impotent female.83 In part, many of Ruud’s observa-
tions are pertinent and useful, but his final analysis leaves us with a reading
of the fiendish encounter which reinforces traditional binaries by rendering
the female as inevitable victim and the masculine – whether the text’s nega-
tive or positive example – as inevitable victor. On closer examination, how-
ever, it becomes clear that Julian’s intentions in her foregrounding of this
79
Jay Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye”: Julian, Romance Discourse and the Masculine’, in
McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 183–205. See also David F. Tinsely,
‘Julian’s Diabology’, in the same volume, pp. 207–37. More recently, the encounter has
been addressed by Judith Dale in ‘ “Sin is behovely”: Art and Theodicy in the Julian Text’,
Mystics Quarterly 25, 4 (1999), pp. 127–46. Here Dale comes to some of the same conclu-
sions as myself about Julian’s setting up of these narratives as parodic parallels to the
earlier Passion narratives.
80
Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 183.
81
I quote here from the Glasscoe edition which is based upon the Sloane 1 manuscript,
whereas Ruud uses the Paris manuscript which has been edited by College and Walsh. I
will embark upon a more extended discussion of the manuscript tradition in Chapter 6.
82
Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 197 (my emphasis).
83
For an alternative reading of the applicability of the ethics of courtly love to the female
mystical discourse of sex, see Lochrie, ‘Mystical Acts’, especially p. 185: ‘The terms of
courtly love are simply not adaptable to the discourse of women mystics because they
are gendered, and we must be careful not to subsume the violence of the sexual language
in their writings to the masculine uses of the language of courtly love’.
154
devilish encounter are far more complex and far more in keeping with an
increasingly confident invocation of the feminine which we have witnessed
elsewhere.
In this context, it is significant that Julian’s descriptions of her assaults by the
fiend vary considerably between the Short and Long Texts.84 For Ruud, the
expansion of the original Short Text material into the more dramatic Long Text
version reflects the author’s need to balance Christ’s wholly desirable mascu-
line/feminine qualities with a figure which represents a mixture of undesirable
masculine/feminine qualities.85 Whereas Ruud depends upon the sexualised
and overtly venial devil of the Long Text for his analysis, for the purposes of my
own interpretation it is the less graphic and more concise Short Text represen-
tation which is of initial importance. Julian has already learned in her Fifth
Revelation ‘be worde formede in [her] vndyrstandynge’ (ST, 48) that ‘the
passyon of [Christ] is ouercomynge of the fende’ (ST, 50), but whereas her intel-
lectual acceptance of this concept is one thing, dealing with the physical pres-
ence of the fiend in her own bedchamber is wholly another. In Chapter 11 she
describes her first physical encounter with the fiend, an episode which consti-
tutes a familiar topos within the writings of medieval religious women.86 Yet, as
David Tinsely has pointed out, unlike her precursors such as Christina
Mirabilis or Ita of Hohenfels whose trials with the devil function to accentuate
their suffering in the narrative and thus prioritise the discourse of imitatio
Christi,87 Julian’s Short Text account of the fiend’s initial visit is muted and
almost dismissive: ‘me thought the fende sette hym in my throte and walde
hafe strangelede me, botte he myght nought’ (ST, 72). Here, Julian seems to be
using the incident, not as the affective mnemonic which Susan Hagan con-
siders it to be,88 nor as explicatory device, as David Tinsely suggests,89 but as a lit-
eral and material reinforcement of Christ’s reassurance to her that ‘the feende is
ouercomyn’ (ST, 51). This interpretation is further substantiated by the lack of
any emotive literary devices in her description of this visit as it appears in the
Short Text. Briefly, Julian alludes to ‘smoke’ and ‘a fowle stynke’ in her cham-
ber, details to which those in attendance in the chamber are not privy (ST, 73).
Similarly, her account of the fiend’s second assault on her is just as restrained
and unexploited in spite of a slight increase in affective vocabulary: ‘The stynke
was so vile and so paynfulle, and the bodely heete also dredfulle & trauaylous’
(ST, 74–5). This time she also adds sound to the account, documenting the
84
Ruud also makes this point in ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 194.
85
Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 200.
86
On this see David, F. Tinsely ‘Julian’s Diabology’, in McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book
of Essays, pp. 207–37 (p. 209).
87
Tinsely ‘Julian’s Diabology’, p. 209.
88
Hagan makes this suggestion in her essay, ‘St. Cecelia and John of Beverley’, pp. 98
and 106.
89
Tinsely’s essay explores the use that Julian makes of the convention and what this con-
vention would have signified for her readers, ‘Julian’s Diabology’, pp. 209–10.
155
‘iangelynge’ and ‘speche . . . as hif thay had haldene a parliamente with grete
besynes’ (ST, 75). Nevertheless, Julian herself still remains at centre stage and
her characteristically assertive use of the repetitive subject position ‘I’ serves to
dissipate any agency which the fiend might have in the narrative. What is
important to Julian in this early version is how she evades the (neglible) influ-
ence of the fiend, and it is significant that it is the comfort of orthodox, rather
than mystical, ritual to which she turns in order to rid herself of the fiend’s pres-
ence: ‘my tunge I occupyed with speche of cristes passion & rehersynge of the
faith of hali kyrke, and my herte I festende on god, with alle the triste and alle
the myght that was in me’ (ST, 75). According to medieval diabology as
expounded in the ‘satisfaction theory’ of Anselm of Canterbury, for example,
the devil, as a result of the Fall, was granted only limited agency to tempt and
seduce mankind,90 and in many ways Julian’s theodicy as displayed in her ini-
tial reaction to her experiences with the devil adheres to this orthodox belief.91
She is clearly avoiding the implications of her own dialogue, something
nowhere more evident in the text than her account of how she attempts to talk
herself out of the implications of the fiendish encounter: ‘And I triste besely in
god & comforthede my sawlle with bodely speche as I schulde hafe done to
anothere person than myselfe that hadde so bene travaylede’ (ST, 75).
Julian’s salvation at this point comes about because of a ventriloquising of
the orthodox line on the devil and by literally talking herself out of its more
sinister connotations. In the same way, the entire Short Text version will attempt
to ‘talk away’ the sexual overtones of the encounter. At no point, for example,
is the fiend anthropomorphised or bestialised in any explicit way as we
would expect to find in other fourteenth-century depictions with which Julian
would surely have been familiar.92 Instead, we are presented with a quasi-
conceptual, quasi-personified vision of evil not-quite-embodied, which falls
short of adhering to traditional representations of the devil which saw him as
a concrete reality and body rather than abstract concept.93 In the context of
more traditional representation, Julian’s fiend’s lack of a concrete body or
90
This is something pointed out by Baker, From Vision to Book, pp. 17–19. According to Anselm
of Canterbury in the eleventh century, the devil only had certain rights over humankind
because they had relinquished total obedience to God because of the Fall. Anselm thus
repudiated the so-called ‘devil’s rights’ theory which saw redemption as a legal contest
between God and Satan, with humanity standing on the sidelines. Instead, Anselm recognised
the position of Christ’s humanity as being at the centre of the eschatological debate.
91
For the influence of Anselmian thinking upon later medieval spirituality see Thomas H.
Bestul, ‘Antecedents: The Anselmian and Cistercian Contributions’, in Pollard and
Boenig, Mysticism and Spirituality, pp. 1–20.
92
See, for example, Jean le Tavernier, ‘St. Jerome sees a devil on the train of a Bourgeoise of
Bethlehem’, Miracles de Nostre Dame (Paris, Bibliotèque Nationale MS fr. 9198, fol. 91). For a
brief but well-contextualised and well-illustrated overview of the iconographic depictions
of the devil in western tradition see Jacques Levron, Le Diable dans l’Art (Paris, 1935).
93
On this see Tinsely, ‘Julian’s Diabology’, p. 213. Here Tinsely quotes Michael Camille, The
Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989), p. 63: ‘Evil was
not an idea to medieval people. It was real and had bodies. These bodies were devils.’
156
morphology in the Short Text becomes the location of an intriguing lacuna, an

explanation for which can only be ascertained by unraveling the possible rea-
sons for Julian’s non-disclosure of information in this text.
For Tinsely, Julian’s Short Text reticence on this issue can be understood
within the context of Julian’s fear of her own potential for corruption. Using
the stance of Gregory the Great who associated demonic stenches with those
‘stained by the sins of the flesh through the pleasures of thought’,94 Tinsely
concludes that the sexual implications of the stink accompanying Julian’s
fiend renders her most feared inner enemy to be ‘the deadly sin of lust’.95 He
suggests, and I concur with this view, that Julian’s readers may well have
associated the stink of the fiend in that bedroom location with lascivious long-
ings and the ‘delights of the flesh’ to which a young woman was considered
easy prey. If this is the case, then the suppression in the Short Text of her own
material would suggest that Julian is indeed trying to evade the implications
of these episodes because of their troubling and sordid sexual overtones, just
as she admits in the Long Text to having evaded an explication of the parable
of the Lord and Servant because of her failure to understand it.96 Here again,
therefore, we see Julian avoiding a confrontation with her own material and
retreating into the religious orthodoxy of church ritual.
By the time she came to revise and expand her text some years later, how-
ever, Julian appears to have shed her ambivalence towards the sexually
threatening fiend of her experiences and, by implication, its impact upon her
own self-representation in the text. Thus, in the equivalent narratives in the
Long Text she demonstrates an acceptance of the more unsavoury implica-
tions of the fiend’s presence in her bedroom and of his assault upon her. This
time her description of her attacker is so fully realised that its animation rivals
that of her earlier descriptions of Christ’s suffering and bodily disfigurement,
and thus takes on the appearance of a demonic parody of the central motif of
her Passion narrative. Most significantly in this context, Julian represents the
predatory fiend as appearing in the likeness of a young man, a representation
which again diverges radically from traditional representations of the devil
which had been growing increasingly sinister since late antiquity,97 and by
this stage more frequently depicted as a serpent, a dragon, a dog, a wolf, or
some kind of admixture of these types of animals:98 ‘the fend set him in my
94
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman, vol. 39 (New York, 1959),
pp. 242–3, as cited by Tinsely, ‘Julian’s Diabology’, p. 215.
95
Tinsely, ‘Julian’s Diabology’, p. 215.
96
See Long Text: ‘And yet cowth I not taken therin ful vndersondyng to myn ese at that
tyme’, p. 74.
97
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Satan and The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca and London, 1981),
p. 190.
98
Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity
(London and Scarborough, Ontario, 1977), pp. 245–6. See also Rhodes Montague James
(ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924), pp. 35, 36 and 82, for the devil’s asso-
ciation with the wolf and dog.
157
throte, puttand forth a visage ful nere my face like a yong man; and it was
longe and wonder lene; I saw never none such’ (LT, 108). Decontextualised,
the physical details of this description seem to emphasise a masculine youth,
vigour and leanness which in turn introduce echoes of conventional depic-
tions of the naked and suffering Christ whose physical vulnerability, youth
and beauty add to the poignancy of his destiny and provide powerful stimu-
lation for desired affective responses to the Passion. Indeed, in many ways
Julian’s graphic depiction of the devil’s advances in this text can be read as a
hideous parody of the Bride’s relationship with the Bridegroom in the Song
of Songs which had been invoked earlier or, indeed, of Saint Cecelia’s emo-
tionally and physically satisfying relationship with her divine lover, and does,
in fact, provide a key to the narrative strategy which Julian is employing in
her extended and fully developed description of this encounter. Just as trad-
itional affective treatments of the young and physically beautiful suffering
Christ are sexualised, particularly in female-authored texts, so now Julian
proceeds to develop a similarly sexualised description of the aggressive fiend
to its full exploitative potential:
The color was rede like the tilestone what it is new brent, with blak spots
therin like blak steknes fouler than the tilestone. His here was rode as rust,
evisid aforn, with syde lokks hongyng on the thounys. He grynnid on me
with a shrewd semelant, shewing white teeth . . . Body ne hands had he
none shaply, but with pawes he held me in the throte. (LT, 108–9)
The redness of Julian’s devil is also an interesting divergence from trad-

itional representations of the devil, who was nearly always black.99 In his study
of Christian iconography, Louis Reau suggests that conventional representa-
tions of the devil as black served to reflect the black emptiness of hell,100 but he
also concedes ‘le rouge . . . (le) convien(t) aussi’101 because of its association
with blood and the flames of hell. It would therefore appear that in associating
the devil’s red colouring with that of ‘tilestone’ in her account, Julian is further
emphasising the fiend’s hellish connections. Often forged from red sandstone,
the tilestone relies upon the heat of the fire for its solidity and its characteristic
colour. In effect, it is from the realm of the earth, is fashioned with fire, and
takes on the appearance of its location. So the physicality of Julian’s fiend
99
Russell, Perceptions of Evil, p. 246. A typical example of the devil represented as black can
be found in the Middle English Life of St Margaret where the devil is ‘muche deale blackre
þen eauer eani blamon, se grislich, se ladlich, þet ne mahte hit na mon relich e areachen’
(much blacker than any black man, so grisly, so loathsome, that no-one could easily find
words to describe it) (Seinte Margarete in Millett and Wogan-Browne, Medieval English
Prose for Women, pp. 44–85 (p. 60)). The devil is similarly black in colour in Sawles Warde
(an edition of which appears in the same volume, pp. 86–109). See, for example, the com-
parison between those suffering souls in hell and ‘þe blake deouel’ (the black devil), p. 92.
100
Louis Reau, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien, vol. 11, no. 1 (Paris, 1965), p. 62.
101
Reau, Iconographie, p. 62.
158
reflects its own origins and essence. Not only that, of course, but much more
importantly here, the redness of its hue also provides a direct parody of the
face of the bleeding Christ of Julian’s earlier vision when she tells us: ‘I saw
how halfe the face, begyning at the ere, overrede with drie blode til it beclosid
to the mid face, and after that, the tuther halfe beclosyd on the same wise’ (LT, 14).
Now we begin to realise that, whilst ostensibly describing an encounter
with the fiend, this assault narrative also engages with the subtext of Christ’s
redeeming Passion. Julian is, in effect, telling two stories at the same time. This
is further corroborated by Julian’s focusing on the intriguing ‘blak spots’ and
‘blak steknes’ covering the visage of the fiend. These too would also appear to
be an invention of Julian’s own imaginative powers and are similarly imbued
with connotations of corrupt sexuality. Although the commonest reading of
this description is that it is an allusion to the physical ravages of the bubonic
plague which had devastated the population of much of Europe during the
course of the fourteenth century,102 it is more likely that Julian was attempting
to depict a face ravaged by leprosy, a common complaint which was consist-
ently associated with sexual dissoluteness and loose living, as we saw in the
case of Margery Kempe’s son, and was believed to be a punishment for gen-
eral moral depravity.103 Moreover, Julian’s fiend’s physical countenance
adheres closely to the standard fourteenth-century medical description of lep-
rosy which was founded on the personal experience of its author, Gilbert
Anglicus. In his Compendium Medicinae Gilbert examines the various stages of
the disease, documenting, amongst other symptoms, a dusky redness of the
face, scabs, nodules and boils, lumps on the face and earlobes, thickened lips,
hands and feet.104 For another contemporary expert on the disease, Guy de
Chauliac, one of the unequivocable signs of the illness was a horrible satyr-
like appearance (‘horrible in þe manner of a beste þat highte satoun’).105 Again,
this is a representation to which Julian’s fiend would seem to adhere and one
which may well have been informing her description. In addition, because of
its associations with the figure of the sexually hedonistic Pan from classical
antiquity, the concept of a corrupt – and specifically masculine – sexuality is
foregrounded here which hints at an aggressive and bestial body beneath the
graphically described face. Similarly, the redness of face and body would also
add to the impression of an angry passion, enabling us yet again within this
disturbing narrative to read the subtext of the tormented and bloody Christ,
102
See, for example, Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 195.
103
For a detailed account of attitudes to and beliefs about leprosy in the Middle Ages, see
Peter Richards, The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs (Cambridge, 1977).
104
Gilbert Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae, as cited in Richards, The Medieval Leper, p. 98.
105
Guy de Chauliac, Inventarium sive Collectorium Parvis Chirugicalis Medicinae (1363),
as cited in Richards, The Medieval Leper, p. 99. For a Middle English translation of this
text, see The Cyryrgie of Guy de Chauliac, ed. Margaret S. Ogden, EETS o.s. 265 (London,
New York and Toronto, 1971). For an account of the ravages and treatments for leprosy,
see pp. 377–89; for the satyr analogy, see p. 380.
159
stripped naked, his body covered in dark lacerations which Julian witnesses
during her encounter with his Passion. Popular representations of Christ in
some fifteenth-century manuscripts depict him as bruised and bleeding, hold-
ing a charter before him. All visible parts of his naked body are covered in
evenly placed spots which contrast significantly with the obvious and trad-
itional blood-flow from his five major wounds. Although Christ’s lacerations in
this type of representation tend to be picked out in red, nevertheless there is a
striking resemblance between the ubiquitous pattern of wounds on this image
of the wounded Christ and the blemishes on the face of Julian’s fiend.106 Earlier
too, Julian has stressed the changing hues of the dying Christ’s face, concen-
trating at times on its bloody redness, as we have seen, but also at other times
depicting its ‘brownehede and blakehede’ (LT, 15). Elsewhere she tells us ‘the
swete body was brown and blak’ (LT, 24), and ‘as cloderyd blode whan it is
drey’ (LT, 26). Likewise, the face is ‘more browne than the body’ and all of
these graphic depictions of dark lacerations and congealed blood could well
invoke comparison with Julian’s depiction of the devil and his ‘blak
spots . . . like blak steknes’. Such a palimpsest of descriptive possibility again
serves to throw into relief the transcendent beauty of Christ, in spite of his
injuries, as opposed to the destructive corruption of the venial and threatening
fiend. The entire episode of diabolic assault as recounted by Julian can thus be
read as constituting an obscene parody of the Soul’s union with God, or the
Bride of God’s long-awaited union with her celestial Bridegroom, or the con-
summation of Christ’s love for Julian which has taken place in her own bed-
chamber. In effect, what we are witnessing is an attempted demonic rape upon
a woman’s prostrate and paralysed body which threatens to render her the
devil’s whore, and so close does the perpetrator come to success that Julian can
feel his breath upon her face and his side-locks hanging down to further
obscure her vision.107 Ruud takes these curious hirsute appendages as invoca-
tions of the hairstyle associated with the medieval image of the ‘demonic Jew’
so often conflated with the devil in medieval consciousness.108 His assertion
however is that Julian uses the image of Jewishness to suggest the fiend’s lack
of masculinity – indeed, that the image imbues the fiend with a type of per-
verted femininity – which creates an impotency which ultimately prevents him
from possessing Julian.109 Whilst I do not take issue with his recognition of the
106
Catherine Jones suggests that the detailed and graphically depicted nature of Julian’s
visions could have been inspired by a familiarity with the school of manuscript illumin-
ation which centred on Norwich in the late fourteenth century (‘The English Mystic, Julian
of Norwich’, in Katharina M. Wilson (ed.), Medieval Women Writers (Athens, 1984), p. 272).
107
Long Text, p. 108.
108
Ruud, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 199. See also p. 204, n. 13. For an examination of
the conflation of Jews and the devil in medieval thinking, see Philip Zeigler, The Black
Death (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 99
109
Here Ruud draws on Leon Poliakov who points out that Jewish men were long con-
sidered to menstruate (The History of Anti-Semitism, trans. Richard Howard (New York,
1965), p. 142). Since it was common during the fourteenth century for Jews to appear
160
demonised Jew within this representation, there is no evidence in Julian’s text

to suggest such a feminisation of the fiend here. On the contrary, Julian’s use
of parody to highlight an unadulterated and therefore undesirable masculinity
is what is central to this episode. What she is actually expressing is her per-
ception of the danger of untrammeled masculine sexual aggression if devoid
of what she has already identified as the ‘feminine’ qualities of gentleness and
unconditional love as personified by the figure of Christ, who is both mother
and ideal lover.
Far from evidencing an impotent masculinity, or a ‘lack’ which constitutes
a feminisation, then,110 I argue that the fiend’s failure to overcome Julian in the
Long Text establishes him as the embodiment of a dangerous and unmodified
aberrant masculinity and that Ruud’s own conclusion fails to take account of
the full extent of the gender politics with which Julian is engaging here.
Whilst acknowledging that her fiend is indeed lacking, it is a lack, not of mas-
culinity but of all those characteristics associated with the feminine in this text
(and as possessed in abundance by Julian’s Christ), such as gentleness, nur-
turance, compassion and unconditional love. Thus, the fiend’s lack of any
modifying feminine qualities leaves him wanting which, in spite of his desire
to possess Julian, renders him ultimately impotent. This, in turn, serves to
throw into relief the perfection of a Christ whose male body and unquench-
able desire have been palimpsestically overwritten by the feminine – some-
thing which can now be turned to humanity’s advantage since ‘everyday he
is redy to the same if it myght be . . . for this might be done everyday if he
wold’ (LT, 32). Once again – and by means of an unique treatment of a recog-
nisable topos – Julian demonstrates how the feminine can be redefined and
redirected to constitute a potent adversary of evil. Moreover, without the
modifying features of its redemptive propensity, humankind is reduced to a
fiendlike bestiality as embodied by the wholly unmodified devil. Therefore,
what appears to be Julian’s own feminine impotency at this point – that is to
say her paralysed body and inabilitiy to defend herself from a diabolic
predator – becomes, in reality, a steadfast, determined and infinitely powerful
agent by means of its conflation with Christ as embodiment of divine love. Thus,
just as we have seen Julian’s development of the motherhood imagery in her
texts lead inexorably to its climactic bursting forth in the Long Text, so we can
see a similar explosion of hitherto suppressed sexual energy in Julian’s depic-
tion of the devil’s assaults upon her in the Long Text. In turn, this sudden
flowering of both image patterns evidences a new confidence on the part of
alongside lepers as the most popular scapegoats for human depravity, this singular
depiction of the venial fiend would seem to be conflating both representatives in one
demonic, masculine body.
110
Again this is Ruud’s stance in ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye” ’, p. 199: ‘the Fiend comes up
short in the competition with the masculine God by proving to be less than a man in being
more like a beast. In another sense, the Fiend proves less than a man, in being more like a
woman. That is, in his ultimate impotence, Julian’s Fiend is portrayed as effeminate.’
161
the author to draw upon the workings and impulses of the female body to
provide an accessible means of explicating for her ‘evencristen’ those mys-
tical insights which would otherwise remain impenetrable.
Hermeneutics of Profit and Loss
As I have been arguing, the hermeneutic of fleshly and tradable bodies is one
which is central to Julian’s explication of her unique insight into the salvific
process. It not only emerges in her treatment of illness, suffering and diabolic
assault, but is everywhere incorporated into the language of her texts, pro-
ducing an exposition which is at the same time highly contemporary and
intensely mystical. This aspect of Julian’s writing has been recognised in part
by Ritamary Bradley who, in a detailed study of the author’s use of the lan-
guage of purchase and debt, demonstrates the extent to which such language
is tightly interconnected with the themes of sin, divine love and the mother-
hood of God.111 Bradley’s study concentrates on Julian’s use of the word
‘asseth’ and its conglomerate meanings of ‘atonement’, ‘satisfaction’ and
‘sufficiency’. She suggests, moreover, that Julian’s frequent use of this word
is closely connected to an equally prominent use of the language of transac-
tion – that is, words which denote buying and selling. Of course, the use of
this type of language to express theological concepts was not invented by
Julian. As early as the third century Saint Ambrose was explicit in his use of
such vocabulary to express the theme of debtor–creditor within a divine con-
text.112 Equally, Julian’s contemporary, the mystic Walter Hilton, uses a simi-
lar language to illuminate his vision of God’s justice:
Jhesu . . . made amendis to the Fadir of hevene for mannys gilt. And that
myght He wel doon, for He was God, and He oughte not for Hymsilf, but
for as mykil as He was man born of the same kynde that Adam was that first
trespacede. He ought it of His free wille for the trespas of mankynde, the
whiche kynde He took for savacioun of man of His endeles merci.113
Where Julian’s treatment of this theme differs, however, is that she associates
it throughout with the ability of the Christian to bargain with God via a trans-
action which is predicated on the body – whether Christ’s, the Virgin’s, her
own or that of her fellow Christian – and, as already demonstrated, those bod-
ies in this text tend to be overwritten as feminine or feminised. What is even
more pertinent here (something which Bradley fails entirely to take account
111
Ritamary Bradley, ‘Julian of Norwich: Everyone’s Mystic’, in Pollard and Boenig, Mysticism
and Spirituality, pp. 139–58.
112
Bradley, ‘Everyone’s Mystic’, p. 148.
113
Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, Michigan,
2000). Online at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/hilfr1.htm. Book 2,
Chapter 2, lines 59–65.
162
of in her own assessment) is that Julian’s use of this type of transactional lan-
guage in the context of the tradable body is dependent for its effect upon a
repeated use of the term ‘profytte’. Given the close connection between the
concepts of transaction and profit within contemporary society, not to men-
tion its prevalence in Julian’s writing, Bradley’s oversight is surprising and in
this section I will attempt to draw a link between the language and influence
of the marketplace and the thematic of profit and loss which is everywhere
apparent in Julian’s writing.
From the onset of the Short Text Julian adopts the term ‘profytte’ to estab-
lish what she has learned from her own bodily suffering, something which
points clearly towards her recognition of the potential embodied within her
own female corporeality to offer profit to herself and her ‘evencristen’. As she
tells her audience soon after her dramatic account of her illness: ‘And so ys
my desyre that it schulde be to euery ilke manne the same profytte that I
desyrede to myselfe’ (ST, 47). Indeed, this part of the narrative is punctuated
with references to what she had hoped to gain from such bodily suffering and
what she feels the nature of the benefit has actually been. She tells her audi-
ence, for example, that the entire experience has been for the ‘edificacyon of
houre saule’ (ST, 46) and in order to ‘love god the better’ (ST, 47). Such a juxta-
posing of the benefits she hopes to reap for her audience alongside her rep-
resentation of those experiences which will facilitate them demonstrates
clearly that Julian considers any profit gained has been part of a divinely
ordained transaction which is – crucially – predicated on her own female
body as commodity. In this sense, the salvific by-product of Julian’s mystical
insight has been bought firstly by Christ’s own suffering and subsequently by
Julian herself, by means of an infinitely suffering and tradable female body.
Such a commercialised bodily transaction is later explicitly confirmed by
Christ who demands of Julian, ‘ “Arte thou wele payde that I suffyrde for
the?” ’ (ST, 56), to which Julian’s response is enthusiastic and unequivocal:
‘ “Ha, goode lorde . . . Gramercy goode lorde, blissyd mut thowe be.” ’ Christ
then proceeds to speak for both of them and confirms the success of the trans-
action: ‘ “Hyf thowe be payede . . . I am payede” ’ (56–7). Although the con-
ventional reading of the word ‘payede’ as it is used here is in the sense of ‘well
satisfied’ along with its alternative meaning of ‘to settle a debt’,114 another
common use of the word paien was to denote the ‘gratifying of the flesh’.115
Such an association and layering of meaning is entirely typical of Julian’s lit-
erary technique, as we have seen, and here serves to implicate both a suffer-
ing and a fleshly body within the successful mystical transaction which
has been effected between Christ and Julian for the profit of all humankind.
114
MED ‘paien’ 2a, 3a and 1b.
115
MED ‘paien’ 1b. One of the earliest known usages of the word in this sexual context is
in Ancrene Wisse, p. 164, ‘þus ich sohte delit, hu ich meast mahte paien mi lustes brune’
(thus I sought delight, how I might most satisfy my burning lust).
163
In this sense, both female and Christic suffering are depicted in terms of an
economic principle which is of benefit to both giver and recipient(s), whose
roles merge as giving and receiving become indistinguishable in this context
of mutual benefit. As a result, like Cecelia, she will ultimately emerge as a
type of ‘common woman’ or procuress who trades her body in order to pro-
cure for God the love of all her ‘evencristen’. Such a transaction, in turn, will
obtain for her fellow Christians the love of God which will be ‘plentously
profitable to his lovers in erth’ (LT, 49).
Commonality and the Holy Whore
By the time Julian came to write the longer version of her experiences, this con-
cept of commonality, like that of Christ’s motherhood, is adeptly integrated
into a text which everywhere insists upon the author’s trading with her own
body as being of profit to all of humankind. Confidently she asserts: ‘for I
would it were comfort to they, for al this sight was shewid general’ (LT, 12–13),
telling us also, ‘I pray you al for Gods sake and counsel you for your owne
profitt that ye levyn the beholding of a wretch that it was shewid to, and
mightily, wisely and mekely behold God’ (LT, 13). As previously demon-
strated, because of Julian’s abject and female suffering, the self-denigrating
word ‘wretch’, whilst a generic term used to refer to fallen humanity, is also
one marked by gender in the context of the female speaker,116 further exploit-
ing the concept of trading on bodily abjection as being a female-associated
phenomenon in this text. This is something which is subsequently reinforced
by Julian’s use of the concept of ‘commonality’ – a use which is particularly
pronounced in the Long Text, as I have suggested. Commentators have fre-
quently pointed out the author’s eradication of references to her own frail
womanhood in this text, the absence of autobiographical detail and a new
sense of confidence in her own authority in what they see as an attempt to
degender her writing and make it applicable to humankind generally. Watson,
for example, comments that by the time Julian came to write the Long Text, it
was all her fellow Christians whom she envisioned as ‘leued, feble and freylle’
rather than herself as representative of womankind, and that for Julian all
human life falls into the female category of ‘sensuality’.117 However, rather
than the Long Text reflecting an attempt to degender, I would argue that the
gendering of the material goes underground to form a palimpsestic expression
of the human. In this context, Julian’s use of the female body as tradable com-
modity continues to inform her concept of ‘commonality’ which, like the
116
For a discussion of how femaleness became a synonym for humanity in the Middle Ages,
see Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 151–79.
117
Watson, ‘Remaking “Woman” ’, p. 24. On Julian’s reconfiguration of ‘sensualyte’, again see
Lichtman, ‘ “I desyrede a bodylye syght” ’, especially pp. 15–17.
164
Motherhood of God thread, becomes an increasingly insistent motif as the

Long Text gathers pace. For example, Christ now tells Julian about her mys-
tical insights that she must ‘Take it generally’ (LT, 47), and that she should
expect its relevance to be ‘nothyng in special’ (LT, 48). Moreover, the frequency
of her use of the subjective ‘I’, so prevalent in the Short Text, is now supplanted
by language which is more inclusive, her experiences being recounted in the
context of their common relevance to the whole of humankind:
And that I say of me I sey in the person of al myn even cristen, for I am
lernyd in the gostly shewing of our lord God that he menyth so; and
therefore I . . . counsel you . . . that [God] of his curtes love and endles
godenes wolde shewyn it generally in comfort of us al; for it is gods will
that ye take it with gret ioy and likyng as Iesus had shewid it onto you
all. (LT, 13)
This dynamic assertion, appearing where it does in Chapter 8 of the Long

Text, makes quite explicit the altered emphasis of the revised version and
pulls together the several threads which have emerged in this analysis.
Julian’s experiences, filtered as they are through an explicitly female and suf-
fering body and interpreted for by her by means of a set of matrices provided
by societal attitudes towards that body, are now to be shared so that all who
recognise the patterns may partake of its wisdom. Thus, commonly held
beliefs about the ‘inherent nature’ of the female, allied to Julian’s own experi-
ences of being female, are re-examined, dissected, relayered, recontextualised
and redirected to enable her ‘evencristen’ to be brought closer to Christ, the
divine lover they hold in common with her, and by means of a language they
similarly all hold in common. Above all, Julian wants to make common her
insight that divine agency shall indeed be ‘worshipful to God and plentously
profitable to his lovers in erth’ (LT, 49). Thus, the overarching themes of the
Long Text become those of union, commonality and profit, themes which are
relayed to the reader by means of their being grounded in both the maternal
and the fleshly body, and all of which are transformed from a more familiar
worldly import by their association with the transcendent.
Such a recontextualising of contemporary discourses and their ability to
yield more positive connotations has been examined in recent times by Anne
Clark Bartlett in the context of male-authored works directed at women. In her
study, Bartlett suggests that proscriptive and essentialist attitudes towards
women such as expounded in the many male-authored devotional texts in cir-
culation in the fourteenth century, could have had the effect of ‘regendering’ its
female readership in order to bring them back into line with popular attitudes
towards them.118 She asks the reader to consider whether such a process of
118
Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle
English Devotional Literature (Ithaca and London, 1995), Introduction, p. xi.
165
acculturated regendering would have had the effect of limiting female literary
activity, or whether it is possible that those ‘counterdiscourses’ within such
texts could be appropriated and exploited by the female readership and disrupt
from within the hegemony of the more misogynistic ones.119 Bartlett has,
for example, identified three major counterdiscourses as being integral to
works such as Aelred’s De Institutione Inclusarum120 and Ancrene Wisse. Running
counter to the less than complimentary views about women’s ‘nature’ which
seem to predominate in such texts, themes such as courtly love, spiritual friend-
ship and narratives of nuptial passion are interwoven and, as Bartlett suggests,
offer women alternative readings with which to counter the proscriptive senti-
ments ostensibly comprising the subject matter. According to Bartlett too, such
texts, with their emphasis on the type of nuptial union with the divine which I
have previously examined, could enable women to develop, express and recon-
textualise their own sexuality, desire and pleasure as females in a way which
was theologically orthodox. Significantly too, Bartlett politicises the female
adoption of the nuptial theme, asserting that union with the divine can be inter-
preted as ‘a thinly disguised protest movement’.121 In this scenario, both nup-
tial discourse and its sister, Passion discourse, provide powerful and liberating
alternatives to those traditional ascetic and misogynistic discourses so preva-
lent in male-authored devotional texts. Moreover, such discourses, both of
which allow for the expression of female desire and the achievement of female
jouissance, offer an opportunity for women to subvert and resist the all-pervasive
religious attitudes towards the female body promulgated in literature pro-
duced largely by the male and celibate clergy.122 Indeed, The Book of Margery
Kempe has already yielded for us the potential for self-empowerment contained
within contemplation of the Passion and a psycho-sexual devotion to the flesh-
and-blood body of the man, Jesus. In the case of Julian, although similarly predi-
cated on the workings of the female body, her treatment of it is far less
performative than is Margery’s and more systematically intellectualised.
Ultimately, however, it serves the same purpose in both texts: both the com-
plexity and the simplicity of God’s love for humankind is clearly explicated by
the foregrounding of a desiring female subject as humanity’s ideal representa-
tive as told from the perspective of the woman mystic and writer. Thus, in
Julian’s writing it is her Passion narrative which rules supreme in both texts,
both discursively and imagistically, leading on inexorably towards her cumu-
lative exposition of the motherhood of God, as previously demonstrated.
Nevertheless, as this present chapter has demonstrated, deeply embedded
within this narrative of passion and maternity is what can now be regarded
119
Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, Introduction, p. xi.
120
John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt (eds), Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum,
EETS o.s. 287 (London, New York and Toronto, 1984).
121
Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, p. 121.
122
Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, p. 132.
166
as a counterdiscourse which concerns itself with notions of profit, loss and the
trading of commonly owned female/feminised bodies within a commer-
cialised transactional arena. Moreover, as this theme begins to emerge more
insistently, it begins to conglomerate into a trope which takes on the defining
characteristics of a type of ‘holy prostitution’. In fact – and here again there
are echoes of Saint Cecelia’s own transactional activities – Julian now trans-
forms herself in the Long Text from lone recipient of the mystical experience
into one of Christ’s many lovers, by implication rendering him at the same
time lover held in common by all humanity with whose souls he willingly
and repeatedly engages in ‘comenyng and daliance’ (LT, 90). Now, Julian’s
insights assert that she and her ‘evencristen’ must actively ‘sekyn into our
lord God in whom it (knowledge of our soul) is inclosid’ (LT, 90), and that
they should ‘be led so depe into God that we verily and trewly knowen our
own soule’. This, then, for Julian, ‘is the onyng that it [human sensuality] hath
in God’, and it is a ‘onyng’ which is achieved by means of both penetration
and enclosure of and by sexual/mystical/divine bodies with release and
unity as its profit (‘Of this substantial kindhede mercy and grace springith
and spredith into us, werking al things in fulfilling of our ioy’; LT, 90). Thus
Julian leads us towards perhaps the most explicit image of union within the
text, a union which is simultaneously sexual, spiritual, maternal and mystical
and which brings together the complex and heteroglossic themes which we
have been examining. Now the open-bodied Christ invites Julian, as repre-
sentative of all Christ’s lovers on earth, to enter what amounts to a vagina-like
wound in his side.123 In an extraordinary passage which shows none of the
tentativeness in its use of sexualised imagery which characterises the
corresponding passage in the Short Text, Christ is defined in terms of the sex-
ual female as he invites Julian to enter the wound/vagina as his lover in order
to achieve union:
Than with a glad chere our lord loked into his syde and beheld, enioyand;
and with with his swete lokyng he led forth the understondyng of his
creture by the same wound into his syde withinne. And than he shewid a
faire delectabil place, and large enow for al mankynd that shal be save to
resten in pece and in love. And therwith he browte to mende his dere-
worthy blode and pretious water which he lete poure al oute for love. And
with the swete beholdyng he shewid his blisful herte even cloven on two.
(LT, 35)
123
Bynum suggests that the sexual overtones of Christ’s wounded side which are evident to
modern readers may also have existed for a medieval audience ‘who frequently spoke of
entering God’s side’, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 278. For a similar interpretation,
see also Voaden, ‘Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta’, in Watt, Women in
Their Communities, p. 74. For a particularly perceptive analysis of the importance to mys-
tical women of Christ’s wound as a feminine image see Lochrie, ‘Mystical Bodies’,
pp. 188–94.
167
If we compare this to the corresponding passage from the Short Text, it

becomes immediately evident how Julian’s confidence in her own use of
female imagery has developed since she wrote this initial account:
Fulle merelye and gladlye oure lorde lokyd into his syde and behelde and
sayde this worde, ‘Loo, how I lovyd the’, as hyf he hadde sayde: My childe,
hyf thow kan nought loke in my godhede, see heere howe I lette opyn my
syde, and my herte be clovene in twa, and lette oute blude and watere all
þat was thareyn. (ST, 58)
Whereas in this earlier version it is Christ who looks into his own wounded
side and explains its import to Julian as onlooker, in the Long Text revision
she is entreated to penetrate Christ’s wound and enter the ‘faire delectabil
place’ within, an allusion whose invocation of the erotically charged hortus
conclusus of the Song of Songs is simply too strong to be ignored.124 Moreover,
it is a place from whence flows the same blood and the water which earlier
has been established as identifiably female, thus compounding the conflation
between wound and vagina, female womb and Christ’s heart.125 As Cynthia
Krayman has demonstrated, the hortus conclusus was closely associated with
the geography of the female body in the Middle Ages,126 and here the confla-
tion of Christ here and the ‘garden of delights’ into which a multiplicity of
earthly lovers may fit (‘large enow for al mankynd’) transforms him into a
type of holy whore with ontologically open body, voracious appetite and
capacious womb. Such a representation forms a daring and innovative treat-
ment of the traditional motif of the wounded Christ which, whilst affirming
Christ’s traditional salvific role, also serves to insert the female body into
mainstream theological exposition and validate its presence there. Thus, the
words of Christ following this sacred (re)union between God and mystic,
Bride and Bridegoom, body and soul in the very place where the flesh is fis-
sured is amplified by his passionate profession of love upon union:
‘My derling, behold and se thy lord, thy God, that is thy maker and thyn
endles ioy. Se what likyng and bliss I have in thy salvation, and for my love
enioy now with me . . . Lo how I lovid the. Behold and se that I lovid the so
124
See Song of Songs 4: 12–13: ‘My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed,
a fountain sealed up./ Thy plants are a paradise of pomegranates . . .’. On Julian’s
engagement with the Song of Songs tradition see Baker, From Vision to Book, p. 25. Here
Baker uses Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentry on the Song of Songs to contextualise the
tradition in which she considers Julian to be writing. The closest she comes to recognis-
ing Julian’s own use of its erotic imagery, however, is in her acknowledgement that in
desiring God, Julian adheres to a topos of desire utilised by the women in the German
Brautmystik tradition. For a full-length study of the western tradition of the Song of Songs
see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved.
125
On the interconnection between such imagery again see Voaden, ‘All Girls Together’, in
Watt, Women in Their Communities.
126
Kraman, ‘Communities of Otherness’, p. 139.
168
mekyl ere I deyd for the that I wold dey for the; and now I hay deyd for the,
and suffrid wilfuly that I may. And now is al my bitter peyn and al my hard
travel turnyd to endles ioy and bliss to me and to the.’ (LT, 35)
Julian’s depiction of the promiscuous Christ here becomes highly person-

alised as he directs his profession of passion towards her as representative of
general humanity. Whereas, therefore, Julian’s desire in the Short Text has
been to purchase and possess her lover by means of her own individual suf-
fering, in the Long Text she not only casts herself as one of Christ’s many
lovers but also, like Cecelia, procures the quasi-sexual services of her divine
lover for a myriad of ‘evencristen’, inscribing upon this feminised Christ the
additional role of ultimate and transcendent ‘holy whore’ in the process.
Sifting through the confusing, contradictory and frequently misogynistic
inscriptions of her day, it would seem that Julian, like Margery Kempe, was
able to deftly extract their more positive associations in order to articulate her
direct experience of God’s love. In so doing, she succeeds in reinstating the
female and the feminine into the upper ranks of the salvific hierarchy, locat-
ing alongside the redefined mother the redeemed ‘common woman’ in order
to clarify God’s relationship with the ordinary Christian. Julian therefore
leaves us with a text shot through with what have become familiar and com-
forting images of both the maternal and the fleshly female which, when
inscribed upon the body of Christ, is able to help define, clarify and deliver
the process of salvation. Significantly, in a final question directed at her read-
ers at the end of the Long Text, both the unconditional love of motherhood
and that of transactional sexuality are united in one final unifying moment of
insight:
Woldst thou wetten thi lords mening in this thing? Wete it wele: love was
his mening. Who shewid it he? Love. What shewid he the? Love. Wherefore
shewid it he? For love. Hold the therin and thou shalt witten and knowen
more in the same. (LT, 135).
169
Margery Kempe: Wisdom, Authority

and the Female Utterance
I am a womman, nedes moot I speke

Or elles swelle til myn herte breke.1
These words, spoken by Proserpina to her husband Pluto in Chaucer’s

‘Merchant’s Tale’, take up a common thread in medieval literature – that of
women as being unable to control their voices. Within this paradigm, the
female voice is often represented as a monstrosity which is always threaten-
ing to break out and damage the socio-religious or the domestic status quo.2
Like a monstrous pregnancy, its progeny will necessarily burst forth and
spread its poison into the world of men. Such a discourse of the disruptive
female voice is everywhere apparent in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and
throughout the collection we see the female voice acting as a measure of the
female subject and as a reflection of the values of those men who have to deal
with her. Within this discourse – and it is a discourse which also characterises
many of those texts such as Ancrene Wisse specifically written for women –
the most acceptable woman tended to be the sealed one whose orifices were
closed and therefore less threatening. Orality and sexual activity, as examples
of female excess, needed to be contained in order to prevent the dangerous
release of a female and fleshly text, most famously exemplified, perhaps, in
Chaucer’s depiction of his Wife of Bath. Gap-toothed, garrulous and wide-
hipped, and promoting the experience of her body as a challenge to the Latinate
learning of the ecclesiastic intelligentsia,3 she embodies her own discourse
1
2
For an analysis of this theme within the Canterbury Tales, see David Wallace,
‘Household Rhetoric: Violence and Eloquence in The Tale of Melibee’, in Chaucerian
Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford,
1997), pp. 212–46. For a discussion of carnal female rhetoric in ‘The Wife of Bath’s
Tale’, see Lee Patterson, ‘ “For the wyves love of Bathe”: Feminine Rhetoric and
Poetic Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury Tales’, Speculum 58 (1983),
pp. 656–95.
3
Wallace notes that the Wife of Bath ‘holds off the Parson and everything he stands for’,
Chaucerian Polity, p. 225. For a full examination of this aspect of the Wife of Bath, see John
A. Alford, ‘The Wife of Bath versus the Clerk of Oxford: What Their Rivalry Means’, The
Chaucer Review 21 (1986), pp. 108–32.
170
MARGERY: WISDOM, AUTHORITY AND THE FEMALE UTTERANCE
and rhetoric.4 Her deafness, a permanent signifier of marital violence, and

possibly the source of what is represented as an excessively strident voice, is
more eloquent about the tensions between the sexes than any of the pages in
Jankyn’s book. Alisoun’s destruction of this symbol of scripted male rhetoric,
emerging as it does from the site of the male imaginary, attempts to establish
the text of the female body as an authoritative and unmediated location of
what Margery Kempe in her own book refers to as ‘very trewth schewyd in
experiens’ (220). That ‘trewth’ is then depicted by both Margery and Chaucer
as literally pouring forth from one of the primary exit-points of the body in
the form of a challenging and uncontainable utterance.
It is just this type of discourse of uncontained orality which Margery Kempe
draws upon in her account of her vilification and marginalisation on her
return from the Holy Land, where, as we have seen, she has been filled with
the Holy Spirit and given the gift of uncontrollable crying as a sign of her sin-
gularity (68–71). This divine gift, however, proves to be a double-edged
sword; on the one hand it provides evidence to Margery and those who sup-
port her of the presence of the Holy Spirit within her and allows her to draw
upon an esteemed tradition of prophetic and legitimised female voices, as we
shall see. On the other, its text will be misunderstood by all but a handful of
her acquaintances and will frequently be the instigator of situations of intense
danger. Again, it is this type of orality which she depicts as leading to her
arraignment at Leicester, for example (111) when, as at other times, her highly
vocal and uncompromising response to a crucifix in a local church insists
upon its own articulation and leads immediately to Margery’s arrest:
Þan þe fyr of lofe kyndelyd so hern in hir hert þat sche myth not kepyn it
preuy, for, whedyr sche wolde er not, it cawsyd hir to brekyn owte wyth a
lowde voys & cryen merueylowslyche & wepyn & sobbyn ful hedowslyche
þat many a man and woman wondryd on hir þerfor. (111)
Margery’s use of language here not only displays the embodiment of a new
sense of self within her text, but also lets slip the tensions which this embodi-
ment contains both for herself and her audience. Like the monstrous pregnancy
with which this chapter began, the sounds ‘brekyn owte . . . meruey-
lowslyche & . . . ful hedowslyche’. More importantly, the oral text here is
depicted as autonomous and resists any closure on it by Margery, the man who
has arrested her or any other authoritative agency. Quite simply – and as she
has emphasised on other occasions – she is unable to contain it.5 Moreover,
once the utterance has emerged, it necessarily enters that interpretative ‘free-
for-all’ – what Julian has earlier referred to during Margery’s visit to her in
4
For a discussion of the Wife of Bath and Prudence as the embodiments of their own dis-
course see Wallace, Chaucer’s Polity, pp. 225–6. See also Patterson, ‘Feminine Rhetoric’.
5
See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 68, 69, 70 and 235.
171
Norwich as ‘þe langage of þe world’ (43) – and from that point of utterance it
is left to her immediate audience to read and interpret it as they will. Margery’s
coming to writing and her search for a suitable scribe, therefore, can be seen as
an attempt on her own part to impose some discipline upon and provide an
accessible reading strategy for the anarchic voice which spills forth the mys-
tical utterance. In this capacity, Margery’s scribe is quick to assert from the
outset of the Proem that an understanding of Margery’s written text will not
be automatic, but will be wholly dependent upon the reader’s own reading
strategy being based upon charity (‘yf lak of charyte be not ower hynder-
awnce’; 1), as indeed should the ‘readers’ of her performing body. Those lack-
ing in this charity will later be typified as those who prefer to focus on her
articulations as expressions of socio-religious aberrancies and accuse her of
Lollardy, for example;6 others will spread rumours about her perceived
hypocrisy,7 and a very small proportion of the recipients of her oral text will
read it as divine inspiration.8 Whatever its reception, however, the insistent
oral utterance in The Book of Margery Kempe remains fundamental and is every-
where prioritised – even over the ‘authority’ traditionally provided by the
written word, and even when the narrative appears to be at its most literary.
This chapter, therefore, will argue that the textual effect of this prioritising of
the insistent and apparently unmediated female voice is carefully constructed
in order to imbue it with an authority which will ratify the woman’s ability to
ventriloquise the voice of God.
‘[Þ]e muð þe speoweð ut atter’:9 Orality and the Female Voice
Ambivalent attitudes towards the female voice pervade much of the literature
of the Middle Ages, making their presence felt in almost every literary
genre. Whilst texts such as Ancrene Wisse exhorted its audience of female
anchorites to emulate the softly spoken Virgin and speak only when neces-
sary, others such as the highly popular Lives of the virgin martyrs legitimised
a highly vocal and strident female voice – provided it were put to the use of
evangelising or conversion, as we found in the case of Saint Cecelia examined
in the previous chapter. Even historical documents such as those examined by
Karras in her study of prostitution and those scrutinised by Power, Shahar
and others in the context of women’s work in the towns suggest that social
attitudes to the female voice were rarely neutral and, if Margery Kempe’s nar-
rative is anything to go by, the loud and public use of the female voice was as
6
See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 28, 112, 124, 129, 132 and 135.
7
For example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 13, 83, 156 and 112.
8
See in particular Margery’s meeting with Julian of Norwich (42–3), to be discussed in
more detail later in this chapter. See also her conversation with Archbishop Arundel (37),
and the response to her request for an audience by Richard Caister (40).
9
Ancrene Wisse, p. 43 (the mouth that spews out poison).
172
troubling to the authorities as was a high-profile female presence.10 This is

perhaps captured perfectly in a late medieval carving in the church of Saint
Margaret in Lynn which depicts a woman scold as bridled like a horse, in
keeping with a perceived need for her to be ‘reined in’ and kept firmly under
control.11 Further afield, in a church at Chanteussé in France, the dangers
associated with the female voice are clearly illuminated in a depiction of the
devil and his henchmen gleefully writing down the spoken words of a group
of gossiping women.12 It would seem that both on the institutional level and
the social, the voice of a woman – rhetorically at least – was often deemed
tedious, dangerous and inappropriate for many public settings.
The origins of this suspicion of the female voice, of course, lay deep within
the Christian tradition. As identified in part in the previous chapter, theo-
logical and religious convictions about the nature of women were predicated on
the assumption that they were by nature corporeal, sensual, deeply carnal
and the embodiment of original sin as perpetrated by Eve.13 It was Eve’s
untrammelled desire for knowledge and experience which led to the inappro-
priate use of her voice to persuade Adam to eat the apple. It was thus a
woman’s voice which had separated humankind from God. One of the primary
results of this misogynistic tradition was proscription against women teach-
ing or preaching in public during the days of early Christianity,14 although, as
the work of Elaine Pagels as clearly demonstrated, there had also been a coin-
cidental openness towards women’s participation in the early days of the
Christian Church.15 Eventually, however, preaching and teaching by women
became associated with the more marginalised heretical sects and by the end
of the second century women’s participation in worship was explicitly con-
demned.16 Taken up with enthusiasm by Saint Paul in his epistles, this more
proscriptive attitude towards women’s public utterances, and in particular
the danger of their voices, was to feel his influence throughout the Middle
Ages and rest in uneasy tension with the legitimised voices of the biblical
women prophets such as Miriam, Huldah, Anna and the four daughters of
Philip, for example,17 as well as those Corinthian women prophets of the early
10
The findings of Karras suggest that women who were considered to be ‘scolds’ were often
accused of being ‘common women’, sometimes by their neighbours who may have had
a grudge against them. In this sense, see Karass, ‘Common Women’, pp. 138–9. Similarly,
there is evidence to suggest that men in the towns were often disgruntled by the employ-
ment of women, who were paid less and who appeared to be taking what they con-
sidered to be their jobs (Power, Medieval Women, p. 60).
11
I am grateful to Sarah Salih for pointing me towards this image.
12
‘Les femmes qui médisent, les diables qui écrivent’ (church of Chanteussé, France).
Reproduced in Levron, Le Diable dans l’Art.
13
For an overview of misogynistic attitudes see Voaden, God’s Words, pp. 19–34.
14
Voaden examines this in the context of female prophecy, God’s Words, pp. 37–40.
15
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (London, 1979), p. 61.
16
For a discussion of this development see Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, pp. 60–3.
17
Miriam was the saviour of the prophet Moses who in Micah 6: 4 is accorded equal status
to both Moses and his brother, Aaron. Huldah is the wife of Shallum who appears in
173
Church such as Maximilla, Priscilla and Quintilla who comprised part of an

alternative tradition.18 In his first epistle to Timothy, for example, Saint Paul
explicitly links the notion of woman’s inferior human and social status to her
voice: ‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a
woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’.19
In calling for both ‘silence’ and ‘subjection’, Paul clearly sees the public use of
the female voice as a direct challenge to male authority and is unequivocal
about the need for its suppression.
Such attitudes were consolidated throughout the Middle Ages, coming to
fruition in the thirteenth century in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, who
remained a pivotal influence within the intellectual climate of the period. Whilst
recognising in his Summa Theologiae that woman’s voice does have a role to play
within a domestic and maternal context (women were expected to be teachers
for their children and offer them religious and moral guidance, as suggested
previously), Aquinas nevertheless wholeheartedly supports and endorses
Pauline proscription against the public female utterance and the reasons for it:
quia communiter mulieres non sunt in sapientia perfectae, ut eis possit con-
venienter publica doctrina committi . . . unde mulieres, si gratiam sapien-
tiae aut scientiae habeant, possunt eam administrare secundum privatam
doctrinam, non autem secundum publicam.20
Women are not generally perfected in wisdom so as to be fit to be entrusted
with public teaching . . . Women, if they have the grace of wisdom or of
knowledge, can impart it by teaching privately but not publicly.
It was these types of sentiments which were taken up with particular

enthusiasm by the authors of instructional literature directed at women in an
attempt to impress upon the intended audience the need for silence and the
ever-present danger of the unchecked female voice. Furthermore, recent
research has uncovered evidence which suggests that anchoritic texts such as
Jeremiah 52. Her role runs in parallel to that of Jeremiah in that she predicts the fall of
Jerusalem and the premature death of the king. Anna and the four daughters of Philip
are New Testament prophets who appear in Luke 2: 36–8 and Acts 21: 9 respectively. For
an interesting reading of these prophets from a feminist perspective see Cullen Murphy,
The Word according to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own (London and
New York, 1998). These female prophets are also discussed briefly in the context of
medieval prophecy by Watt in Secretaries of God, p. 23.
18
These women were leaders within the Montanist movement, were accepted as prophets
and exercised considerable authority within early Christian groups. For an examination
of their influence see Karen King, ‘Prophetic Power and Women’s Authority: The Case of
The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene)’, in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of
Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamel J. Walker (Berkeley, Los Angeles and
London, 1998), pp. 21–41 (p. 21).
19
1 Timothy 2: 11–12.
20
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. Roland Potter (London and New York, 1970), 2a2ae,
vol. 45, 117: 2, p. 134.
174
Ancrene Wisse had, by the late fourteenth century, become much more widely
available to an increasingly literate population at large, causing such
antipathetic attitudes towards the female voice to be disseminated to a far
wider lay audience.21 As the author of Ancrene Wisse informs his readers:
‘Þe deouel is leas & leasunge feader. Þe ilke þenne þe stureð hire tunge i lea-
sunge ha makeð of hire tunge cradel to þe deofles bearn & rockeð hit heorn
liche as his nurrice’22 (the devil is a liar and the father of lying. She, then, who
stirs her tongue in lying makes a cradle for the devil’s child out of her tongue
and rocks it diligently, as if she were its nurse). Here the deeply gendered
exhortations of the author for the moderation of the female voice reflect per-
fectly ecclesiastic anxieties concerning the public female utterance and the
unsealed body from which it emerges.23 As we have seen previously, the
author of this work also emphasises the traditional contrast between garrul-
ous Eve and the softly spoken Virgin. As the author reminds his anchoresses –
and echoing a common topos within the literature the Middle Ages which
served to regulate the aberrant female voice: ‘Vre deore wurðe leafdi seinte
Marie þe ah to alle wummen to beo forbisne wes of se lutel speche þ nohwer
in hali srit ne finde we þ ha spec bute fowr siðen ah for se selt speche hire
wordes weren heuie & hefden much mihte’24 (Our precious Lady, Saint Mary,
who should be an example to all women, spoke so little that nowhere in Holy
Writ except four times do we find that she spoke. But because she spoke so
seldom her words were heavy and had great power). As Atkinson has shown
in her study of medieval attitudes towards motherhood as discussed in Chapter 1,
women, and especially mothers, were required to follow the quiet, stoical
and self-controlled example of the Virgin. Promoting this expectation, the
Ancrene Wisse author tells the anchoress that as a result of this bodily and ver-
bal control she ‘mei ec hopien þat ha schal singen þurh hire silence sweteliche
in heouene’ (she may also hope that she will sing, through her silence, sweetly
in heaven).25 The implications of this, of course, are that whereas female
silence can lead to apotheosis, the female voice, emerging as it does out of
Eden, will direct both speakers and listeners to sure damnation.
In spite of these types of negative attitudes frequently informing Margery
Kempe’s own use of her voice as documented in The Book of Margery
Kempe, Margery nevertheless modifies their effects by making emphatic the
21
On this, see in particular Bella Millet, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Renevey
and Whitehead, Writing Religious Women, pp. 21–40. Also useful in this context is Marleen
Cré, ‘Women in the Charterhouse? Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and
Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls in British Library, MS Additional 37790’, in the
same volume, pp. 44–62.
22
23
Using Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror as a starting point, Lochrie examines the concept
of the sealed body in ‘The Language of Transgression: Body, Flesh, and Word in Mystical
Discourse’, in Franzen, Speaking Two Languages, pp. 115–40.
24
25
175
fundamental orality of a God-inspired text made possible primarily because of

the female voice. The conclusion of Book 1 and the opening of Book 2, for
example, take up the theme of the Book’s orality which was first presented to
us in the Proem (and which will be discussed in greater depth below).
Margery’s scribe tells us he ‘had wretyn as mech as sche wold tellyn hym for
þe tym þat þei wer togydder’ (4; my emphasis). At the end of the first book and
as he begins the second, we are again presented with the curious image of
Margery and priest enclosed within the womb-like space of ‘hir chambre’
(216) in homely and intimate communication, she dictating her experiences
from memory (‘lych as þe mater cam to þe creatur in mend . . .’; 5), he writ-
ing down for public consumption the words which she is dictating to him. At
one point, this process of composition begins to draw Margery’s attentions
away from orthodox religious ritual which she has always held so dear: ‘[She]
seyd fewer bedys for sped of wrytyng þan sche had don Herys beforn. &
whan sche cam to chirche & xulde heryn Messe, purposyng to seyn hir
Mateyns . . . hir hert was drawyn awey fro þe seying . . .’ (216).
However, such anxieties about the amount of her devotional energies
which are being redirected towards this literary enterprise are allayed by
Christ, who tells her: ‘het xulde he not plesyn me more þan he don wyth howr
writyng, for dowtyr, be þis boke many a man xal be turnyd to me & beleuyn
þerin’ (216). The corporeal speech-act of Margery’s dictation is to be trans-
formed into a channel for the attainment of human salvation, and the female
voice ventriloquising the word of God substitutes for and even bypasses the
hegemony of Church ritual. Similarly, the priestly amanuensis is keen to
emphasise that the ownership of the new material constituting Book 2 is also
a record of Margery’s own speaking voice, told ‘aftyr hyr owyn tunge’ (221).
Not only can we read the word ‘tunge’ in terms of Margery’s orality, but also
in terms of the gynaecentric language which she employs in the course of
that orality. The scribe is, in fact, keen to establish for her readers that Margery
is writing the story of her extraordinary body with her extraordinary body, an
assertion which not only adds to the status of Margery as holy woman but
also enhances his own position as scribe who is privileged enough to be asked
to turn oral text into scripted treatise.26 In this sense, the scribe makes perman-
ent the epistemological drama which is enacted within and by Margery’s
body and enters the realm of human language by means of its tongue. Such a
bodily outpouring may deplete and exhaust the body’s resources, but para-
doxically, it will also replenish it as the Word rushes in and the words are
ushered forth: ‘And sche was many tyme seke whyl þis tretys was in writyng,
and, as sone as sche wolde gon abowte þe writyng of þis tretys, sche was
heil & hoole sodeynly in a maner’ (219). As M. T. Clanchy has famously
26
For an examination of the relationship between scribe and holy woman and the variety
of functions of that relationship see Catherine Mooney (ed.), Gendered Voices: Medieval
Saints and their Interpreters (Philadelphia, 1999).
176
recognised, for many medieval writers the act of writing was frequently a
speech act of dictation, rather than an activity undertaken with pen in hand.27
Rosalynn Voaden has cogently argued in her recent study of holy women
prophets, however, that the scribe could also act as a major collaborator and
shaper of both text and its reception.28 These findings are further corroborated
by Catherine M. Mooney who argues in the context of hagiographical or auto-
hagiographical texts, that when women claim to be speaking textually in their
own voices they are frequently more assertive and active than are their male
promoters in their own accounts.29 Using the case of Hildegarde of Bingen as
an initial example, Mooney points out that the two co-authors of her Vita,
Gottfried and Theoderic, preferred to render her as aristocratic abbess and
foundress, rather than the prophet of God she announced herself to be in her
own writing.30 Other scribes, however, such as John Marienwerder, who docu-
mented the experiences of Dorothea of Montau, were deeply concerned with
their own self-authorisation and had in mind a self-aggrandisement as con-
tributors to what they hoped would be the beatification of their holy
protégées and an increased status for themselves.31 Henry Suso, on the other
hand, seems to have taken great liberties with the notes written by Elsbeth
Stagel about her experiences in order to compose his own version of her
Vita;32 and in his account of Catherine of Siena’s life, Raymond of Capua
stresses Catherine’s war with demons rather than the passion for Holy
Church and intense optimism which forms the crux of her own letters on
which Raymond’s account claims to be based.33
Interestingly, Margery Kempe’s scribe would appear to possess all of these
traits in some measure – something which has, of course, contributed to much
of the debate surrounding the level of his contribution. This is also what has
brought Lynn Staley to the conclusion that Margery’s scribe is primarily a lit-
erary trope which functions on the textual level along the lines of such scribes
I have just been identifying and thus provides a number of literary functions
27
M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford and Cambridge,
Mass., 1979), pp. 125–6.
28
Voaden raises questions about the nature of the collaboration between Margery and her
scribe, stating ‘It is obvious that at least three people are writing this book, and none of
them is particularly good at it’. God’s Words, p. 113.
29
For an examination of the reception of such ‘holy women’ see Elizabeth Makowski,
‘Mulieres Religiosae Strictly Speaking: Some Fourteenth-Century Canonical Opinions’, The
Catholic Historical Review 85, 1 (1999), pp. 1–14. See also Voaden, Prophets Abroad.
30
Mooney, Gendered Voices, Introduction, p. 10.
31
Mooney, Gendered Voices, p. 11. On the relationship between Dorothea of Montau and
John Marienwerder, see Dyan Elliott ‘Authorizing a Life: The Collaboration of Dorothea
of Montau and John Marienwerder’, in Mooney, Gendered Voices, pp. 168–91.
32
See Frank Tobin, ‘Henry Suso and Elsbeth Stagel: Was the Vita a Cooperative Effort?’, in
Mooney, Gendered Voices, pp. 118–35.
33
On the relationship between Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua see Karen Scott,
‘Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic’s
Encounter with God’, in Mooney, Gendered Voices, pp. 136–65.
177
in the text.34 Foremost among these is the scribe’s ability to offer written autho-
risation for a woman who was not herself authorised to speak on matters of
God from within official culture. Moreover, as a figure who is represented as
having spent a great deal of time with her in an intimate setting, the scribe
takes on the role of witness to Margery’s life and its sanctity. In addition to this,
if, as Staley argues at length in Dissenting Fictions, Margery’s primary role is
that of social critic rather than holy woman35 the female voice used in this con-
text might appear to subvert that very culture, if left unmediated36 – indeed,
the French mystic Marguerite Porete went to the stake for it.37 However, what-
ever our final verdict on Staley’s reading of the figure of the scribe (and my
own position is that the scribe is probably both actual and tropological) it nec-
essarily brings about an important interrogation of his function, his influence
and the complicated relationship between scripted and oral text which
emerges from the pages of Margery’s book. Indeed, what is also evident from
even a cursory reading of the text is that, like those holy women authors exam-
ined by Mooney and others, she is far more proactive and vociferous in pro-
moting her own abilities and sanctity than ever her amanuensis is, or indeed
any of the other figures of male authority in her text. Indeed, her voice is
simultaneously both highly disruptive medium, as we have seen, and yet
intensely productive agent which not only defiantly preaches the word of God
and articulates what she regards as his prophesies but ultimately initiates the
final, scripted version of its oral text by persuading the priest to write it down
and by dictating it to him. Thus, rather than doggedly defying proscriptions
against the public use of her voice, by means of her scribe, Margery is able to
embark upon a self-fashioning literary performance which works with and
within the constraints in order for her version and vision of God’s truth to be
permanently recorded and disseminated. I shall argue in this context that, in
spite of the scribe’s transliteration of her oral text into the physical and written
book, the text’s literary focus remains within the spoken – and female – word
as primary vehicle for the dissemination of its mystical content. To this end,
this chapter argues against major scribal collaboration and influence, asserting
that it is the directness of the female utterance which has shaped both subject
matter and its physical record and which continues to resonate once the scribe
has finished his own important job.
34
As well as Staley’s Dissenting Fictions, see Lynn Staley, ‘The Trope of the Scribe and the
Question of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe’,
Speculum 66 (1991), pp. 820–38.
35
Staley, Dissenting Fictions. See also, ‘Trope of the Scribe’, p. 837, where Staley asserts that
the ‘scribe’s framing of Margery as holy woman serves to shift attention away from her
role as social critic’, p. 837.
36
Staley, ‘Trope of the Scribe’, p. 828.
37
On Marguerite Porete see Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, pp. 217–28 and
pp. 275–8; and Katharina M. Wilson (ed.), Medieval Women Writers (Manchester, 1984),
pp. 204–26. Here, Wilson suggests that Porete lost her life because she was unable to
draw upon the ‘safe conduct’ accorded to the female prophet, p. 217.
178
‘[A] fals loller, & a fals deceyuer of þe pepyl’: Margery and the Lollard Threat
In order to fully examine Margery Kempe’s self-fashioning as wise and holy

woman, and, by implication, her reception, it might first be useful to examine
her deployment of voice in the context of the so-called ‘Lollard threat’ which
was prevalent at the time when she was most active. It is certainly true to say
that contemporary attitudes towards Lollards – and female Lollards in par-
ticular – would have had a marked effect upon her reception by her contem-
poraries and there is much to suggest that Margery was not as unsympathetic
to the Lollard cause as some of her more orthodox professions to the contrary
would allow us to believe.
As we have seen, when Margery is at her most public and vocal, her male
detractors frequently attempt to categorise her as both sexually and reli-
giously aberrant. Operating at a time when the Lollard movement was at its
height in England, much of Margery’s unorthodox behaviour was inevitably
in danger of being branded heretical, in spite of her own frequent assertion of
orthodoxy.38 Moreover, it appears from the records of heresy trials during the
early fifteenth century that Lollardy was particularly well established in East
Anglia at this time and far more developed that has previously been
thought.39 In addition, as Margaret Aston has illustrated, Lollard teaching
helped to produce some very well-schooled women in the fifteenth century,40
amongst whom one might add to Aston’s list Margery Kempe who was her-
self also travelling around the countryside at that time and ‘talking about
things of God’.41 In spite of her spirited defences against accusations of heret-
ical activity, however, there is much evidence in The Book of Margery Kempe to
suggest that Margery was more than familiar with the tenets of Lollardy and
its perpetrators, and it is likely that, like many of those born and brought up
in areas of enthusiastic heretical activity, she had absorbed much of its
teachings and hovered around the grey areas on its margins.42 As Hudson
38
The definitive text on the Lollard movement in England during this period remains Anne
Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Tests and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988). Also
valuable is Shannon McSheffery, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard
Communities 1420–1530 (Philadelphia, 1995).
39
Tanner, Norwich Heresy Trials, p. 29. See also Claire Cross, ‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’,
in Donald Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 359–80. For evidence of a
community of Lollards living on the Norfolk–Suffolk border in the 1420s, see pp. 362–3.
40
Margaret Aston, ‘Lollard Woman Priests?’, in Margaret Aston, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 31, 4 (October, 1980), pp. 441–61 (p. 443).
41
Felicity Riddy borrows this phrase from Bunyan to head her chapter on holy women as
a religious subculture in the Middle Ages (‘ “Women talking about the things of God”: A
Late Medieval Subculture’, in Carole Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain 1150–1500
(Cambridge, 1993; second edition, 1996), pp. 104–27).
42
It would seem that Maureen Fries is of this opinion when she asserts, ‘The Lollard
Feminism of Margery’s day . . . was eminently suited to Margery’s own idea of her voca-
tion’ (‘Margery Kempe’, in Szarmach, Medieval Mystics, p. 230), although, contrary to my
179
also suggests, books and literacy were very important within Lollard circles
when the movement was at its height of popularity from the 1380s through to
the 1530s.43 Originating as a literate heresy in the form of the writings of John
Wycliffe, Lollardy became, in turn, a heresy which served to foster literacy.44
For Lollard communities, books were crucial and the popularity of the move-
ment gave rise to a demand for the Scriptures in the vernacular, the so-called
‘naked text’ of the Bible. In response to this move towards the dissemination
of the Scriptures in the vernacular, Archbishop Arundel, whom Margery met
in 1413 prior to her journey to Jerusalem (36–7), had in his Constitutions of
1409 forbidden the dissemination or ownership of vernacular biblical texts,
except under episcopal licence.45 We know for certain that Margery was famil-
iar with a variety of devotional and mystical texts written in the vernacular,
and it is significant that she first documents some of these texts in the chapter
immediately following the account of her visit to Arundel (39).46 She admits
to the influence of the Revelations of Saint Bridget for example, which was in
circulation in the vernacular during the fifteenth-century,47 and Walter
Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, which was also written in English. More interest-
ingly, in the context of the Lollard need for books, Margery Kempe tells us
that after an intolerable period of spiritual deprivation and exclusion from
church, a priest who arrived in Bishop’s Lynn probably in 141348 began to
read to her a selection of popular texts, including books like Rolle’s Incendium
Amoris and ‘Þe Prikke of Lofe’ erroneously attributed to Saint Bonaventure.49
These texts, of course, were not suspect per se under Arundel’s constitutions
but it also remains true that in circumstances where heresy was suspected,
possession of any works in the vernacular could increase the case against the
accused.50 Margery, however, then proceeds to document how this priest also
own findings, Fries also asserts that Margery ‘does not record any connection with the
Lollard movement’, p. 231.
43
Anne Hudson, ‘Laicus Litteratus: The Paradox of Lollardy’, in Biller and Hudson, Heresy
and Literacy, p. 228.
44
On this see Hudson, ‘Laicus Litteratus’, p. 229.
45
Hudson, ‘Laicus Litteratus’, p. 232. See also Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (eds),
Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud and New York, 1997), p. 19. Nicholas
Watson also examines the effect of Arundel’s Constitutions upon vernacular religious lit-
erature in ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular
Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum
70 (1995), pp. 822–65.
46
For an account of the other texts with which she was familiar see The Book of Margery
Kempe, p. 143.
47
The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 276, n. 39/24.
48
The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 320, n. 142/29–31.
49
Meech points out that this reference is to a fourteenth-century compilation entitled
Stimulus Amoris which includes the chapters from a similarly entitled work by a
thirteenth-century friar, Jacobus Mediolanensis, The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 323,
n. 153/38–154/1.
50
This is something which Watson suggests in the context of ownership of the Canterbury Tales
in Nicholas Watson, ‘The Politics of Middle English Writing’, in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne,
180
reads to her from a Bible which had been glossed by commentators (‘þe Bybyl
wyth doctowrys þerupon’; 143). Elsewhere, Margery has been most explicit
about her inability to understand Latin,51 which suggests that this may well
be a copy of the Bible in the vernacular, something which is altogether more
problematic. It is, of course, a possibility that Margery’s priest here is actually
paraphrasing the words of the Latin Vulgate as he reads it aloud to her,52 but
in view of Margery’s continual and almost obsessive need to receive spiritual
guidance, reassurance and fulfilling intellectual stimulation, it may well have
been that she had access through this priest to a Bible written in the vernacu-
lar. Lochrie rather dramatically asserts that ‘Access to vernacular translations
of the gospels was tantamount to possession by the devil’,53 whereas A. I.
Doyle has suggested that the extensive number of surviving copies of the
New Testament written in English and dating from this period would suggest
a wide market and readership – even after Arundel’s 1409 prohibition.54
Similarly, in their introduction to a recent volume of essays examining the
relationship between Lollardy and the gentry, Margaret Aston and Colin
Richmond draw attention to the wealth of evidence in wills dating from the
early fifteenth century testifying to female ownership of vernacular Gospel
texts.55 Even more relevantly, the author of The Myroure of Oure Ladye, a ‘ration-
ale’ of Divine Service written in the mid-fifteenth century for the sisters of
Syon Abbey56 (which we know Margery visited in 1434; 245–6), takes for
granted that the readers of his work would themselves probably be licensed
to possess English Bibles: ‘Of psalmes I have drawen but fewe, for ye may
haue them of Richarde hampoules drawynge, and out of Englysshe bibles if
ye haue lysence therto’.57 In the light of this evidence, we may well consider
the likelihood that Margery had access to the vernacular Bible and if this were
so, in view of the continued harassment of her own book,58 it would not have
Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An
Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520 (Exeter, 1999), pp. 331–52 (p. 345).
51
During her arrest at Leicester Margery had demanded that the steward abandon his Latin
and speak English, asserting ‘for I vnderstone not what he say’, The Book of Margery Kempe,
p. 113. It is not impossible that Margery is being somewhat disingenuous here, as on other
occasions in her book she is represented as being able to quote lines and passages from
the Vulgate at will. However, much of the Latin she does utilise in her Book could have
been learned by rote and absorbed during her years of regular church attendance.
52
Meech also makes this point in The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 276, n. 39/23–5.
53
54
I. A Doyle, ‘English Books in and out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII’, in
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (eds), English Court Culture (London, 1983), p. 169.
55
Aston and Richmond, Lollardy and the Gentry, p. 18.
56
The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS e.s. 19 (London, 1873).
57
Myroure of Oure Ladye, p. 3.
58
It seems likely that Margery was writing her book with the help of the first scribe in 1430
and abandoned it in 1431 upon the first scribe’s death. The revisions and addition of
Book 2 were made in 1436–8. Bishop Alnwick’s persecution of Lollards at Norwich took
place in 1428–31 and three men were burnt at Norwich alone in 1428. For an account of
this persecution see Tanner, Norwich Heresy Trials, pp. 7–10.
181
been something which either she or her amanuensis would have wanted to
advertise overmuch through its pages.
Margery’s geographical links with Lollardy are further intensified by her
connection with other local ecclesiastics who may have had Lollard lean-
ings. Amongst these figures was Richard Caister, a Norwich priest whom
Margery visits on a number of occasions for spiritual guidance and who
offers her wholehearted support following an initial scepticism.59 According
to John Bale in his Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie . . . Catalogus,
although considered to be a pious and erudite man who was eventually
canonised, Caister nevertheless inclined towards Lollardy, disapproving
vociferously of the clerical abuses of the time.60 If this were the case, it
would go some way to explaining what can now be read as Margery’s some-
what overdetermined apologia for Caister with which her account of her
first visit to him culminates. Here, Margery heaps praises upon Caister
whilst evidently recounting another otherwise unrecorded incidence of her
being arraigned for heterodoxy, this time in her own East Anglia (‘sche was
on a tyme moneschyd to aper before certeyn offycerys of þe Bysshop to
answer to certeyn artyculys which xuld be put ageyn hir be þe steryng of
envyows pepyl’; 40). Caister however, we are told, leaps to Margery’s
defence going ‘with hir to her hir examynacyon & delyueryd hir fro þe
malys of hyr enmys’ (40). The turn-around of Caister from cynic to saviour
as recorded in this section of narrative would suggest that Margery and he
had more in common, perhaps, than merely the shared love of God she
would have us believe.
Another likely associate of Margery’s was William Sawtre who took on the
unenviable infamy of being the first Lollard to be burned in England in the
early fifteenth century following Arundel’s statute De Heretico Comburendo of
1401, which legislated for the burning of heretics.61 Sawtre, an unbeneficed
chaplain who was first arraigned and convicted for heresy in 1399, was
burned publicly some time after 2 March 1401. Before his arrest in 1399, he
had been a priest in Margery Kempe’s own parish church and she would
probably have had regular contact with him during that time, although he
remains singularly absent from her narrative.62 Whatever his influence had
been within the parish, it must nevertheless be considered that Margery
would have been aware of Sawtre’s heretical inclinations and would certainly
have been aware of his later notoriety as the first heretic to be burned
in England.
59
See The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 38–40.
60
John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie . . . Catalogus (Basle, 1557–9), 1, p. 556,
as cited in The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 276, n. 38/12.
61
For an account of the drawing up and legislating of this statute and how it affected heretics
like Sawtre, see A. K, McHardy, ‘De Heretico Comburendo, 1401’, in Aston and Richmond,
Lollardy and the Gentry, pp. 112–26.
62
See p. 35, nn. 24 and 25.
182
In this context, it cannot be without significance that Margery’s docu-

mentation of one of the incidents when she is accused of Lollardy, this time
at Canterbury (23), immediately precedes her successful interview with
Archbishop Arundel. Arundel, of course, was notorious for his enthusiastic
persecution of Lollards and Margery would surely have been aware that he
had presided at the trials of William Sawtre. With this in mind, and in view
of having been accused of Lollardy minutes before her audience with the
archbishop, Margery’s emphasis (which one, perhaps, might again qualify
as overemphasis) of Arundel’s unequivocal support for her can therefore be
read as a strategic screen behind which she can hide from public scrutiny a
possible tendency towards Lollard sympathies. However, not only is
Margery a woman who insists upon her God-given authority to speak in a
world which would proscribe her voice, at the same time she must every-
where assert her Christian orthodoxy in order to carve out her own particu-
lar space of relative safety in which to operate. This encounter with
Arundel therefore serves her purpose perfectly. Entering the company of the
anti-Lollard zealot and still carrying the recent interpellation of Lollardy
upon her, here Margery counters it by dramatically overstating Arundel’s
enthusiasm for her female voice and insights: ‘And he fond no defawt
þerin but aprevyd hir maner of leuyng & was ryght glad þat owyr mercyful
Lord Cryst Ihesu schewyd swech grace in owyr days, blyssed mot he be’
(36–7).
Margery’s immersion in the politico-heretical climate of the early fifteenth
century is further substantiated by the obtuse link she sets up in her book
between herself and that most infamous heretic of her day, Sir John Oldcastle.
Also known as Sir John Cobham, John Oldcastle was convicted after a trial in
September 1413, a time which coincides almost exactly with the period in
which Meech and Allen place Margery Kempe’s visit to Arundel.63 That same
autumn, Oldcastle managed to escape from the Tower and flee to
Herefordshire, where he lay low for another four years until being finally
recaptured in 1417 – at which point he was hanged, drawn and quartered in
the presence of the duke of Bedford. This would have meant that he was still
at large when Margery was facing her greatest threats during her arraign-
ments for heresy at Leicester, York and Beverley. In the latter location, brought
before the archbishop of York for a second time in as many weeks, two
yeomen of the duke of Bedford accuse Margery of being ‘Combombis daugh-
ter’ whom he had sent ‘to beryn lettrys abowtyn þe cuntre’ (132). These ‘let-
trys’, of course, probably refer to the medium facilitating the organisation of
the Lollard insurrection which was orchestrated by Oldcastle in hiding. At the
same time, however, it invokes the dissemination of vernacular material by
irrepressibly ‘arrogant’ women who, according to Reginald Peacock, archbishop
63
The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 274, n. 35/28–9.
183
of Chester, ‘make themselves so wise by the Bible, that they are most haughty
of speech regarding clerks’.64 Like Margery, the public voices of these women,
aired in criticism of male ecclesiastic authority, are seen as presumptuous,
usurping and dangerous and therefore naturally to be considered heretical.
Here the court is told of the duke of Bedford’s anger with Margery, and of the
certainty that ‘he wyl han hir’ (132). Hope Emily Allen notes that the duke of
Bedford had many encounters with claims of diabolical manifestations in his
administration of the kingdoms of England and France and posits that this
might have made him very ambivalent about Margery’s claims to direct
access to the word of God.65 She proceeds to assert that in addition to these
doubts, ‘he was in direct contact with religious persons who knew Margery
and thoroughly distrusted her claims as a mystic’.66 In conjunction with this
accusation, Margery is later summoned to the chamber of the archbishop
where he puts to her a further accusation which has been made against her –
this time that she has used her disruptive voice inappropriately in persuad-
ing the Lady Greystoke to leave her husband (133). Elizabeth Greystoke was
the daughter of Lady Westmorland whom Margery admits to having visited
two years previously; Lady Westmorland was none other than Joan de
Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt, and from the nature of Margery’s
response, someone with whom she was on familiar terms. This connection
between Margery and the de Beaufort family is further reinforced towards the
end of Book 2 when Margery describes how she is invited to dinner with a
company of people from ‘þe Cardenalys hows’ with whom she had ‘a gret
fest & ferdyn ryth wel’ (244). This cardinal was one Henry Beaufort, legitimated
son of John of Gaunt, sister to Joan de Beaufort and half-brother to Henry IV.67
The house of John of Gaunt, of course, had been patron to Wycliffe himself,
albeit before his beliefs had consolidated into a heresy. Indeed, as Margaret
Aston and Colin Richmond suggest, John of Gaunt’s own pro-Lollard inclin-
ations were probably responsible for keeping the father of Lollardy alive and
out of prison.68 It would seem then, that far from being unconscious or uncon-
cerned about the political scene beyond her own local milieu as is often
64
As quoted in Aston, Lollardy and the Gentry, p. 51.
65
The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 316–17, n. 132/23 ff. Unfortunately, Allen never produced
the promised introduction in a second volume in which she had hoped to discuss this
point further.
66
For an account of the duke of Bedford’s involvement in the campaign which led to the
burning of Joan of Arc, see M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973),
pp. 386–8. The duke of Bedford is recorded as having referred to Joan as ‘a disciple and
limb of the fiend, called the Pucelle, that used false enchantments and sorcery’, in
H. Nicholas (ed.), Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vol. 4 (London, 1834–7),
p. 223, as cited in Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 386.
67
It is also significant that Margery’s prophetic abilities have earlier come into play in the
context of the erroneously reported death of Henry Beaufort (as bishop of Winchester).
On hearing the report of the bishop’s death, nevertheless Margery ‘had felyng þat he
leuyd’ (The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 172).
68
Aston and Richmond, Lollardy and the Gentry, Introduction, p. 7.
184
assumed, Margery was more closely embroiled in the Lollard controversy of

her day than is usually considered. In recounting this episode at Beverley,
however, Margery places herself strategically between the powerful political
poles of the vehemently anti-Lollard duke of Bedford and the pro-Lollard
John of Gaunt, locating her body firmly at the site of contest between these
two figures. It is from this location that her own quasi-heretical, quasi-orthodox
voice rings out and such a position would suggest a protagonist who is
inadvertently embroiled in the religious politics of her day and who seeks to
suppress the extent of that involvement in her text by her production of
screens which masquerade as orthodoxy. These in turn, serve to shield her
from definitive categorisation by the male establishment and allow her to con-
struct her own subject positions of visionary, prophet and preacher, drawn
from what would appear to be a conglomeration of inherited traditions.69
Thus, it would seem that Margery’s repeated denials of any heretical inclin-
ations are a little disingenuous on her part. If Lollardy was characterised as
a reading community based on a firm commitment to the private reading of
the Scriptures in the vernacular,70 for example, then she was certainly part of
such a community. Although it seems that women were not necessarily
drawn to the Lollard heresy because of their gender,71 Lollardy nevertheless
offered both men and women a structure in which they had access to the
Scriptures, opportunity for intellectual analysis and exegesis and allowed
them unmediated access to the Holy Spirit via their own vernacular. In view
of this evidence, one can hardly believe that Margery Kempe did not find
such a structure an intensely attractive option in her quest to forge a subject-
ivity for herself as woman of wisdom and prophetic insight.
Apostless, Sibyl and Margery’s Own Cité des Dames
Margery Kempe’s heterodox tendencies, of course, emerge textually from a

very personal and embodied experience of Christ, and her self-representation
as a woman on the margins of organised heterodoxy are suggestive of more
than a sympathy with aspects of its tenets. Positioned somewhere in the
lacuna between accepted orthodoxy and potential heresy, it is evident from
69
This is something pointed out by Watt who, like Voaden, examines Margery Kempe
within the context of traditions of female prophecy and political influence, but asserts the
need to examine the phenomenon of female prophecy within its specific socio-religious
context. Watt concludes that Margery’s prophetic activities ‘were largely confined to her
immediate social and religious communities, and did not take an overtly political turn’
(Secretaries of God, p. 4).
70
McSheffery, Gender and Heresy, p. 58.
71
This is something agreed upon by Claire Cross in ‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’ and
Shannon McSheffery, who indicates the importance of the reading of books in Lollard cir-
cles in Gender and Heresy, p. 4. Similarly, Aston and Richmond assert the importance of
vernacular texts to women in Lollardy and the Gentry, pp. 18–19.
185
the outset that she must find a way of authorising her problematic voice by
means of that same voice. In this context, most commentators are keen to
point out what they recognise as an obsessive search for patriarchal approval
for the public use of this voice within Margery’s account of her life. Most
recently, in her examination of the relative successes as visionaries of Saint
Birgitta and Margery Kempe, Voaden has concluded that Margery’s lack of an
influential male supporter and her failure to engage fully with the discourse
of discretio spirituum led to an ultimate failure to convincingly represent her-
self as a prophetic holy woman.72 This is a claim which will be investigated a
little later in this chapter, but on re-examination of the text it is clear that one
of the primary ways in which Margery seeks to validate herself is by estab-
lishing alongside an often ambivalent male authority a community of female
voices with varying degrees of authority.
I have already examined in Chapter 3 the extent to which Margery’s imitatio
is dependent upon an identification with the transgressive sexuality and
subsequent redemption of Mary Magdalene. Her importance to Margery,
however, is likely to have been even more substantial than my initial exam-
ination allowed for. Within the context of her prophetic propensities and the
public use of her voice in an evangelising capacity, Mary Magdalene is
another figure who would have served to further legitimise Margery’s public
ministry and insistent use of her own female voice. As Katherine Ludwig
Jansen has demonstrated,73 from the early twelfth century onwards, Mary
Magdalene was widely referred to as Apostola Apostolorum (Apostless to the
Apostles), a title initially awarded to her because of her role in announcing
the risen Christ to the apostles, as recorded in John 20: 1–8. However, with the
rise in popularity of the apocryphal material regarding the Magdalene
already examined, which emphasises her evangelical role in Gaul following
the crucifixion and her widespread conversion of the ‘pagan’ populace there,
the epithet seems gradually to have become a commonplace in the rhetoric of
religious commentators and preachers.74 Indeed, even the proscriptive Odo of
Cluny (who, if we remember, had famously likened women to excrement)
had confirmed Mary Magdalene’s apostolic role in a sermon preached on the
saint’s feast day in the eleventh century, when he referred to her as apostolorum
consors (consort of the Apostles).75 The findings of Salih, however, suggest
72
Voaden, God’s Words.
73
Katherine Ludwig Jansen, ‘Maria Magdalena: Apostolorum Apostola’, in Kienzle and Walker,
Women Preachers and Prophets, pp. 57–96. See also Haskins, Mary Magdalen, pp. 55–94 for a
detailed account of this tradition. For a brief discussion of the influence of the Magdalene
as apostless upon Margery Kempe see Salih, Versions of Virginity, pp. 204–5, and Salih, ‘The
Digby Saints Plays’, p. 127. Also useful in this context is Alcuin Blamires, ‘Women and
Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy and Saints’ Lives’, Viator 26 (1995), pp. 135–52.
74
Jansen, ‘Maria Magdalena’, p. 71.
75
Odo of Cluny, Sermo II in Veneratione Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, Patrologia Latina 133,
col. 714. The various definitions for ‘consors’ are ‘partner’ (Lewis and Short, Latin
186
that contemporary literature was somewhat slower to adopt the epithet,

although I would argue that it is highly significant that the only extant texts
in which Mary Magdalene does retain the interpellation are ones which bear
close intertextual connections to Margery’s own – de Voragine’s Golden Legend
account, the writings of Pseudo-Bonaventure and the Digby Mary Magdalen.76
As Jansen also points out, the proselytising voice of Mary Magdalene pro-
vided a type of ‘salvific symmetry’ which helped to negate the illicit use of the
female voice as undertaken by her foremother, Eve, and by the later Middle
Ages, the Magdalene in this role was appearing regularly in iconographic
depictions and became a popular subject for the sermons of mendicant
preachers throughout Europe77 as well as making a regular appearance in
Lollard texts as a missionary preacher.78 As we know from Margery’s narra-
tive, mendicant preachers were a commonplace in Bishop’s Lynn and fre-
quently the source of much anxiety for her because of their lack of tolerance
for her loud cryings in church (e.g. 152). Indeed, her access to this type of ser-
mon is further corroborated when Margery tells her audience in the context
of the vision of Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ discussed below: ‘The
creatur had so gret swem & heuynes in þat worde [Christ’s words to Mary
Magdalene] þat euyr whan sche herd it in any sermown, as sche dede many
tymys, sche wept, sorwyd, & cryid’ (197). As a result, it would seem that
Margery would have been fully conversant with Mary Magdalene in this role,
although she never overtly refers to her as ‘apostless’. Indeed, following the
example of Saint Birgitta, Margery appears to prefer to engage with the wide-
spread non-scriptural belief that it was the Virgin to whom the risen Christ
first appeared on Easter Day and not Mary Magdalene (75). Nevertheless, in
a later meditation which leads to a vision in which she experiences the
appearance of the risen Christ in the garden alongside Mary Magdalene (‘þe
creatur was in hir contemplacyon with Mary Mawdelyn’; 197), Margery
assumes the Magdalene’s role as apostless by association when Christ
instructs her, ‘ “Go telle my bretheryn & Petyr þat I am vpreson” ’ (197) which
Mary Magdalene proceeds to undertake with joy. Margery, however, is rather
sceptical of the Magdalene’s ability to be joyful at this juncture because of
Christ’s refusal to let her kiss his feet (‘ “Towche me not” ’.). Moreover, in one
of the more passionate of his expressions of love for Margery on an earlier
occasion (as discussed in Chapter 3), Christ has previously expressed his
desire for Margery to kiss his mouth, his head and his feet (90). In this cap-
acity, there are firm echoes from de Voragine’s life of Mary Magdalene as recorded
in his Golden Legend which draws an explicit link between her mouth, her
Dictionary, 1b), ‘wife’ (2a) or ‘consort’ (2b). The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British
Sources also renders it ‘consort’ or ‘partner’.
76
Salih notes these texts in Versions of Virginity, pp. 204–5.
77
Jansen, ‘Maria Magdalena’, p. 69.
78
Blamires, ‘Women and Preaching’, pp. 137–8.
187
voice and her apostolic role: ‘all wondered at her . . . for her eloquence, which
eloquence was not indeed a matter of surprise, of lips that had touched the
Lord’s feet’.79 In the face of his refusal to allow Mary Magdalene the same
privilege in Margery’s text,80 Christ’s ardently granted permission to Margery
to touch his feet with her own lips endorses both her own role as announcer
of his risen self to her audience and the concomitant salvation it will offer
them. Thus we see Margery taking full advantage of this type of represen-
tation of Mary Magdalene which, as Jansen has demonstrated, had virtually
taken over by this stage in the Middle Ages, inserting itself into the space
where the Church’s former hegemony on the issue of women’s preaching
had begun to fracture. The major point of slippage, of course, was that
whilst running counter to the orthodox line on women’s voices as estab-
lished by the Church, the emergence of the Magdalene as apostless and
evangelist in sermons, hymns, liturgical drama and church iconography
was also produced in the service of the Church and thus provided an infin-
itely malleable role-model for the equally orthodox and heterodox
Margery Kempe.
Allied to the biblical and hagiographic female voices already discussed, all
these authorised female voices play a part in enabling Margery to legitimise
the use of her own voice in what she evidently regards as her performance of
similar roles. However, there remains one further tradition of authorised
female vocalness to examine which may well have had an influence upon
Margery’s self-representation as evangelist and her attempts to authorise her
right to adopt that role. This is a tradition which predates the Christian trad-
ition but had managed to make an almost seamless transition from a pagan
past into mainstream Christianity and continued to coexist somewhat
uneasily alongside the more misogynistic traditions examined at the begin-
ning of this chapter. Equally as dangerous as the female voice crying out of
Eden, but admired as much as it was feared, the God-inspired female voice of
the ancient Sibyl was perhaps the earliest of idealised female prophetic voices
to be heard crying out from the wilderness. Moreover, it is an authoritative
female voice which has reverberated obscurely through time, has been
shaped and modified by a succession of cultures and has permeated much of
western thought and literature in the process.81 The influence of this figure
79
De Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1, p. 357.
80
See The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 193–4. On this occasion, however, it is significant that
it is the Virgin, not Christ himself, who grants Mary Magdalene this permission.
81
For a useful account of the development of the figure of the Sibyl in myth, legend and
folklore, see Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde, pp. 67–96. For an examination of the
role of the Sibyl in classical antiquity see H. W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in
Classical Antiquity (London and New York, 1988). For the significance of the Sibyl in the
Middle Ages see McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla’, and Dronke, ‘Hermes and the
Sibyls’. Also helpful for a reading of the Sibyl in the context of body theory see
Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., and
London, 1990).
188
upon visionary women such has Margery, however, has remained largely
unexamined, in spite of a wealth of evidence to suggest that there was an
upsurge of interest in the Sibyl and her prophetic voice during the high to late
Middle Ages.
The first fragment of information which we have about the tradition of the
Sibyl in antiquity comes from Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) who refers to ‘the Sibyl
with the frenzied lips’.82 Early references to a sibylline figure are also to be
found in Aristophanes and Plato, who presuppose a single prophetic female
figure who speaks for the god and foretells future events.83 However, by the
fourth century BC the number of sibyls seems to have proliferated and their
prophetic pronouncements tended to be apocalyptic, concerning themselves
with changes of dynasties, approaching disasters for cities and empires, and
the return of a Golden Age. Originating in the Middle East in the region of
Anatolia, the history of the Sibyl is one of metamorphosis and complex dis-
guise. Working her way through ancient Greek tradition, she emerges again
and takes up an official role in Roman religion, although many of her pagan
prophetic pronouncements have been lost over the course of time. What is
clear, however, is that these pronouncements were originally associated with
frenzy and ecstasis, resulting in a bodily text which precluded her from writ-
ing well or even from speaking coherently – something reflected in the
obscure and ambiguous nature of her utterances.84 By the second century AD
Judaeo-Christian authors had begun to rekindle interest in the sibylline trad-
ition, largely because a pronouncement by the Cumaean Sibyl, as documented
in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, was widely believed to have been a prophecy of the
birth of Christ: ‘Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas/ . . ./ iam redit et
virgo’ (Now the last age of Cumae’s prophecy has come/ . . ./ Now too
returns the virgin).85 Similarly, the Erythraean Sibyl was considered by early
Christians to have been the author of an obscure acrostic poem which was
also interpreted as a forseeing of the birth of Christ.86 Thus, the prophetic
82
This fragment (fragment 92) is preserved in Plutarch, The Pythian Oracle, 397a, as cited in
McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla’, p. 8. For a detailed examination of the Pythia in the
context of Greek attitudes towards the female body, see Sissa, Greek Virginity, especially
pp. 2–5, 9–14, 25–35, 49–51 and 168–72.
83
McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla’, p. 8.
84
Sissa asserts a link between divinatory speech and female sexuality which also embodies
a paradox: on the one hand the body of the Sibyl is wide-open and penetrated by
truth which then brims over into public utterance. On the other hand, the same body is
depicted as a ‘vessel, hermetically sealed and virginal and utterly silent when not in
proximity to men (Greek Virginity, p. 5).
85
Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–IV, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (London and
Cambridge, Mass., 1957), Eclogue IV, lines 4–6, p. 28.
86
Augustine, City of God against the Pagans, ed. E. H. Warmington, 7 vols (London and
Cambridge, Mass., 1968), V, xvii, pp. 442–4. Here Augustine attests to the fact that the
first letters of each line of the poem spell out ‘ichthys’ (fish), standing for ‘Iesous Christos
Theou hyios Soter’, which translates as ‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour’. For a
discussion of this poem see McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla’, p. 12.
189
female figure of the pagan Sibyl managed the transition into mainstream
Christianity and by the second century AD commentators such as Justin and
Tertullian were referring to her with the utmost respect. In fact, she came to
be quoted more often than the Old Testament prophets,87 and was taken up
vigorously as a propagandist tool in the fight to eradicate paganism in the
Christian West.
A crucial point in the history of the Sibyl in the context of Christian trad-
ition and her reputation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, however,
was forged by an endorsement of her by Saint Augustine in his City of God
against the Pagans in which he proclaims ‘in eoroum numero deputanda
videatur qui pertinent ad civitatem’ (she is clearly to be assigned to the num-
ber of those who belong to the City of God).88 There are clear resonances here
between the Sibyl’s being assigned by Augustine to the City of God and
Margery Kempe’s own documentation of an angel dressed in white appear-
ing to her in the form of small child to display her name as included in the
Book of Life just below that of the Trinity – thus guaranteeing for her her own
place within the heavenly city:
[A]non aperyd verily to hir syght an awngel al clothyd in white as mech as

it had ben a lityl childe beryng an howge boke beforn hym. þan syd þe crea-
tur to þe childe, er ellys to þe awngel, ‘A,’ sche seyd, ‘þis is þe Boke of Lyfe.’
And sche saw in þe boke þe Trinite al in gold. Þan seyd sche to þe childe,
‘Wher is my name?’ þe childe answeryd & seyd, ‘Her is þi name at þe
Trinyte foot wretyn’. (206–7)
Evoking the words of Augustine, too, Christ will later reassure Margery as to
this privileged status, telling her, ‘Dowtyr, loke þat þu be now trewe & stedfast
& haue a good feith, for þi name is wretyn in Heuyn in þe Boke of Lyfe’ (207).
The endorsement of the theological importance of the female prophetic fig-
ure as displayed by Augustine was also adopted by the normally cautious
Thomas Aquinas, resulting in increased contemporary enthusiasm for the
prescient. Again in the Summa Theologiae Aquinas declares: ‘unde etiam
Sibyllae multa vera praedixerunt de Christo’ (so even the Sibyls predicted
much that was true of Christ),89 an admission which lays the ground for the
validity of the prophetic insights and mystical awarenesses of a whole series
of holy women in the later Middle Ages. This type of popularity enjoyed by
the figure of the Sibyl (who by this time had begun to lose her idealised sta-
tus and had fragmented into a variety of individual figures) is also attested to
by the extraordinary number of extant manuscripts (130 in all) in which are to
be found the pronouncements of the Tiburtine Sibyl. Similarly, in another trad-
ition the Cumaean Sibyl is depicted as showing the Emperor Augustus a
87
McGinn, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla’, p. 13.
88
Augustine, City of God, V, xviii, p. 447.
89
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae XL, 2a2ae, qu. 172: art. 6, p. 48.
190
vision of the Virgin Mary in heaven,90 a popular tropological image which

reimerges in the writing of both Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, both
of whom on several occasions respond textually to their own mystical
insights by revealing visions of the Virgin to their readers.91 It would appear,
therefore, that by the late Middle Ages the tradition of the wise and prophetic
holy woman, inspired by God through whom he spoke and announced his
sacred Word fed into those other traditions which I have just been examining
which also legitimised a vocal female prophetic or evangelising voice. In turn,
these rested in an uneasy tension with those far more misogynistic depictions
of women also examined, which reached their most grotesque expression,
perhaps, in the fabliau tradition which contains a whole host of leaky and gar-
rulous old women.92 It was this apparent dichotomy which, like Margery
Kempe, the French writer, Christine de Pizan, writing in France in the fif-
teenth century, was similarly able to exploit in her Livre de la Cité des Dames,
in order to counter what she regarded as an all-pervasive misogyny within
male-authored literature. In Part II of the Livre, for example, particularly sec-
tions 1–6, Christine de Pizan uses the narrative voice of the unorthodox
female figure of Droitture to tell tales of women whose authority lies outside
that of patriarchal law and through whom she identifies a location of elusive
female power. For Christine, this power is best represented by the figures of
ten now fully individuated sibyls who manifest for her various aspects of the
ideal from which they originated and which Christine identifies as the secret
and hidden wisdom of the female in the world. The Lady Reason, like
Droitture, has prophesied to Christine telling her: ‘Mais je te prophetise, come
vraye sebille’93 and Christine is then led by the Sibyl in a vision and shown
the fountain of Sapience with which sibylline ‘truth’ is closely associated and
which constitutes the source of all female-centred knowledge.94 For Christine,
sibylline wisdom and prescience belongs to an initially non-textual and extra-
legal tradition which lays claims to female authority and wisdom and whose
influence calls for a revision of history and the ‘deconstruction of the cities
90
See, for example, Curt F. Buhler (ed.), The Epistle of Othea, trans. Stephen Scrope, EETS o.s.
264 (London, 1970), p. 120. Maureen Quilligan also examines this legend in The Allegory
of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames (Ithaca and London, 1991), p. 144.
91
See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 50; and Long Text, p. 36–7.
92
For a useful examination of this type of representation see the essay by Jane E. Burns,
‘This Prick which is Not One: How Women Talk Back in Old French Fabliaux’, in Linda
Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (eds), Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval
Literature (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 188–212. This is also something observed by Jansen
who suggests that the endorsement of women’s speech by such figures of female
authority stood out in stark contrast to the vilification and mockery heaped upon
the ‘garrulous, gossipy woman who inhabited much of medieval discourse’ (‘Maria
Magdalena’, p. 79).
93
Christine de Pizan, Livre de la Cité des Dames I, iv. Quoted in Quilligan, Allegory, p. 105.
94
The Christian tradition of sapiential theology with which the Sibyl was closely associated
is something which will be examined in the context of Julian of Norwich in the follow-
ing chapter.
191
of men’.95 Although, like Margery’s own ‘wisdom’, it does become scripted in

an attempt to make permanent its pronouncements, Christine depicts the
sibyls as powerful and authoritative female figures who are united within a
tradition which provides an oral alternative to what she regards as inflexible –
and erroneous – masculine, misogynistic, scripted rhetoric. In the words of
Maureen Quilligan, it is an orality which ‘speaks the transtemporal genera-
tivity of female knowledge’.96 Not only that, of course, but for Christine the
Sibyl represents a female authority which is not reliant on traditional hier-
archical distinctions based on gender, but forms part of a community of women
who draw on the authority of legitimised female voices and their articulation
of prescient female knowledge.
In her original, idealised role, the voice of the Sibyl was legitimised
through her ventriloquism of the word of the male god and thus she could be
viewed in terms of privileged, albeit passive, vessel in which that word was
housed. Like the scripted version of Christine de Pizan’s sibyls, her voice and
pronouncements, although still recognisably female, were consequently over-
layed with masculine ‘legitimacy’ which served to contain, or else screen the
‘threat’ posed by her voice’s apparently unruly, unpredictable and uncontrol-
lable tendencies. Its very lack of recognisable boundaries, however, also made
it the perfect conduit for the limitless and the ineffable, and the unfathomable
body of the ‘dangerous’ female was therefore able to take up a place within
mainstream Christian prophecy alongside Miriam, Huldah, Anna, the daugh-
ters of Philip and others, to be drawn upon later both explicitly and implicitly
by a succession of female holy women and writers such as Margery, Julian
and Christine for purposes of authorisation.
It is therefore highly likely that this venerable tradition of authorised
female utterance was covertly informing Margery Kempe in her attempt to
counter public anxieties regarding the disruptive use of her own speaking
voice and bodily utterances. As a woman apparently operating alone and
refusing to adhere to accepted guidelines about the appropriate use of that
voice (indeed, attempting to redefine the very category of ‘appropriateness’)
Margery Kempe’s potential as a catalyst for public disorder is quickly recog-
nised by the courts of Leicester, York and Beverley, as we have seen. Indeed,
the vision of female-invoked public disorder is rarely far from the forefront of
male anxieties in the Book and it is significant that within days of her York trial
where Margery has proclaimed ‘I come in no pulpytt’ (126), the court’s anx-
ieties are revealed as fully justified when her appearance on the streets of
Hessle incites a crowd of women to chase after her, threatening her with their
distaffs (129). Within a day or so she is again under arrest – this time in
Beverley, accused of being a ‘fals heretyk’ (229). Now, in an example of the
95
This phrase appears in Roberta Davidson, ‘Suspicion of the Sibyl: Truth and Authority in
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames’, unpublished paper, as quoted in Quilligan, Allegory, p. 117.
96
Quilligan, Allegory, p. 128.
192
strategic crafting of her material so often denied her by critics, Margery

details her defiant preaching from the makeshift ‘pulpit’ of an upstairs win-
dow in the house to which she has been confined under house arrest, from
where she proceeds to win over of the women of the town:
Þan stode sche lokyng owt at a wyndown, tellyng many good talys to hem
þat wolde heryn hir, in so meche þat women wept sor & seyde wyth gret
heyynes of her hertys, “Alas woman, why xalt þu be brent?” Than sche
preyid þe good wyfe of þe hows to heuyn hir drynke, for sche was euyl for
thryste. And þe good wife seyde hir husbond had born awey þe key, wher-
for sche myth not comyn to hir ne heuyn hir drynke. And þan þe women
tokyn a leddyr & set up to þe wyndown & houyn hir a pynte of wyn in a
potte & toke hir a pece, besechyng hir to settyn awey þe potte preuyly & þe
pece þat whan þe good man come he myth not aspye it. (130–1)
It would be difficult to find a more overt example of a woman taking up the

role of preacher in medieval literature outside traditional hagiography.97 Not
only does Margery represent herself here explicitly in terms of a preacher in
the pulpit, but she also firmly regenders both the role and the location by
means of this self-representation. The scene is further feminised by the sup-
port of the jailor’s wife who actively encourages Margery in her husband’s
absence, and the explicitly female audience to whom she preaches. Thus, just
as Christine de Pizan envisaged a female wisdom which operates outside the
legitimising influence of male authority, so Margery here depicts herself as
disseminator of that same female wisdom in the absence of the male and
within a self-supporting female community. In effect, the urban centre of
Beverley has become a true Cité des Dames where the women are reduced to
tears by her words of wisdom: ‘[the] women wept sor & seyd wyth gret
hueynes of her hertys, “Alas, woman, why xalt þu be brent?” ’ (130–1). In this
way, Margery further defends herself against accusations of heretical inclin-
ations just at the moment when she is describing a performance which would
substantiate them.98 By moving her audience along rapidly from the ultimate
location of male authority – the ecclesiastical courtroom – and transferring
them to the accepted sphere of the female – the domestic residence – and by
exercising an active and overt contravention of the boundaries of this female
97
There is a striking resemblance between Margery’s role as preacher depicted here and a
representation of Mary Magdalene preaching to the converted in Gaul which appears on
the Lazarus altar in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Marseilles. This image is
reproduced in Jansen, ‘Maria Magdalena’, p. 72.
98
In an essay on women and preaching in the Middle Ages, Alcuin Blamires’s findings lead
him to assert that ‘Lollardy probably did countenance female preaching’ (‘Women and
Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy and Saints’ Lives’, Viator 26 (1995), pp. 135–52
(p. 136)). Aston, however, concludes that there is no real evidence to suggest that Lollard
women actually set themselves up as priests; nevertheless it was a theoretical possibility
which was aired in popular myth in the fourteenth century. Aston examines this idea in
‘Lollard Women Priests?’, pp. 441–61.
193
sphere by quite literally shouting from the window to other women in the
public street, Margery thus throws down a challenge to accepted notions of
female behaviour and draws upon a tangential tradition of Magdalenean
preaching and sibylline utterance for purposes of validation. Her account of
this incident also provides her with an opportunity to illustrate how inter-
pellative male judgements can be circumvented and an alternative system of
female solidarity constructed in its place.
Such a strategy is evidenced everywhere in the Book, in which Margery’s
women are frequently – although not ubiquitously99 – represented as both
receptive and supportive of her transgressive identities. Those who do sup-
port her, however, frequently serve to authorise Margery’s calling far more
effectively than the male authorities who frequently remain somewhat ambiva-
lent towards her. The question of female solidarity, for example, becomes a
major discourse on Margery’s journey back from Jerusalem. In recounting this
journey, Margery documents a series of women who offer both physical com-
fort and moral support when she is at her most vulnerable. There is, of course,
the woman with the devotional doll whom I have already discussed along
with the women who tend to the distraught Margery during the same
episode. Similarly, there is the alluring Margaret Florentyne who makes a last-
ing impression on Margery (79 and 93) during the same pilgrimage. Although
they only have a ‘fewe comon wordys’ (79) and a series of gestures with
which to communicate, Margery’s attempts at conversation with this woman,
uttered as it is in a mixture of broken English and pseudo-Italian, echo the dif-
ficult genesis of the Book when the male amanuensis is unable to decipher the
eccentric mix of two badly written languages. The language with which these
two women do communicate is, however, resolved by means of a language of
the female body – gestures and the offering of food. Moreover, Margaret
Florentyne’s recognition of Margery’s bodily requirements and her provision
of food for her suggests a recognition of her voice as that of the authoritative
female. She insists upon Margery’s company at her own table, indeed she ‘set
hir at hir owen tabil abouyn hirself & leyd hir mete wyth hir owyn handys’
(93). Her support of Margery, of course, offered by means of the traditional
female offerings of food and drink, not only serves to alleviate Margery’s dif-
ficulties, but also reinforces her sense of spiritual authority.100 This, in turn,
reactivates Margery’s own sense of authority here and induces other local
women to acknowledge her wisdom and spiritual insight. On one occasion,
for example, a ‘holy mayden’ follows Margaret Florentyne’s example and
99
Margery admits to having been rejected by a York anchoress, for example (119), and
whilst on pilgrimage her maidservant abandons her (62), although she does make an
attempt to make reparation when Margery meets her again on her way home from
Jerusalem (95).
100
For an examination of charitable food distribution by women see Bynum, Holy Feast and
Holy Fast, especially pp. 233–4, where she illustrates the type of contribution made by
aristocratic women to the charitable distribution of food to the needy.
194
offers Margery food. At another time two young mothers request recourse to
Margery’s female wisdom by desiring her to be godmother to their children
(94), a position which in both folk and religious lore carried with it all the
associations of female wisdom, female support, social bonding and the
passing on of knowledge.101 Significantly, the child for whom she agrees to per-
form this role has been named after Birgitta, about whom the child’s mother
and others ‘haddyn knowlach . . . in hir lyuetyme’ (94). Thus, by means of her
association with this woman and child, Margery is able to draw upon their
first-hand knowledge (and the concomitant authority) of that other newly
famous sibylline figure – Saint Birgitta herself – in order to authorise her self-
representation. This is further intensified by the account of her subsequent
visit to the saint’s handmaid in Rome on ‘Seynt Brigyptys days’ and the docu-
menting of the conversation between the two women in the newly conse-
crated chapel which had originally been Birgitta’s own domestic residence
(95). As she kneels on Birgitta’s stone and communicates with the handmaid,
Margery literally steps into Birgitta’s place, usurping both her female prophetic
authority and the authority of the tradition in which she had been operating:
‘Sche was in þe chawmbre þat Seynt Brigypt deyd in . . . & sche knelyd also
on þe ston on þe whech owr Lord aperyd to Seynt Brigypte and telde hir what
day sche huld deyn on’ (95). Thus Margery carefully constructs around herself
an edifice of female communitas and understanding, culminating in her own
conflation with Saint Birgitta in that saint’s own chamber. In the absence of
consistent male approval, therefore, Margery’s sense of her own authority is
often achieved by an insistent drawing on effectively inclusive female-centred
discourses which ultimately serve to destabilise accepted notions of ortho-
doxy and the need for male approval. In this context, Saint Birgitta operates
in Margery’s text not simply as a role model; she forms the apex of an active
community of women whose voices call out from both past and present in
support of Margery’s life and her textual endeavours.
Rosalynn Voaden has already illustrated the extent to which Margery
Kempe’s narrative concerns itself with an almost obsessive need to document
proof of her visionary and prophetic capabilities; indeed, Margery rarely
misses an opportunity to emphasise for her readers these gifts. At times this
self-representation is highly artificial in its construction and there is a sense
that she is amassing as much material as she can remember and employing a
wide range of narrative techniques in order to substantiate her claims to
prophetic insight. In places, for example, she employs a protracted narrative
rhythm of prophetic utterance followed closely by its substantiation which is
101
On this see Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde, p. 33. Similarly, Warner discusses the ety-
mological link between the word ‘godmother’ and ‘gossip’, which originally was used to
refer to a christening feast. However, increasingly it became associated with idle and
dangerous women’s speech and by the seventeenth century had evolved to mean the
content of idle chatter, or the perpetrator of it, p. 33.
195
then further endorsed by such validating phases as, ‘sche sey it was so in
dede’, and ‘so it was in trewth’, ‘so sche dede’ and ‘so it ferd wyth hir’.102
These confirmatory phrases, with all their cadences of the spoken voice, take
on a type of mantric role in the text, punctuating it with linguistic reassur-
ances for the reader that Margery’s prophetic abilities are genuine and God-
given. In this way, Margery creates a type of alternative personal and textual
discretio spirituum which is dependent ultimately not on a traditional, scripted
discourse to lend it authority, but on the ability of her female voice and its
own orality to validate the truth of her own experiences. This is not to say, of
course, that she is not also dependent upon her scribe to turn body and voice
into text, as I have suggested. Some level of dependency on his material con-
tribution remains a given – unless, of course, we concur with Staley’s thesis.
However, Margery’s scribe appears to be prioritising this type of oral self-
validation in his recording of Margery’s life and appears to be retaining the
cadences of her voice with little attempt to eradicate them by means of editor-
ial adjustment in a way that other hagiographers appeared to do in their
accounts of other holy women’s lives.103 This is nowhere better substantiated
than in the account which documents the gullibility of Margery’s amanuensis
in being tricked out of some money by a young man purporting to be
desirous of entering the priesthood,104 in spite of the fact that he appears to
have killed a man in a brawl (55–7). Entirely hoodwinked by this young
man’s ‘prestly . . . gestur & vestur’ (56), all the amanuensis’s book learning
and masculine authority fail to offer him insight into the real intentions of this
young man – intentions which Margery, of course, with her intuitive under-
standing that ‘he xal dysceyue how at þe last’ (56), is able to determine from
the outset. In the same chapter we are told of how the same priest again fails
to heed Margery’s prophetic warnings about a second trickster who tries to
sell him a non-existent book (‘Syr . . . byith no boke of hym, for he is not to
trustyn vpon’; 57). The results, of course, are predictable and the whole episode
makes for amusing reading, especially as we have the impression that the
102
For example, at one point Margery tells us of her ability to correctly predict the death of
her spiritual advisor (The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 170), describes her prescience of times
of pestilence and her own survival of the plague (pp. 185 and 202), and also predicts the
survival of a friend’s husband (p. 202), as well as the wrongful report of the death of a
bishop (p. 172).
103
Again, the problem of discerning ‘voice’ in hagiographic texts is addressed in the essays
included in Mooney, Gendered Voices. If we compare the scribe’s treatment of Margery’s
voice with that of the later redactor of her text whose version appears in The Book of
Margery Kempe, pp. 353–7, we can see more clearly the full extent to which her voice is
retained in the original book. On this see also my Introduction, pp. 20–1.
104
This entire chapter is one which is generally considered to be an interpolation by the
amanuensis himself rather than by Margery. However, in the context of the Book’s
mode of production, which required the priest to read back to Margery the written
material, and to make alterations where any were deemed necessary by her (5), it
is likely that the decision to include – or at least approve – the account was again
Margery’s own.
196
amanuensis, through his act of writing and collaboration with Margery, is

telling these tales against himself – whether inadvertently or deliberately as a
topos of humility – and thus to some extent undermines his own priestly
authority (and, by implication, the male-identified doctrine of discretio spiri-
tuum itself). However, the real purpose for the inclusion of this entertaining
interlude becomes apparent from what precedes it. The chapter opens with
considerable attention being allocated to the scepticism of this priest about
Margery’s authenticity. We are told he went to great lengths ‘to preuyn þis
creaturys felyngys’ (55), no doubt anxious about his own reputation and his
contribution to the production of what could become a dangerous written
text. We have the impression of Margery and the priest locked in verbal com-
bat, he quizzing her and demanding answers ‘to preuyn þis creaturys felyn-
gys’, and she ‘vnsekyr & vncerteyn . . . what xuld be þe ende’ (55). The priest
compels her to produce a type of ‘prophecy on demand’ to allay the vestiges
of his cynicism, and she hesitantly agrees for fear that he will renege on his
promise and refuse to ‘wretyn þe boke’. This priest is reluctant, of course, to
verify the oral text of Margery’s experience through transliteration and thus
to compromise his own authoritative masculine position. For this reason, he
‘wold not alway heuyn credens to hir wordys’ (55). He fears the very orality
of Margery’s pronouncement and would prefer to defer to the written text in
order to reinforce his position. Indeed, this is exactly what we will see him do
on later occasions when his confidence in Margery waivers and he turns to a
series of written sources to shore up his faith in her.105 It is therefore particu-
larly ironic, as Margery herself intimates here, that he is beguiled and his trust
in such scripted authority abused by a young man attempting to sell him a
written text which in reality does not exist. By implication, the ‘authority’ he
is so keen to seek in the written word is not definitive – in this case, it does
not even exist – and he is left with nothing but damaged pride and an
enforced confrontation with the alternative and ‘real’ authority of a woman’s
spoken voice. Thus, it is with much loss of face that he is eventually driven
to acknowledge ‘þat þe forseyd creaturys felyng was trewe’ (58). Indeed,
when his writing gets fully under way and his faith in Margery is estab-
lished, we find that ‘hir writer cowde not sumtyme kepyn hymself from
wepyng’ (219). By drawing on recognised tradition of authoritative female
prophecy which is accompanied by such physical manifestations of grace,
and by carefully avoiding all explicitly political implications, Margery is able
to construct a self which prefers to resist the powers of politicised and insti-
tutionalised male discourse as its primary authority, and establish alongside it,
both inside and outside the text, an insistent presence of a prescient female voice.
105
The priest admits that his faith in Margery only returns after he has read the lives of
Marie d’Oignies and Elizabeth of Hungary, two Vitae which give credence to the female
voice as privileged and tears of devotion as demonstrative of exceptional piety (The Book
of Margery Kempe, pp. 153 and 154).
197
‘Settyth al howr trust in god & feryth not þe langage of þe world’:

The Authority of the Word
Perhaps the most significant episode which assists Margery in her struggle for
authority is that of her visit to Julian of Norwich in 1413. Unlike her encoun-
ters with representatives of ecclesiastic authority, this meeting between
Margery and the respected anchoress is female-focused, non-hierarchical and,
from Margery’s perspective at least, mutually satisfying: ‘Mych was þe holy
dalyawns þat þe ankres & þis creatur haddyn be comowngyng in þe lofe of
owyr Lord Ihesu Crist many days þat þei were togedyr’ (43). In Julian, Margery
discovers, perhaps for the first time since her conversion, positive support
and active encouragement, and at no point does she report the anchoress as
illustrating any of the initial scepticism so characteristic of some of the male
representatives of religious authority whom Margery has approached. On the
contrary, from the outset Julian is represented by the author as the embodi-
ment of the same authoritative and female-centred wisdom which Margery is
always so keen to identify with:
þe ankres . . . hyly thankyd God wyth al hir hert for hys visitacyon, cownse-
lyng þis creatur to be obedyent to þe wyl of owyr Lord God & fulfyllyn
wyth al hir myghtys what euyr he put in hir sowle yf it wer not ageyn þe
worshep of God & profyte of hir euyncristen. (42)
There is no hint of condescension in Julian’s words to Margery in this extract

(although, of course, we cannot be sure that Margery would have chosen to
record it if there were) and it is highly significant that the only other person
apart from Christ to encourage Margery not to heed the criticisms levelled at
her by the world is this respected and authoritative holy woman who tells
her: ‘feryth not þe langage of þe world’ (43). Besides comprising an allusion
to the type of verbal abuse with which Margery is already familiar, the ‘lan-
gage of þe world’, of course, can also be viewed as the traditional patriarchal
discourse which we have witnessed from a whole host of Margery’s male
associates and enemies – Richard Caister and the court presided over by
Bishop of York amongst them.106 The implication of Julian’s advice is that she
recognises that Margery’s language is not that of the world; like the language
of Julian’s own texts, its female-centred hermeneutics reflect its female locutor
as ‘þe sete of God’ (43) and therefore as the privileged and utterly extraordinary
106
See pp. 182 and 58–60 above. Caister, of course, is initially sceptical about a woman’s
ability to engage in theological discussion but is quickly brought round by Margery’s
abilities and puts his trust in her bodily and vocal expressions of piety. See, for
example, The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 38–40. It is significant, however, that she
convinces him otherwise and modifies the prejudice which he displays on this
occasion (40).
198
conduit of the Word.107 Above all, Julian’s advice to Margery gives her the
reassurance that as possessor of the Holy Spirit in her soul, she has the right
to speak and to be heard. The struggle to exercise this right will thus become
Margery’s primary concern – both within and without the text, and must
surely have been a convincing factor in her eventual decision to transform
into written text and make permanent her oral ministry, whether she was
aware of Julian’s own status as an author, or not.
Margery’s difficulties in translating Word into word is, of course, reflected
in the difficult genesis of her written treatise, as fully documented before the
onset of her text itself. In the Proem we have been made privy to the text’s
problematic birth twenty-five years or more after Margery’s conversion and
the onset of her mystical experiences.108 Even when she does finally begin to
write, she is hampered by a series of well-documented problems which last
for four years or so, during which time the first amanuensis dies, leaving
behind a script which is ‘so euyl sett & so vnreasonably wretyn’ (4) that it is
unreadable. Not only that, but we are told that ‘þe lattyr was not schapyn ne
formyd as oþer letters ben’ and that it is ‘neiþer good Englysch ne Dewch’, in
effect falling into the impenetrable fissure between two languages. It is only
on Margery’s appeal to God that the third and final amanuensis finds he can
tackle the work and begin to understand what has been written. Most critics
alluding to this episode accept its literal interpretation: Margery as a sup-
posedly illiterate woman (or, as they would argue, the scribe as her literate
‘voice’) is describing the mechanical problems of producing a book from an
initial and poorly written manuscript. However, and I concur with Lochrie
here,109 there is much more to this initial caveat than an attempt to explain
away an amateurish effort at creating an autobiographical text. What is also
being articulated is the difficulty of producing a mystical work of any kind,
particularly that written by a woman, and it is significant in this context that
from the outset this text is associated with specifically female bodiliness, sick-
ness and pain which are transformed into ‘wonderful spechys & dalyawns
whech owr Lord spak and dalyid to hyr sowle’ (2). Margery’s understanding
of the Word is similarly embodied and internal, being received in and by her
female body (‘Sche knew & vndyrstod many secret & preuy thyngys whech
107
On the problematic and often dangerous relationship between women and the Word, see
Janet L. Nelson, ‘Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages’, in W. J. Sheils and
Diana Wood (eds), Women in the Church, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford, 1990),
pp. 53–78. For an overview of the attitude of the medieval Church to female spirituality,
see Voaden, God’s Words, pp. 27–34. For a summary of the ambivalence towards female
prophecy from the Middle Ages through to the seventeenth century, see Watt, Secretaries
of God, especially pp. 1–14.
108
In her useful analysis of the orality of Margery’s book, Diane Uhlman examines the func-
tion of the Proem in this context. ‘The Comfort of Voice, the Solace of Script: Orality and
Literacy in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Studies in Philology 91 (1994), pp. 50–69. See also
Voaden, God’s Words, pp. 112–13.
109
Lochrie discusses the difficult genesis of the Book in Translations, pp. 99–101.
199
schuld beffallen aftyrward be inspiracyon of þe Holy Gost’; 2). However, like

the initial attempts of the first amanuensis to transcribe Margery’s experi-
ences, her own first attempts at articulating these ‘priuy thyngys’ result in
primeval weepings and sobbings, as we have seen. Such primeval language
of the body, rooted in its prelinguistic recesses, perhaps even the semiotic,
re-emerges whenever the writing process is thwarted and the stream of creativ-
ity is stopped up. At the end of Book 1, for example, Margery describes her
need to write in terms of a bodily compulsion which, if frustrated or impeded,
would result in illness, as we have seen. Moreover, from the outset, Margery
consistently emphasises how language remains inadequate for the task of
explicating her insights, and that, where it fails, the body takes over. Like her
first script then, articulation of her communications with God, also falls
between two languages: ‘Ne hyr self cowd neuyr telle þe grace þat sche felt,
it was so heuenly, so hy abouen hyr reson & hyr bodyly wyttys . . . þat sche
myth neuyr expressyn it wyth her word lych as sche felt it in hyr sowle’ (3).
As a result, Margery herself problematises her own speech as well as her own
writing. What she says and what is written down can only be an approxima-
tion and dilution of the utterances received in her soul. If the primeval,
sibylline scream is the closest that human language can get to articulating the
mysteries of this experience, then the organised written language of male-
identified authority as represented by the priestly scribe can only further dis-
sipate, confuse and erroneously represent the female mystical utterance. In
this context then, far from being evidence of a lack of authority as has been
argued by many critics, the Book’s apparently haphazard organisation and
chronological structure would appear to adhere much more closely to the
organising principles of the oral voice, depending as it does on memory, qual-
ity of recall, stream of consciousness, lateral thinking and other devices which
the written text is normally intent on eliminating. This being the case, the very
authority that Margery is attempting to achieve for herself in her writing and
which so many critics would deny her, is achieved implicitly by its non-linear
structure and its very adherence to the rhythms, cadences and idiosyncrasies
of the very spoken voice which dictates it.110 Moreover, the Book is heavily
reliant on dialogue for its impact and authority, a fact which again seems to
escaped many commentators. Comparative works, such as Birgitta’s
Revelations or Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue are often less dialogic than mono-
logic. What seems to be important to these highly literate disseminations of
the mystical utterance is their prioritising of the long monologic utterances of
Christ, with the mystic remaining largely the silent conduit. For Voaden
again, it is this very act of disappearance which lends the necessary authority
to the ‘successful’ female mystic.111 In the case of Margery, however, except on
110
On the issue of subtextual structure and authority in the Book, again see Fanous, ‘Measuring
the Pilgrim’s Progress’, in Renevey and Whitehead, Writing Religious Women, pp. 157–76.
111
Voaden, God’s Words. See, in particular her conclusion, pp. 155–7.
200
the occasions of her Marian and Passion narratives (18–19; 187–97), we detect
a resistance to the structured organising of her communications with Christ in
order to produce a traditional monologic coherence. Margery’s emphasis is
always the mutuality of the experience. She is no mere passive conduit, what-
ever she would have us believe. She is a fully active partner – lover even – of
the Divine and at times is not even averse to resisting his instructions or
advice if they appear to contravene her own vision of appropriate behav-
iour.112 Her female voice is everywhere to the forefront of her narrative,
recorded as it is in direct speech, and ironically it is this insistent orality with
its capturing of the cadences and intonations of her own voice which has pro-
vided most ammunition for her main critics, both during her own time and
since the discovery of the manuscript in 1934. Quite simply, because she is
noisy, she is not believed, and her perceived lack of authenticity has hinged
on the noise of what is often considered her own self-delusion. The issue of
the untruthful language of the female is, of course, something which has
always threatened the status quo, contravening as it does, social ethics and
threatening social cohesion. What we have witnessed in much of twentieth-
century criticism’s reaction to Margery Kempe113 is the same subtly misogy-
nistic resistance to and vilification of the ‘embarrassing’ and ‘transgressive’
female voice as exemplified by the series of male ecclesiastics who persecute
and ostracise Margery from the flock of the faithful.114 Yet, as has been demon-
strated, it is this very orality of the insistent female voice, albeit now embed-
ded within the permanency of script, which creates for The Book of Margery
Kempe the authority which its author so keenly sought throughout her life.
The apparent tension which this orality-embedded-in-writing throws up
here has been resolved to some degree by Karma Lochrie in her discussion of
what she terms Margery’s ‘interdiction’, defined as the insertion of an author-
ial voice between text and reader.115 According to Lochrie, in spite of a new-
found willingness to cooperate, Margery’s amanuensis is nevertheless wholly
reliant on such interdiction in the form of a fresh oral input by Margery ‘aftyr
hyr owyn tunge’ (221) in order to render the sense of the text clear and remain
112
See, for example, Margery’s attempts to resist the wearing of white clothes, The Book of
Margery Kempe, p. 32.
113
In addition to the reactions of the early critics to the Book’s discovery cited on p. 21, n. 66,
see, for example, Clifton Walters, who refers to Margery as a ‘queer, unbalanced crea-
ture’, in Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Introduction, p. 16. Similarly, R. W.
Chambers echoes both Thurston’s and the Canterbury monk’s attitude to Margery’s
highly vocal expression of piety when he suggests that ‘things might have been better for
Margery if she had been a recluse’, in William Butler-Bowden (trans.), The Book of Margery
Kempe, 1436 (London, 1944), Introduction, p. vii.
114
See for example the refusal of a monk to let her into the chapel, The Book of Margery
Kempe, p. 139, and the proscribing against her presence in Church during his sermons by
the Fransciscan preacher, William Melton, pp. 148–9.
115
Lochrie, Translations, p. 100. The term is borrowed from Donma C. Stanton,
‘Autogynography: Is the Subject Different?’, in Domna C. Stanton (ed.), The Female
Autograph (Chicago, 1987), p. 13.
201
true to the original: & so he red it ouyr beforn þis cratur euery word, sche
sumtym helpyng where ony difficulte was (50). The original, dictated mater-
ial is thus still reliant on the further oral interdiction of its originator to clar-
ify and confirm its authenticity and ends up ‘sandwiched’ between the two
oral inputs which shape it. It is very likely, for example, that the attempt to
impose order upon the highly confused chronology between Chapter 18 and
Chapter 22 (which document the conception and birth of Margery’s last
child), is directly attributable to such interdiction rather than reflecting an
independent attempt by the amanuensis to impose some order upon the
material.116 In this way a second dialogue is established between writer and
amanuensis, which is inadvertently recorded as a palimpsest to the original
words set down upon the page. Similarly, the passages which are usually
recognised as interpolations by the priest himself can also be read in terms of
similar interdiction.117 One such addition has been attributed to Chapter 64 in
which the amanuensis recounts his battle with disbelief and how the Vita of
Marie d’Oignies amongst other written texts, brought him back to trusting in
Margery’s authenticity (152–4). Diane Uhlman has suggested that this authen-
ticating interpolation by the priest serves to illustrate how he has had to
revert to the written word to find intertextual support for Margery’s credibil-
ity,118 arguing that such verification is crucial for his understanding of
Margery’s orality from which he has recently been alienated. However, the
true significance of this episode lies beyond the priest’s recourse to scripted
verification of Margery’s authenticity. The priest tells us that ‘he had not ryth
cler mende of þe sayd mater whan he wrot þis tretys’ (153), indicating that he
was not able to fully recall the story of Marie d’Oignies from memory at the
time of writing. Just as we have been told in the Proem that Margery ‘had for-
getyn þe tyme & þe ordyr whan thyngys befellyn’ because ‘it was so long er
it was wretyn’ (5), so memory, the store of the oral utterance, also fails the
priest when he wishes to draw upon it to substantiate Margery’s claims. In
documenting this lapse, the scribe therefore inadvertently underlines the
importance of writing and its relation to the oral. The one major weakness of
the oral text is its very impermanence and the primary benefit of the written
is, therefore, the making permanent and the preservation of the oral utter-
ance. Thus, in validating Margery’s orality by invoking his impaired memory
116
These passages have been examined by Laura L. Howes, ‘Margery Kempe’s Last Child’,
Modern Philology 90, 2 (1992), pp. 220–5. In this article, Howes asserts that the text points
towards the birth of a final child in Venice whilst Margery Kempe is on pilgrimage.
I have, however, disputed this claim, pointing out that on careful analysis, the non-linear
narrative would point towards a date early in 1413 as the likely time of birth for this last
child. See Liz Herbert McAvoy, ‘Margery’s Last Child: A Refutation’, Notes and Queries,
n.s. 46 (June 1999), pp. 181–3.
117
The passages which are generally regarded as scribal contributions are the Proem,
Chapters 24–5 and Chapter 62.
118
Uhlman, ‘The Comfort of Voice’, p. 67–8.
202
of the life of Marie d’Oignies, he also justifies the act of writing and his own
contribution to a permanent inscription of the orality of the mystical Word.
The written text everywhere, therefore, returns to an oral mode of utterance
for validation, just as the oral utterance has ultimately to turn to the written
text for its own immortality. In this context, the words of John of Salisbury
about the relationship between written and spoken utterance are particularly
pertinent: ‘Fundamentally, letters are shapes indicating voices. Frequently,
they speak voicelessly the utterance of the absent’.119 Any written text which
is based on absent voices and retains their original echoes is therefore itself
fundamentally oral in that it literally stands in for those voices. In The Book of
Margery Kempe the ‘shapes’ resound with multifarious voices which burst
through and frustrate any attempt by the page to contain them. It is precisely
these absent voices which are rendered present by the process of interpol-
ation, interdiction, and ventriloquism employed by Margery as she dictates her
experiences. Thus, superimposed upon the dialogue between Margery
Kempe and God, we have a continuous dialogue between herself and her
amanuensis in the intimate space of the chamber. These palimpsests of pro-
duction will eventually result in the birth of a fully realised text, able to be
understood by its readers and adhering to a formula which will enable ‘many
a man [to] be turnyd to [God] & beleuyn þerin’ (216). As if in recognition of
this, during the final chapters of Book 1 when Margery returns to the problem
of the Book’s genesis, she likens her conversations with Christ to the way in
which ‘on frende xulde spekyn to anoþer’ (214). There is little doubt that her
conferences with this priest and the intensive work which they perform
together, withdrawn as they are from other human contact for much of the
time, has led to this invocation of the intimacy which she has shared with
Christ. Now both source and means of dissemination of her mystical insights
become conflated and source material and production become one. Margery’s
mystical desire, allied to the increasing desire of the priest to record it, pro-
vides us with a text which is uniquely oral and one in which script tends to
be subsumed by the insistent and overlaying female voice of its author, both
as recipient and disseminator. Just as God has said to Margery in the early
days of her mystical experiences: ‘I am in þe and þou art in me. And þei þat
heryn þe þei heryn þe voys of God’ (23), so Margery’s noisy, uncontrollable
body remains the sacred text itself and her disruptive voice the means of its
dissemination. Far from failing to authenticate life and text as both Voaden
and Dillon have asserted,120 Margery takes the sacred text of the Word deter-
minedly into an unprepared world and disrupts its expectations. Her refusal
to remain silent is her ultimate strength and any attempts to silence her voice
are equated with trying to silence the multifaceted and mystical voice of God
119
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 1, 13, as cited by Lochrie, Translations, p. 102; quoted and
translated by Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, p. 200.
120
Voaden, God’s Words, and Dillon, ‘Holy Women and Their Confessors’.
203
himself. Thus, her voice reverberating from the binding of her book is offered
as a permanent means to enlightenment so that indeed ‘many a man xal be
turnyd to [God] & beleuyn þerin’ (216). In this capacity, we may well be
reminded of the words of the immortal Sibyl:
Usque adeo mutata ferar nullique videnda,

Voce tamen noscar; vocem mihi fata relinquent.121
Even to such changes shall I come. Though shrunk past recognition of the
eye, still by my voice shall I be known, for the fates will leave me my voice.
121
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols (London and Cambridge, Mass.,
1958), II, xiv, lines 147–50, p. 152.
204
Julian of Norwich: Voice of the Wise Woman
This booke is begunne be Gods gift and his grace, but it is not yet performid,
as to my syte. (LT, 134)
At the climactic moment as the Long Text draws to a close, Julian of Norwich
admits to having experienced a secondary vision ‘xv yer after [the original
vision] and more’ (LT, 135). Julian tells us that it was in this secondary reve-
lation (which must have occurred some time during or after 1388) that she
was made privy to the crucial and transforming insight that ‘love was our
lords mening’ (LT, 135), and it is an insight which crowns the entire Long Text
and brings it to its close:
And I saw ful sekirly in this and in all, that ere God made us he lovid us;
which love was never slakid, no never shall. And in this love he hath don
all his werke; and in this love he hath made all things profitable to us; and
in this love our life is everlestand. In our making we had beginning; but the
love wherin he made us was in him from withoute begynning; in which
love we have our beginning. And all this shall be seen in God without end.
(LT, 135)
In his examination of this passage, Watson has pointed out its similarity in
tone and content to the wholly undeveloped allusions to divine love which
appear at the end of the Short Text, a correlation which suggests that both pas-
sages originate from this secondary insight dating from the late 1380s.1
Indeed, it is highly likely that it was this overarching insight that necessitated
the complete reworking and rethinking of the original material, resulting in
the production of the Long Text. It is therefore significant that the Short Text
ends with an unusually incongruous passage which follows on from what
appears to be a natural point of closure occurring half way through Chapter
23 where Julian adopts what is normally a traditional ending for religious
treatises, ‘Amen par charyte’ (ST, 75).2 Following this attempt at closure,
1
Watson, ‘Composition’, pp. 665–72.
2
For examples of similar endings in contemporary texts, see, for example, the ‘Legend
of St Euphrosyne’, in C. Horstman (ed.), The Smaller Vernon Collection of Legends (1878),
pp. 174–82, which ends ‘God graunte vs þat hit so be! Amen, amen for charite’. In another
205
Julian then uncharacteristically proceeds to digress at this very late stage and
introduces several new strands which do not sit happily in a text which is other-
wise measured, balanced and skilfully crafted. Similarly discordant are the
metaphysical questions incorporated within these strands such as: ‘What er
we?’ and ‘What is alle in erthe that twynnes vs?’ (ST, 76). Moreover, the author
then attempts somewhat unsuccessfully to integrate these questions into a
summary of her text’s primary assertions, using such phrases as ‘as I hafe
sayde before’, and ‘I haffe sayde as I sawe’, no doubt hoping to resolve this
unhappy marriage between what appears to be the natural conclusion of the
Short Text and the subsequent introduction of new material. What we are left
with is the image of a writer struggling with an enforced reassessment of her
material due to some additional insight, which in turn has transformed the
entire meaning of her work. In this context, therefore, the intrusive ‘Amen par
charyte’ is not just the simple, formulaic phrase which it at first appears to be.
In fact, it heralds a wholly new and transformative insight which is indeed
based on the concept of ‘charyte’, but it is a charity which is now heavily
imbued with a transcendent and transformative divine love. In the final pages
of the Short Text the enormity of this new insight becomes clear and it con-
trasts radically with the preoccupation with sin which has characterised this
version up until this point: ‘luffe was moste schewed to me, that it is moste
nere to vs alle, and of this knawynge er we moste blynde’ (ST, 77). Julian’s
insight into the centrality of divine love has inadvertently underlined for her
her own ‘blindness’ in not having grasped this central concept before and thus
she will embark upon a wholly new text with a newly restored perception.
Such a blindness in the face of God’s love, therefore, can be read initially as
autobiographical and as prefiguring Julian’s own intellectual movement from
a somewhat naïve desire to gain experience through imitation of Christ’s suf-
fering (in the Long Text Julian stresses that this desire was ‘in youth’; LT, 2)
towards a far more mature wisdom and insight than is evidenced in the Short
Text.3 In addition, the flash of understanding brought about by this late and
supplementary vision serves to transform not only her exegesis of the earlier
late fifteenth-century manuscript, MS Ashmolean, 61, in which there appears a version

of Ipotis we find similar words unequivocally creating closure: ‘Amen, amen fore charyte!
God grante vs þat it so be! Here endys þis talking’. The ending of The Book of Margery
Kempe also adheres to this pattern: ‘worschepyd be God. Amen’ (p. 247) as do the
‘Prayers of the creature’ which appear after the Book’s narrative closure: ‘I pray þe, Lord,
grawnt hem for þe multitude of þi mercy. Amen’ (p. 254).
3
When I refer to Julian’s ‘youth’, ‘middle age’, ‘old age’ in this chapter I do so advisedly
because of the relative nature of the terminology and the variety of interpretations pos-
sible in different contexts. For example, in The Book of Margery Kempe, Christ refers to
Margery as ‘het but hong’ (87), although she is in her early forties. For Julian, however,
her ‘youth’ is quite clearly more identified with early womanhood. I am grateful to the
general discussions which arose during the Gender and Medieval Studies conference,
Gender and Life-Cycle, at Canterbury, January 2000, for clarifying my thinking on these
issues. For more detailed information on the definitions of childhood, youth and adoles-
cence in the Middle Ages see Hanawalt, Childhood in the Middle Ages.
206
JULIAN: VOICE OF THE WISE WOMAN
visions but also her fundamental knowledge of God, thus provoking the need
for an entirely new text, a life’s work mediated by this transformed under-
standing. In this sense, the narrative voice contained within both versions of
Julian’s experiences must be regarded as one which was modified over the
course of an entire adult lifetime, the latter part of which was spent within the
stone walls of the anchorhold, which location, in turn, facilitated this radical
and new reappraisal of the original mystical utterance.
Cave and Anchorhold: The Presence of the Absent Body
The legacy of the anchoritic tradition and its importance to Julian as a writer
was something I examined briefly in Chapter 2. Similarly, the previous
chapter argued for the tradition of the ancient Sibyl as being one which helps to
cast some light upon the type of gynaecentric authority available to female
mystics and writers in their attempts to validate the public, sometimes
prophetic, female utterance. What has not yet been considered, however, is
the influence that the tradition of sibylline prophecy may have had upon
anchoritism as it emerged in the later Middle Ages (and as inherited by Julian),
and how it goes some way to offer an explanation for the appeal of the
enclosed way of life for women like Julian.4
Although best known for her high-profile prophetic excess and ecstasis, as
we have seen, like the anchoress the Sibyl was most frequently represented as
a sedentary and solitary figure. Depictions of the Erythraean Sibyl and the
Almathaean Sibyl which appear in the text Des Cleres Femmes, a late medieval
French translation of Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris, as found in London,
British Library MS Royal 20 C V, present both sibyls as sitting alone at their
desks, each with a script before them.5 The Erythraean Sibyl is engrossed in
the writing down of her pronouncements onto a scroll whilst the Almathaean
Sibyl, represented as a more aged woman, is reading from a series of books.
Both women, however, are wholly enclosed in a room of darkness, and in the
case of Almathaea, wrapped up tightly in wimple and veil, representations
which would probably have summoned up images of anchoritic enclosure for
a contemporary audience.6
The most memorable representation of the Sibyl, however (and one which
pertains most closely to my argument here), was that immortalised by Ovid
in Book XIV of the widely disseminated Metamorphoses.7 Here, we find a deeply
4
For a more detailed discussion of this possible appeal and how it relates to Julian, see my
essay, ‘Redemption of the Monstrous Female Body’.
5
London, British Library MS Royal 20 C V, fol. 23v and fol. 38v.
6
The author of Ancrene Wisse does not prescribe wimpling for his anchoresses but instead
leaves it to their own preferences (p. 215). He does, however, insist upon a head cover-
ing of some sort.
7
Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, xiv, pp. 309–11.
207
enigmatic depiction of the ancient Cumaean Sibyl whose tragic and prophetic
voice emerges insistently from the womb-like depths of the cave of Phoebus
Apollo. In Ovid’s account (from which the quotation at the end of the previ-
ous chapter is taken) the Sibyl laments the deterioration of her youthful
beauty and her descent into decrepit old age within that gloomy and dust-
ridden cave. Ovid recounts how the Sibyl, after being seduced by the promise of
Phoebus Apollo to bestow upon her eternal life in return for her sexual
favours, had foolishly demanded as many years as there were grains of sand
beneath her feet. However, in her youthful ignorance and naïvety she failed
to ask also for eternal youth. Hence, seven generations later when visited by
Aeneas, she has yet another three hundred years to live, during which time
her wizened body will shrink to the size of a man’s palm. Poignantly she fore-
sees her own approaching invisibility:
Tempus erit, cum de tanto me corpore parvam

longa dies faciet, consumptaque membra senecta
ad minimum redigentur onus.8
The time will come when length of days will shrivel me from my full form
to but a tiny thing and my limbs, consumed by age, will shrink to a feather’s
weight.
The Sibyl’s once youthful and seductive body will gradually occupy a
diminishing space, crumbling into insignificance to become, finally, nothing.
What will remain, however, is her authoritative and disembodied prophetic
voice, a permanent testimony to her life and destined to reverberate through
time: ‘voce tamen noscar’ (by my voice shall I be known).
A classic tale of tragedy and metamorphosis as this is, ostensibly the story
of the downfall of an inexperienced and desirable young woman effected by
an all-powerful god, the powerful sociological subtext nevertheless adheres
to a traditional topos everywhere apparent in the Metamorphoses (and in much
medieval literature, as we have seen) of a dangerously irrepressible and
potent female orality which resists all attempts to curtail and contain it. It is,
perhaps, the same female voice about which in more modern times Hélène
Cixous has said, ‘[it] never stops . . . [r]esonating . . . [and] retains the power
of moving us . . . [and] draws her story into history’.9 Long after her sexual
and potentially procreative body has dissolved into dust, however, the voice
of the Cumaean Sibyl remains, insisting upon its own articulation and its
place within history. Youthful idealism and inexperience have eventually
paved the way towards wisdom, prescience and divine inspiration, all of
which ultimately combine to transcend her disappearing female body.
Moreover, the loss of her feminine beauty and seductive charms allows for the
8
Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, xiv, p. 310.
9
Cixous, ‘Laugh of the Medusa’, p. 251.
208
establishment of a potent and significantly more enduring female knowledge,

and thus constitutes an alternative tradition of vocal female empowerment
which found its way into the ethos of late medieval anchoritism – and the
writing of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in particular. Thus, in
Julian’s terms, the ‘blyndhede’ of her youthful ignorance and idealism now
weathers into the wisdom of maturity, and in the powerfully enigmatic figure
of the Cumaean Sibyl we are able to recognise a precursor to the wise and
contemplative anchoress of the Middle Ages for whom, ‘ripe wordes lates
ripe & werkes bilimpeð’ (mature words, mature behaviour and acts are
appropriate).10 Like the Cumaean Sibyl too, Julian’s anchoritic life constitutes
figuratively a living death, albeit one which has been voluntarily invoked in
order to attain wisdom through contemplation. Stone walls similarly hide her
aging body from the outside world, whilst the dusty earth of the floor beneath
her feet serves in the same way to remind her of her own mortality. Again
according to Ancrene Wisse the anchoress ‘schulden schrapien euche dei þe
eorðe up of hare put þat ha schulien rotien in. Godd hit wat þat put deð much
god moni ancre’11 (should, each day, scrape up the earth of their graves in
which they will rot. God knows the grave does a lot of good to many an
anchoress). Yet, like the Sibyl, the articulation of the anchoress’s wisdom will
not be suppressed. Although invisible and withdrawn behind wall, curtain
and veil, nevertheless she is permitted to articulate divine truth and mystical
insight, both of which are understood by means of a mature wisdom.
Consequently, elsewhere in this text the degree to which the anchoress is
invisible is explicitly dependent upon her age: ‘Na wepmon ne chastie he ne
edwiten him his unþeaw . . . Halie alde ancres hit mahe don summes weis ah
hit nis nawt siker þing ne ne limpeð nawt to hunge’12 (Do not preach to any
man and do not reproach him for his fault . . . Old and holy anchoresses may
do it in certain ways, but it is not a safe or appropriate thing for young ones).
For this author it is the aging process itself which makes a woman gradually
less visible and the crumbling to dust of the Cumaean Sibyl, of course, stands
as a poignant metaphor for this type of disintegration both as body and as
beauty. Yet, for the author of Ancrene Wisse, such a disintegration ultim-
ately renders the aging anchoress altogether less threatening to men than
her younger, youthful sisters and his insistent proscription against her speak-
ing to men from her location of enclosure becomes much more flexible as she
ages. The aging anchoress is therefore offered an opportunity by this physical
and social construction of invisibility to speak out and to be heard – and to be
associated with a sought-after wisdom.
In suggesting that the aged anchoress provides less of a threat and is her-
self less likely to be threatened under these circumstances, the author of
10
11
12
209
Ancrene Wisse seems to be recognising a type of sanctity which fills the fissure
left by the disappearing body and which can be articulated legitimately by
means of a disembodied voice. By colluding in the construction of its own
absence therefore, the anchoress’s body is in a position to exploit that absence
and the resultant influx of spiritual wisdom – a wisdom which can then be
articulated by the female voice without the usual impediments. In effect,
voice is able to subsume problematic body and refocus attention on orality
rather than corporeality. It was just such a recognition of the potential housed
within the aging body for an exploitation of a newly authoritative female
voice which characterised the latter stages of The Book of Margery Kempe, as we
have seen, and may inadvertently go a little way towards explaining the
intriguing popularity of the anchoritic life for women in the later Middle
Ages. The question remains, however, to what extent was Julian of Norwich
also able to employ and exploit such attitudes towards the aging woman in
order to ensure the lasting efficacy of her own voice?
Youth versus Experience: Body Problematics and the

Prophetic Female Voice
Unlike Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich makes very little use of overtly
prophetic topoi in her texts, and she is generally considered to have no inter-
est in forging for herself a persona as prophetic visionary along the lines of
her other contemporaries such as Birgitta of Sweden or Catherine of Siena.13
Whereas for these other mystics, self-establishment as divine conduit is one of
the foremost considerations of their narratives, for Julian it seems to have
been the process of intellectualisation and exegetical analysis of the visionary
material which was of primary concern. Both approaches to the dissemination
of the mystical utterance, however, are subject to the same problematic para-
dox, as Voaden has pointed out in the context of Birgitta and Margery
Kempe.14 Firstly, the female mystic is compelled to articulate and publicise the
Word in a highly audible voice, but in order to be successfully heard and
understood she is also required to erase her distracting and problematic body
from her discourse. In the context of Margery Kempe, however, I have argued
for a measure of success in her self-representation as prophetic wise woman
13
Apart from Voaden, God’s Words, on Birgitta’s prophetic authority, see Claire L. Sahlin,
‘Gender and Prophetic Authority in Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations’, in Jane Chance
(ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (Gainesville, 1996), pp. 69–95. On Catherine
of Siena see Suzanne Noffke (trans.), Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue (London, 1980),
Introduction, pp. 1–22. For an examination of the political influence of Catherine of Siena
from her perspective as marginal woman, see Thomas Luango, ‘Catherine of Siena:
Rewriting Female Holy Authority’, in Lesley Smith and Jane Taylor (eds), Women, the
Book and the Godly (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 89–111.
14
Voaden, God’s Words.
210
in spite of, or even because of, an insistence from the very outset of her text
that voice is body and body is voice. For Julian too, whilst aware of the body’s
potentially distracting presence, her non-dualistic approach to her material
nevertheless insists upon that presence in her texts as a central and vital
hermeneutic, as has been demonstrated. Thus, the long process of Julian’s text-
ual production can be examined in terms of a transference of that body from
the forefront of text to a position of immanence within it. In other words, it
goes underground. In this way she is able to effectively prioritise voice over
body and body over voice where necessary – but without eradicating either.
At the time when Julian would have been embarking upon the Long Text in
the early 1390s, the works of her continental forbears (and those who adhere
most closely to Voaden’s paradigm of the ‘disappearing visionary’) were just
becoming available in England and it is now considered possible that they
could have had some influence upon Julian’s spirituality and her decision to
write down her experiences.15 Thus, Julian’s famous Short Text caveat ‘for I am
a woman, leued, febille, & freylle’ (ST, 48) can be read as, amongst other things,
a wholly self-conscious attempt to deprioritise body in favour of voice at a
very early point in her writing career. To obliterate the body, of course, it must
first be visible, and such a highly unsubtle attempt at erasure as this comprises
serves only to re-emphasise its presence in the discourse and offer it an even
clearer profile. Evidently aware of this paradoxical situation, Julian further
embroils herself in confusion, again addressing her projected audience
directly: ‘if itte be welle and trewlye takyn . . . [t]han schalle he sone forgette
me that am a wrecche’ (ST, 49). In other words, if her audience puts its trust in
her voice, then it will forget about the presence of her intrusive and distracting
body – and the use of the word ‘wrecche’ here serves to highlight the inad-
equacy of both the body and the imperfect spirit deemed to be within. Yet, in
drawing attention to this problematised body in this way, it is, of course, auto-
matically reprioritised. Thus, even in the early days of her writing career, it
would appear that Julian is aware of the traditional problematics presented by
both female body and voice, and here appears to be unsure about how best to
proceed in a self-representation which includes both secretary of God, and
undeniably physical, visionary woman. Thus, in the Long Text Julian seems to
have made a highly conscious effort to depersonalise the original material in
an attempt to make it less subjective and to render it relevant to all her read-
ers. In other words, the problem inherent within her initial representation of a
bodily self who occupies a primary position at the forefront of the Short Text
is one which she sets out to rectify from the start of the Long Text.
15
Baker points this out in Julian of Norwich’s Showings, p. 167, n. 6. Similarly Watson,
although at pains to emphasise the differences between the continental and insular trad-
itions of female visionary experiences, allows for the fact that the contemporaneous
influx of this material and its circulation in Julian’s geographical area placed her in the
ideal location for early notice of this tradition (‘Composition’, pp. 652–7).
211
In this context, it is significant that both texts begin with an overtly gen-
dered representation of her own vulnerable body in her detailed account of
her youthful desires and of the dangerous illness which she experienced
some years later, as we have seen. However, if we re-examine the latter
episode as recounted in the Long Text what we find is an effective paradigm
for the reconciliation of the paradox of bodily presence and absence within
the mystical text. As we have seen, Julian’s illness is characterised by develop-
ing paralysis and lack of sensation (‘my body was dede fro the middis
downewards’; LT, 4) until her body becomes wholly inactive and impotent –
in effect, absent from feeling. In its absence, however, it is at its most insist-
ently present because of Julian’s consciousness of that very absence of feel-
ing. In its inability to feel or to move, Julian’s body is both there and not
there. Encased within this simultaneously absent and present body, Julian’s
voice is also apparently silenced, but at the same time it is in fact bursting
and exploding into mystical utterance. Later, through the act of writing, that
same voice will experience a re-embodiment and permanence of expression,
and in this way Julian’s experience of body and no-body will develop into a
paradigm for her physical and textual embodiment of the Word. In effect, it
will provide the key for the production of a final and definitive text in which
there will also be body and no-body. Now the female body will become less
explicit and more implicit, and in becoming less visible – moving ‘under-
ground’ as it were – it will take up a position as hermeneutic to ultimately
facilitate the explication and interpretation of its own prophetic voice. In this
way, self and body will eventually be superseded by the insistent and
increasingly confident voice of the mystic, and the physical paralysis which
dominates the early stages of the Long Text will allow body to take on the
role of exegetical tool rather than constitute the distracting focus of the
reader’s attention. It is therefore highly likely that another of Julian’s pur-
poses in embarking on the Long Text almost as soon as the Short Text drew
to an end was to resolve this paradox of the ever-present female body and
attempt its complete integration into, rather than eradication from, the text.
Thus the female body remains implicitly immanent in the Long Text because
it is no longer deemed by a more mature and insightful Julian to be threat-
ening or occluding. Indeed, it now rests comfortably within the text as a sub-
tle epistemological presence which offers support to the newly prioritised
insights of the maturing mystic.
In many ways, Julian’s treatment of prophetic discourse is similarly prob-
lematised. How can she reveal her prophetic insights without transforming
them into subjective – and thus limited – pronouncements? As we have seen
in the case of Margery Kempe, it is very easy to misinterpret female prophecy
as an attempt to achieve personal aggrandisement and self-empowerment by
an otherwise marginalised member of the community. This dichotomy, of
course, was one of the primary reasons for the development of the ecclesias-
tical doctrine of discretio spirituum in the Middle Ages which demanded the
212
absent body, and the absent body of the female in particular, and it is a doctrine
with which Julian was evidently intensely familiar, as her sound advice to
Margery Kempe would testify:16
What creatur þat hath þes tokenys [gift of tears] he muste stedfastlych
belevyn þat þe Holy Gost dwellyth in hys sowle. And mech mor,
whan God visyteth a creatur wyth terys of contrisyon, deuosyon, er
compassyon, he may & owyth to leuyn þat þe Holy Gost is in hys
sowle. (42–3)
When Julian offered these words of comfort to Margery Kempe in 1413 she
was in her early seventies and, self-evidently, her words resonate with confi-
dence, assuredness and the mature wisdom of someone who has mused on
these issues over the course of a long lifetime (‘þe ancres was expert in swech
thyngys & good cownsel cowd heuyn’; 42 ). From her own texts, however, it
is clear that Julian was not always so well acquainted with the fundamental
purposes of prophetic insight and grace, and one episode in particular,
recounted in both texts, serves to illustrate the dangers of abusing the gift of
prophecy. Immediately following her well-known exposition in of God’s opti-
mistic revelation to her in her Short Text account, ‘I may make alle thynge
wele’ (ST, 63), Julian describes what initially seems to be an impulsive attempt
to apply this insight to her own subjective and personal desires. In a moment
of self-revelation she attempts to exploit her privileged subject position as
prophetic conduit by questioning God about the specific welfare of a personal
female friend or family member: ‘I desyred of a certayne person that I lovyd
howe it schulde be with hire’ (ST, 64). Unlike Margery Kempe’s God, how-
ever, who is always ready to oblige his chosen spouse’s personal requests in
such matters, Julian’s God, whilst not quite offering a rebuke, is nevertheless
unequivocal in his instruction as to the true value of prophetic discourse:
‘Take it generally, and behalde the curtayssy of thy lorde god as he schewes it
to the, for it is mare worschippe to god to behalde hym in alle than in any
specyalle thyng’ (ST, 64). What is of particular importance here is the nature
of Julian’s reaction to this quasi-admonishment. In the light of God’s instruc-
tion to her that her insights are to be for the long-term general good, rather
than for instant gratification of personal curiosity, Julian’s response is to feel
deeply chastened about her own intrusive naïvety and lack of understanding:
‘Hyf I schulde do wysely eftyr this techynge, I schulde nought be glad for
nathynge in specyalle, na desesed for na manere of thynge’ (ST, 64). As if to
excuse this early lack of insight she qualifies her desire to know the fate of her
friend thus: ‘in this desyre I lettyd myselfe, for I was noght taught in this
tyme’ (ST, 64). Julian is quick to learn that the gift of prophetic insight is
16
Voaden, God’s Words, pp. 127–8. Here Voaden demonstrates the extent to which Margery’s
interview with Julian is characterised by Julian’s use of the discourse of discretio spirituum.
213
wholly irrelevant without the gift of wisdom, and that wisdom is unattainable
without teaching and learning from God’s example. Moreover, such wisdom
is acquired with experience and contemplation over time. In her self-depiction
in this episode the author is a flawed young woman asking God about the
welfare of another woman whom she loves and utterly lacks the seasoned
wisdom which she has evidently attained in her old age as demonstrated both
in the Long Text as well as in her encounter with Margery Kempe. In time too
she will come to realise that, indeed, ‘al shal be wele’ – both in the particular
sense and in the general. Not only that, but she will be able to recontextualise,
utilise and apply her own subjective experiences to her later text in order to
make sense of initially obscure eschatological concepts which in turn will
become clearer as her wisdom develops in maturity.
Perhaps now we can see the full complexity of Julian’s dramatic represen-
tation in both texts of her own immature and impetuous desire for illness and
how its function alters over time. Initially offering a mere context to her mys-
tical experiences, by the end of the Long Text it has come to stand in for the
nature of prophetic insight itself. Although an apparent – and simplistically
formulaic – fulfilment of Julian’s prophetic desire for illness is very quickly
established for her readers in both texts, in the Short Text it is nevertheless
presented initially more in terms of unwitting foresight than genuine
prophetic ability (‘This sekenes desyrede I yn my Hought þat y myght have it
whene I were threttye Heere eelde’; ST, 40), and its fulfilment is almost as coin-
cidental (‘Ande when I was thryttye wyntere alde and a halfe, god sente me
a bodelye syekenes’; ST, 41). It is only when viewed through the distancing
lens of retrospect – that is to say, the perspective of the Long Text – that the
full import of the prophetic announcement and the pivotal role it has taken on
can be appreciated. Now Julian begins to recognise that the true prophetic ful-
filment of this episode lies far beyond the mere onset of illness. If, as Julian
has begun to appreciate, experience is a precursor to the development of wis-
dom and an essential support to mystical insight, this experience of illness
and subsequent visionary encounter forms a mere beginning to, rather than a
fulfilment of, prophetic enlightenment. Rather than fulfilling the immature
request of a young girl to experience an ascetic illness in order to increase her
pious understanding of God, in fact the onset of illness immediately precipi-
tates a desire in Julian to stay alive in order to fulfil what she is already begin-
ning to recognise as the crux of the true prophetic announcement: ‘I was ryght
sarye & lothe thouht for to dye . . . fore I walde hafe lyevede to have lovede
god better and lange tyme, that I myght, by the grace of that lyevynge, have
the more knowynge and lovynge of god in the blysse of hevene’ (ST, 41). For
Julian, the onset of her illness offers her her first mature insight: that life is
precious because its continuation allows the devoted Christian to strive for a
deeper understanding of God’s love. To die without achieving that insight
would be to cut short the prophetic consummation rather than to experience
it in its entirety. Thus, it is not without considerable anxiety that the already
214
less naïve young woman demands of God: ‘Goode lorde, maye my lyevynge
be no langere to thy worshippe?’ (ST, 40).17 It is now becoming clear that the
central prophecy with which Julian begins her texts is located not in the desire
for and achievement of illness, quasi-death and visionary experience, but in
the visionary’s survival of those experiences which, in turn, will lead to the
attainment of wisdom and a greater knowledge of God over the course of a
long and privileged lifetime. No doubt, it is for this reason that the equivalent
passage in the Long Text provides us with a much more matter-of-factual
account which is almost entirely devoid of the uncritical youthful idealism
foregrounded in the Short Text. This time, Julian implicitly stresses her imma-
ture naïvety as a ‘simple creature’ whose request was made ‘in youth’ (LT, 4).
Similarly, as we have seen, the youthful Saint Cecelia is also eradicated from
this version, no longer as significant a role model for the now mature and self-
confident woman of the 1390s. The result of this shift is that the Long Text
account of this early prophetic experience implicitly points towards its own
ongoing fulfilment because of the chronological distance between the experi-
ence itself and this moment of definitive documentation. As a result, it is
rendered proleptic: its author is recording a prophetic episode from her
inexperienced and unpracticed youth, but is representing it from the priv-
ileged vantagepoint of full knowledge and understanding of its continued ful-
filment. In this way, the episode both prefigures and effects Julian’s growth
from a ‘febille & freylle’ young woman to one who ‘lered that it is mare
wyrschippe to god to behalde hym in alle’ (LT, 64). In effect, Julian’s very act
of articulation of this perpetual prophetic announcement and its ongoing
fulfilment, emerging as it does from her location of enclosure, serves to trans-
form Julian into sibylline wise woman whose voice has indeed been privil-
eged by God. Thus, Julian becomes fully incorporated within a tradition of
female embodiment of the Logos, and re-emerges in the Long Text as fully
fledged figure of sapience. It is in this role that she is finally able to offer living
proof to her ‘evencristen’ that God and his wisdom are immanent in
all things and in all beings, and it is such a bodily immanence which she
then proceeds to translate into the textual body of her narrative. In so doing,
the divine message contained within her prophetic voice is simultan-
eously performed for her readers and ‘not yet performid’, each new reading
perpetuating the ongoing and cyclical (re)enactment of the reciprocity
of divine love.
17
For an interesting investigation of Julian’s use of the phrase ‘our good lord’ in her writ-
ing see Alexandra Barratt, ‘Julian of Norwich and the Holy Spirit: “Our Good Lord” ’, in
Mystics Quarterly 28, 2 (June 2002), pp. 78–84. Here Barratt argues for the phrase as pos-
sibly having a bearing on Julian’s class position, of which we know very little. She sug-
gests that Julian’s positive use of the phrase as metaphor would come naturally to a
woman belonging to the country gentry. Barratt also posits that Julian’s metaphoric use
of this phrase could also suggest that the Motherhood of God conceptualisation is
equally metaphorical and should be perhaps taken as such (p. 83).
215
‘Wintering into Wisdom’:18 Sapiential Theology and the Female Voice
Julian’s growth towards maturity and wisdom which is evidenced through-

out her writing is usefully examined in the context of yet another important
tradition within the Christian Church – one which is also in dialogue with
sibylline tradition and which was again able to offer women a positive exam-
ple of the contribution of the prophetic female voice. The so-called ‘sapiential’
writings of the Old Testament constitute a body of writing which remains
remarkable for its contradictory feminine imagery within texts which take as
their ostensible subject the omnipotence of a masculine, patriarchal deity.19 In
the Book of Ecclesiasticus, for example, the aspect of God consistently
referred to as ‘Wisdom’ (Hokhmah) is represented as an autonomous female
who is both wise and voluptuous:
Approach me, you who desire me,

And take your fill of my fruits,
For memories of me are sweeter than honey.20
In these books – which incorporate images of sexual union in the Song of

Songs tradition – Wisdom is depicted as offering her wisdom (and herself as
its embodiment) to humankind as moral guidance. Frequently she takes on
the role of Bride of God and becomes the ethical and physical guide to God’s
followers. What is significant, however, is that within this tradition this figure
always remains separate from the aspect of God of which she is a part, retain-
ing a distinct – and indisputably female – persona.
Recent studies have begun to uncover the considerable importance of this
ancient concept of female-identified Wisdom – translated into Greek as
‘Sophia’ and subsequently into Latin as ‘Sapientia’21 – for the understanding
of the patterns of early Christianity which left their mark on the religious
thinking of the later Middle Ages.22 The hypostatisation and personification
18
‘Awræc wintrum frod’, C. L. Wrenn (ed.), Beowulf (London, 1973), lines 1722–24, p. 161.
19
For an interesting overview of Sapiential theology see Marina Warner, ‘Lady Wisdom’, in
Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London, 1985), pp. 177–209. For
a more detailed approach see James Wood, Wisdom Literature: An Introduction (London,
1967); Joseph Blenkinsop, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament and the Ordering of Life
in Israel and Early Judaism (Oxford, 1995); R. J. Clifford, The Wisdom Literature (Nashville,
1998).
20
Ecclesiasticus 24: 19–20.
21
For purposes of this chapter, I have chosen to use the Latin term ‘Sapientia’, primarily
because this is the term used in the Vulgate Bible with which Julian would probably have
been familiar.
22
William R. Schoedel documents how ancient Jewish wisdom left its mark upon the say-
ings attributed to Christ in the canonical Gospels and thus passed into mainstream
Christianity, in ‘Jewish Wisdom and the Formation of the Christian Ascetic’, in Robert L.
Wilken (ed.), Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame, Indiana,
1975), pp. 169–99.
216
of the concept of wisdom in Jewish wisdom literature (such as the canonical

Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and The Wisdom of Solomon and the non-
canonical Ecclesiasticus) was to have a marked effect upon the progress of
Christology and early Christian thought, particularly as Christ himself also
came to be identified with this female figure.23 It is also likely that the author-
ity invested in this figure was a result of her being conflated with the ancient
Judaic tradition of the male Sophos, to which her Greek name would also
attest.24 The figure of the Sophos incorporated both sage and teacher and com-
bined practical common sense and prudence with a detailed knowledge of
the Old Testament stories and teachings. Similarly, he would gather around
him a group of pupils whom he was able to instruct in the moral and religious
values essential for good living. Moreover, the Sophos undertook a street
ministry which was entirely legitimate,25 and was differentiated from his
peers by the way he walked, the way he spoke and the way he dressed.26 Like
the female tradition of the ancient Sibyl, he was at the same time part of and
set apart from the people, and his knowledge was similarly both of this world
and otherworldly.
What is significant in this context is that Wisdom appears to have been a
concept which had long been associated with inspiration by the divine Logos
in association with learning and common sense. Crucially too, it could be
represented as both masculine and feminine. Emerging as it did in different
guises in a wide variety of religions and cultures over a period of time, it
finally came to rest in western Christianity in the female figure of Sapientia,
who was nevertheless still an aspect of an essentially masculine trinitarian
God. It is such an overlaying of the feminine upon the masculine, of course,
which also characterises Julian’s own depiction of the Trinity, as we have
seen. It is therefore wholly appropriate that this ambiguous figure should
make her veiled appearance within Julian’s texts as a means of increasing
and explicating the author’s mystical understanding of Christ’s feminine
aspects and, in so doing, authorise her own role as female visionary, as I shall
demonstrate.
The western tradition of Sapientia depicts her as intensely female and
vociferous, calling out in an unprecedented way in the public places as did
the male Sophos within Judaic tradition (and, indeed, invoking images
of Margery Kempe at the height of her own vociferous ministry). Proverbs 8,
for example, characterises Sapientia as a female street-preacher who is
23
For an analysis of the influence of sapiential theology upon medieval theologians, and in
particular on the visions of Hildegarde of Bingen, see Newman, Sister of Wisdom, espe-
cially pp. 42–5.
24
For an account of the influence of the figure of the Sophos on early Christology, see James
M. Robinson, ‘Jesus as Sophos and Sophia: Wisdom Tradition and the Gospels’, in
Wilken, Aspects of Wisdom, pp. 1–16.
25
Robinson, ‘Jesus as Sophos’, p. 2. See also J. Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy: A Study
of the Eleventh Mandate (Leiden, 1973), pp. 8–11.
26
Wilken, Aspects of Wisdom, Introduction, p. xvi.
217
attempting to call people to their senses, exhorting them to listen out for the
Word of God:
Does not wisdom call out?

Does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights along the way, where the paths meet, she takes her
stand;
beside the gates leading into the city,
at the entrances, she cries aloud:
‘To you, O men, I call out;
I raise my voice to all mankind.
You who are simple, gain prudence; you who are foolish, gain
understanding.
Listen, for I have worthy things to say; I open my lips to speak
what is right.
My mouth speaks what is true, for my lips detest wickedness.
All the words of my mouth are just; none of them is crooked or
perverse.
To the discerning all of them are right; they are faultless to those
who have knowledge.’27
In this biblical account, the voice of the prophetic woman is central and –
again like Margery Kempe – entirely irrepressible. Instead of lies pouring
from her lips, as was the case in other biblical traditions such as that of gar-
rulous Eve or duplicitous Delilah, she utters a truth reminiscent of sibylline
prophecy, only discernable to those who have knowledge of how to receive it.
What is more, she is compelled to call out that truth unashamedly in the
street, in spite of the fact that in reality women were utterly proscribed from
this type of public behaviour. What is important here is that this street min-
istry later came to be identified with Christ’s public ministry and his own role
as sage, as teacher and as embodiment of his father’s Wisdom, an identifica-
tion which again allowed female access to a particularly empowering expres-
sion of imitatio Christi.
This theological endorsement of the feminine was further increased by the
fact that in the days of the early Christian Church the figure of Sapientia had
also become conflated with Ecclesia or Mother Church.28 Although concerted
attempts were made during the patristic period to suppress her celebratory
femininity in the interests of a developing Christology,29 nevertheless during
Carolingian times (primarily under the influence of Alcuin’s Mass of the Holy
Wisdom) a sapiential cult emerged which became widespread as a result of this
votive, the use of which continued in the medieval Church until as late as 1570.30
27
Proverbs 8: 1–9.
28
Warner, Monuments, p. 179.
29
Newman, Sister of Wisdom, p. 43.
30
Newman, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 43–4.
218
Upon the flowering of Christian mysticism in the West, Wisdom theology was
taken up with some enthusiasm and the figure of Sapientia continued to
metamorphose into an unmistakably female figure who was able to facilitate
a more immediate and personal experience of God for the humble Christian.
Most significantly in this context, the most dramatic and fully realised depic-
tions of this female figure flowed from the pens of the female mystics, no
doubt speaking to them directly in the same way as the figure of the Sibyl
spoke to Christine de Pizan. Such extensive and fully developed depictions of
Sapientia as we find in female-authored mystical texts served not only to
define the nature of the Godhead, but also the mystic’s own subjectivity in
relation to that Godhead.
Perhaps the best-known of the female mystics to explicitly adopt the figure
of Sapientia in her writing is Hildegarde of Bingen writing in the twelfth cen-
tury and herself known as the ‘Rhenish sibyl’.31 Hildegarde’s theology is
heavily dependent on the figure of Sapientia for its expression. Sometimes she
appears in the guise of Caritas with whom she was closely associated and at
others she is conflated with the figure of Ecclesia. At all times, however, she
is represented as shining, transcendent, beautiful and exuding the power and
force of the Logos:
I saw the image of a woman of great size . . . She had her head crowned
wondrously, and her arms were covered with the long sleeves of a tunic
which glistened from heaven right down to the earth . . . I could not look at
her garment closely except that I noticed it shone with a very bright peace-
fulness. Her breasts were surrounded with such splendour that they shone
as a reddish dawn full of reddish lightening.32
Newman has argued for the figure of Sapientia as allowing Hildegarde to

largely evade the tradition of misogyny which she had inherited, suggesting
that, in combination with her knowledge and insight into folk-wisdom, med-
ical lore and motifs from classical mythology, her use of this female figure
allowed her to take up herself the position of female prophet within a society
which was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the ability of the patri-
archal Church to offer leadership.33 It seems more likely, however, that the
tradition of Sapientia allowed more for a reconciliation of misogynistic atti-
tudes and possible female empowerment than for the total evasion of anti-
feminist sentiment as posited by Newman, and in view of the fact that by the
time Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe came to writing in the late
Middle Ages there had been an upsurge in such misogynistic discourse, their
31
See Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, p. 144. See pp. 144–201 for a comprehen-
sive overview of Hildegarde’s writing and her impact upon her peers.
32
Hildegarde of Bingen, Hildegarde von Bingen’s Mystical Visions: Translated from Scivias,
trans. Bruce Hozeski (Santa Fe, 1986), p. 97.
33
Newman, Sister of Wisdom, p. 4.
219
need for recourse to such figures of female authority had become paramount.
Moreover, by this stage both Sapientia and Ecclesia had become increasingly
associated with the figure of the Virgin (and, therefore, a wholly redeemed
Eve), something which again rendered her the ideal female authority upon
which these female mystics could draw for purposes of validation.34 In so
doing, each female mystic could not only reinforce her own self-representation
as sponsa Christi, but also imbue herself and her potentially dangerous female
voice with both biblical and divine authority.
Julian’s own absorption of the Wisdom tradition is evidenced in both texts,
as I have suggested, but becomes a much more insistent discourse in the Long
Text as a product of her growing maturity. At the beginning of Chapter 1 –
and no doubt again dependent upon her 1388 insight into the nature of divine
love – Julian explicitly associates God with both wisdom and love, telling us:
‘our lord God [is] almighty wisdome, all love, right as verily as he hath made
every thing that is’ (LT, 1). Similarly, elsewhere she explicitly associates the
Virgin with wisdom. In both texts ‘the wisdam & the trewth of hir [the Virgin’s]
sawle’ is associated with her youth and simplicity (‘a sympille creature of his
makynge’; ST, 44). However, in the Long Text version Julian insists upon a
further contemplation of the Virgin’s youth and simplicity. This time the
Virgin is redefined in terms of her possession of a mature and sublime wisdom
(‘hey wisdom’; LT, 10) which contrasts with her previous description of her as
‘little waxen above a child’ (LT, 6): ‘Our lord God shewed our lady Saint Mary
in the same tyme; that is to mene the hey wisdome and trewth she had in
beholding of hir maker so grete, so hey, so mightie and so gode’ (LT, 10).
Crucially, this higher, more sublime (and, by implication, more seasoned) wis-
dom is born not of the Virgin’s motherhood, but of her ability to watch, listen
and contemplate the meaning of that motherhood and, by implication, the Word
itself. It is such a wisdom which the incarnate Christ will take on in the form
of female flesh and which Julian will take on as a mature female visionary
who learns over time to similarly watch, listen and contemplate the divine
utterance.
Julian’s complex adoption of sapiential theology finally comes together in
the Long Text during her fully realised Motherhood of God narrative, how-
ever. Here the mother, as synecdochal figure of wisdom, is used to incorp-
orate not only the Virgin and Christ, but also Julian herself as writer-visionary
giving birth to the wisdom of the mystical text. Now she asserts authorita-
tively, ‘God is our moder; and that shewid he in all, and namely in these swete
words where he seith . . . “I it am: the wisdam of the moderhede” ’ (LT, 96).
Elsewhere, she assures us, using her own ‘swete words’: ‘the depe wisdom of
the Trinite [is] our moder in whom we arn al beclosid’ (LT, 87). Moreover, like
the work of the writer-visionary, this motherhood is specifically a ‘moderhede
34
On this see Newman, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 196–7.
220
of werkyng’ (LT, 96). Just as, for Julian, motherhood as constitutes a life-long
work, so the achievement of wisdom is a similarly life-long process. Thus, the
‘werkyng’ of motherhood and that of visionary become paradigmatic of the
life-long task undertaken by Christ on the behalf of humanity. Julian’s even-
tual understanding of unitive love, therefore, comes about as a result of a syn-
onymy which she establishes between herself, Christ and the Virgin, who, in
their ‘werkyng’ and their ‘moderhede’ embody the wisdom of the Sapiential
tradition which is to be disseminated on behalf of the trinitarian God – of
whom it is also a part. Typically, however, Julian insists that this embodied
wisdom is directed ‘not to hem that be wise’, but to ‘yow that be simple for
ese and comfort, for we arn al one in comfort’ (LT, 13). Her wisdom, she tells
us (and by implication the wisdom of the entire Trinity) is not for the already
enlightened (and it is tempting to read this latter extract as a subtle critique of
those male ecclesiastics and theologians who claim insight and wisdom, but
whose lack of simplicity and ‘female’ humility separates them from it
entirely);35 on the contrary, it is for those like herself who were once naïvely
ignorant, but who may now benefit from sharing her mystical insight into the
truth of God’s feminine wisdom as disseminated by his mature female repre-
sentative on earth, by means of her increasingly authoritative female voice. In
this context the caveat generally considered to have been inserted by the scribe
at the end of the Sloane manuscript’s Long Text36 can be read as a most self-
conscious attempt to reappropriate the material from the realm of the femi-
nine and reimpose upon it an orthodox masculine authority:
I pray almyty god that this booke com not but to the hands of them that will
be his faithfull lovers, and to those that will submitt them to the feith of holy
church and obey the holesom vnderstondyng and teching of the men that
be of vertuous life, sadde age and profound lernyng; for this revelation is
hey divinitye and hey wisdam . . . And thou, to whome this booke shall
come, thanke heyley and hartily our saviour Crist Ihesu that he made these
shewings and revelations for the. (LT, 135–6)
Intriguingly, the readers of Julian’s text are exhorted to obey the teaching of
learned old men, that is to say the very priests and theologians whose claims
to wisdom Julian may well have been questioning earlier in her text. What we
are left with is the figure of a scribe who rests uncomfortably with Julian’s
theology of the feminine and even, perhaps, with the female voice by which
it is disseminated. Possibly, then, what we witness here is a very early attempt
at suppression, reappropriation or remasculinisation of this gynaecentric
35
Robert E. Lerner has pointed out that it is characteristic of medieval prophecy to offer
implicit criticism of the ‘unenlightened’ and often obstructive clergy, ‘Medieval Prophecy
and Religious Dissent’, Past and Present 72 (1976), pp. 3–24.
36
See, for example, Glasscoe who notes this attribution to the scribe at the end of her edi-
tion, p. 143, n. 276.
221
text for the male reader. In fact, it could be said that this scribal addendum
contains echoes of the initially patronising words of Richard Caister to
Margery Kempe about the inability of a woman to be able to sustain a con-
versation with him for more than ‘an owyr er tweyn in þe lofe of owyr Lord’
(38). Yet, Julian of Norwich occupied over half of her seventy or so years in
the contemplation and analysis of the nature of divine love, striving relent-
lessly for the attainment of a wisdom which she then proceeds to incorporate
into the detailed and complex exegesis which comprises the Long Text.
Through the medium of text, too, she has enabled others to be equally ‘occu-
pied’ and, in spite of a possible male resistance as represented in the words of
this scribe, has, like Margery Kempe, insistently articulated the female voice
as being an equally valid medium for the dissemination of God’s salvific love
for humankind.
Preservation and Dissemination of the Female Voice: Questions of Audience
þe ancre þe wearnde an oþer a cwaer ti lane for ha hefde heoneward ward

hire bileaue ehe.37
The anchoress who refused to another the loan of a book would have the
eye of her faith far away from this.
On 31 July 1429 Christine de Pizan completed the last recorded piece of writ-
ing of her life, the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, a contemporaneous celebration of the
life of the French woman hero. Since 1418 when she had been forced to flee
Paris upon its capture by the Burgundians, Christine had been living in exile
in a walled abbey. She documents this experience in the opening huitain of the
Ditié thus:
Je, Christine, qui ay plouré

XI ans en abbaye close,
Ou j’ay tousjours puis demouré
Que Charles (c’est estrange chose!)
Le filz du roy, se dire l’ose,
S’en fouÿ de Paris de tire, par là traison la enclose,
Ore à prime me prens à rire.38
I, Christine, who have wept for eleven years in a walled abbey where I have
lived ever since Charles (how strange this is!), the king’s son – dare I say it? –
fled in haste from Paris, I who have lived enclosed there on account of the
treachery, now, for the first time, begin to laugh.
37
38
Angus J. Kennedy and Kenneth Varty (eds), Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, Medium Aevum
Monographs, n.s. IX (Oxford, 1977), p. 28.
222
In so doing, Christine de Pizan establishes her voice as emerging not only

from the invisible space of a walled room, but also as being specifically female
and autobiographical. For the authority of this poem, both the enclosed
female body and disembodied female voice are crucial for the authority
which she claims as a woman and as a writer, which enables her to produce
one of the only known contemporary celebrations of the French visionary,
Jehanne d’Arc.39 The heroism which Christine is celebrating in this poem,
however, is far more than that of intense nationalistic fervour or religious con-
viction (although these are both major elements in the poem); it is primarily
to do with its embodiment within a young woman (‘Une fillette de XVI ans’).
The sex of the poem’s protagonist is of primary importance to the poem’s
impact and the impulse of its writer to compose it. Presented as a historical
chronicle of ‘truth’, in which a woman usurps the role of a male clerk to
record another woman’s usurpation of the male role of soldier, each woman
lends to the other an indisputable authority which is celebrated by the author
in her declaration:
Hee! Quel honneur au femenin

Sexe! Que Dieu l’ayme il appeert,
Quant tout ce grant peuple chenin,
Par qui tout le regne ert desert,
Par femme est sours et recouvert,
Ce que Cm hommes fait n’eussent,
Et les traictres mis à desert!
A peine devant ne le creussent.40
Oh! What honour for the female sex! It is perfectly obvious that God has
special regard for it when all these wretched people who destroyed
the whole kingdom – now recovered and made safe by a woman, something
that five thousand men could not have done – and the traitors have
been exterminated. Before the event they would scarcely have believed this
possible.
This assertion of God’s public inscription of superiority upon a woman’s abil-

ity to carry out his will as embodied in the figure of Jehanne, is at the same
time directly applicable to the author herself because of her shared female
identity with the subject of her poem.41 Thus her celebration of Jehanne d’Arc
becomes equally a celebration of the authorial and authoritative female voice,
inscribed as it is in her text and fixed there by the assertion in the first lines,
39
The only other known contemporaneous treatise on Joan of Arc is that attributed to Jean
Gerson.
40
Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, p. 34.
41
Kevin Brownlee makes this point in his essay, ‘Structures of Authority in Christine de
Pizan’s Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc’, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinki (ed.), The Selected Writings
of Christine de Pizan (New York and London, 1997), pp. 371–90.
223
‘Je, Christine’ and in the last huitain, ‘Donne ce Ditié par Christine’. In this
way, Christine de Pizan represents herself in this poem not only as clerk, but
also as prophetic Sibyl whose voice records Jehanne’s achievements for future
generations and as the preserver of the ‘truth’ of female achievement – both
that of the French hero, her own as a writer and that witnessed by the long
tradition of women achievers who have been marginalised within patriarchal
tradition. In effect she establishes herself alongside Jehanne as a ‘mother to
think back through’ which, although a concept to which Sheila Delaney has
taken some exception,42 nevertheless, as defenders of privileged female access
to both word and Word, Jehanne d’Arc and Christine de Pizan explicitly
represent what we have recognised in Julian’s texts – the increasingly confident
awareness that within the female lies a privileged means of accessing divine
Wisdom and love. Not only that, but the female voice, because of its associ-
ations with age-old prophetic wisdom, can also provide the ideal medium for
the preservation and dissemination of divine truth.
If we return to Julian’s writing in this context, in the same way as the
addendum at the end of the Long Text attempts to remasculinise the material,
the incipit attached to the only extant manuscript of Julian’s Short Text, the
so-called ‘Amherst’ manuscript,43 can be examined in terms of a scribal attempt
to locate this text within this tradition of female prophetic insight and to
establish the femininity of the text:
There es a vision schewed by the goodenes of god to a deuoute woman and

hir name es Iulyan that is recluse atte Norwyche and hitt ys on lyfe anno
domini mellesimo CCCCxiii, in the whilke visyon er fulle many comfort-
ablylle wordes and gretly styrrande to all thaye that desyres to be crystes
looverse. (ST, 39)
This scribal addition also serves to lend authority to the notion of textual femi-
ninity by means of a close syntactical association between the ‘deuoute
woman’ and ‘the goodenes of god’. What is more, the scribe specifically names
the author as ‘Iulyan’ and emphasises her status as a living recorder of God’s
Word. The correlation here between this strategy and that which we have just
examined as employed by Christine de Pizan is self-evident and could well
have been added by a scribe who was particularly sympathetic to the
notion of an authoritative female voice and its role in recording, announcing
and preserving.
42
See Sheila Delany’s essay, ‘ “Mothers to think back through”: Who are They? The
Ambiguous Example of Christine de Pizan’, in Renate Bomenfeld-Kosinki (ed.), The
Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (New York and London, 1997), pp. 312–28. Here
Delaney urges caution against the uncritical adoption of women writers as ‘mothers to
think back through’ merely because they were writers. She argues instead that such role-
models should be carefully selected and an attempt made to understand historically both
their successes and their failures.
43
This manuscript is also known as London, MS British Museum Add. 37790.
224
Of course, since the Amherst manuscript’s rediscovery in 1909,44 this

scribal addition has been valued for providing important biographical
evidence about Julian herself, as well as helping us to speculate on possible
circulation and audience. Until the time when it was acquired by the British
Museum, the existence of the mansucript was only known of through the
writing of Francis Blomefield who, in the second volume of his Norfolk pub-
lished in 1745, made reference to Saint Julian’s church in Norwich and to
Julian herself in the following terms:
Lady Julian the Ankeress here, was a strict Recluse, and had 2 Servants
to attend her in her old Age, Ao 1443. This Woman in those Days, was
esteemed one of the greatest Holynesse. The Rev. Mr. Francis Peck, Author
of the Antiquities of Stanford, had an old Vellum Mss. 36 4to Pages of
which, contain’d an Account of the Visions &c. of this Woman, which begins
thus . . .45
Blomefield then proceeds to quote almost verbatim the aforementioned incipit

of the Short Text, its close agreement with which, according to Colledge and
Walsh, ‘cannot be fortuitous’.46 It is therefore highly likely that the manuscript
to which Blomefield alludes is the Amherst manuscript itself. Francis Peck,
the then owner of the manuscript, died in 1743 and on the death of his widow
in 1758, Peck’s books were sold at auction.47 An old binding of this manu-
script, however, still preserves the bookplate belonging to William Constable,
and although it is not known how it came into his possession, it is intriguing
that some of the daughters of the Constable family had been revered mem-
bers of the exiled post-Reformation English Benedictine communities at
Cambrai and Paris. It was these communities of women which were to prove
so important to the preservation and dissemination of the Long Text after the
dissolution of the monasteries, as we shall see. Colledge and Walsh, however,
consider the acquisition of the manuscript by the Constable family as ‘as
remarkable accident (and) no more than that’,48 suggesting a coincidence
which seems to me unlikely. As these editors have shown, the first printed
version of the Long Text by Serenus de Cressy – a version which was the only
witness of Julian’s writing available to scholars for over two hundred years49 –
was almost certainly begun when de Cressy was at Paris where he had been
sent to the newly founded house of English Benedictine nuns soon after his
44
For the full account of this manuscript’s history see Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings,
pp. 10–12.
45
Francis Blomefield, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 5 vols
(Fersfield and Lynn, 1739–75), vol. 2, The History of the City and County of Norwich
(Norwich, 1745), p. 564, as quoted by Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings, p. 11.
46
47
48
49
Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings, p. 14. For a description of this manuscript see p. 6.
225
ordination in 1651.50 It is also known that one of the two extant truncated ver-
sions of the Long Text, known as the Upholland redaction (the other being the
Westminster Text to be examined presently)51 was copied by the nuns at
Cambrai, and one of its scribes was none other than Barbara Constable who
had been professed at Cambrai in 1640.52 Most commentators are also in agree-
ment that Upholland was compiled from the Paris manuscript containing the
Long Text, or its source. Colledge and Walsh also speculate from inscription
evidence that the Paris manuscript could well have fallen into private hands,
having been part of the conventual library of Cambrai or Paris, and indeed
present convincing evidence to suggest that the nuns’ libraries at Cambrai
and Paris did in fact possess copies of Julian before 1637.53 Etymological evi-
dence would also suggest that the two so-called ‘Sloane’ manuscripts on
which Glasscoe’s edition of the Long Text is based54 originated from a reli-
gious community, probably located somewhere between the border towns of
northern France and the Low Countries.55 It would seem then that the sur-
vival of the Long Text in particular was entirely dependent on the English
Benedictine nuns of northern France (who comprised, in fact, just the sort of
transhistorical and transcultural community of women which Christine de
Pizan had envisaged some time before) and, given the web of connections
between these communities and the Constable family in England, it seems
less of an accident or coincidence that the Short Text should also end up in the
hands of this family than Colledge and Walsh consider. As the work of a most
singular English female writer whom the exiled female communities of
northern France obviously held in high esteem, it would be unlikely if the
book-loving Constable family were unaware of the import of the book which
they were buying. Indeed, it is more likely that they knew of the existence of
Julian’s texts and that the purchase by William Constable in about 1758 was a
deliberate one.56
50
51
MS Saint Joseph’s College, Upholland, for a description of which see Colledge and Walsh,
A Book of Showings, p. 9.
52
On this see Hywel Owen et al., ‘The Upholland Author’, Downside Review 107, 369
(October 1989), pp. 274–92.
53
An extract from MS Colwich Abbey 18, a work attributed to Dame Margaret Gascoigne
of Cambrai and copied at Cambrai in 1650, is bound with a piece of the same office book
as that of the Upholland Manuscript and reads, ‘thou hast saide, O Lorde, to a deere
childe of thine, Lette me alone, my deare worthy childe, intende . . . to me, I am inough
to thee, reioice in thy Sauiour and Saluation (this was spoken to Iulian the Ankress of
norw(ich), as appeareth by the booke of her reuelations)’ (as cited in Colledge and Walsh,
A Book of Showings, p. 16). Similarly, MS Mazarine 4058, which documents the ‘bookes
belonging to the Liberary of the English Benedictine Nunnes of our B. Lady of Good
Hope in paris’, records ‘The Reuelations of Sainte Julian’ (A Book of Showings, p. 17).
54
London, MS British Museum Sloane 2499 and London, MS British Museum Sloane 3705.
These are popularly known as Sloane 1 and Sloane 2 respectively.
55
56
Dame Barabara Constable, as mentioned above, was professed at Cambrai in 1640; Dame
Mary Joseph Constable was professed at Paris in 1695 and died in 1767. Similarly, Dame
226
The Amherst manuscript containing the Short Text bears an inscription

which records on fol. 33r an early owner as being James Grenehalgh, whom it
has been established was working to benefit the female religious house of
Syon and other English Carthusian houses.57 Grenehalgh annotated exten-
sively the Amherst manuscript58 and Colledge and Walsh speculate that this
manuscript may therefore have been written at Syon’s sister-house of Sheen.
These editors also suggest that following the production of the Long Text, this
Short Text version might well have been forgotten or suppressed.59 On the other
hand, Vincent Gillespie reminds us of the evident keenness amongst the
Carthusians for simplified rather than theologically complex texts, a prefer-
ence which he suggests was ‘very English’.60 Gillespie draws the conclusion
that this is a likely reason for their valuing of Julian’s Short Text and even
their evident interest in Margery Kempe, whom we know visited Syon on
about 29 July 1434.61 There was a close relation between the houses of Sheen
and Syon; in particular they seem to have collaborated on the production and
circulation of mystical, paramystical and devotional books, often written in
the vernacular, during the course of the fifteenth century.62 Of course, if the
Short Text had found its way into the library at Syon as did other manuscripts
produced by Grenehalgh, written as they were for the special attention of his
friend and confidante at Syon, Joanna Sewell,63 then it would be interesting to
speculate on whether she could have become acquainted with Julian’s work
during a visit there. It is unlikely that evidence will emerge to prove such a
connection, but what is evident from the circumstantial jigsaw of association
and connection is that Julian’s writing was circulated, disseminated, preserved
and copied by communities of women for whom, no doubt, Julian’s inclusive
theology of the feminine and her prioritising of the female body and voice
would have had a particular affective and intellectual import. As in Christine
Frances Sheldon who returned to England on the arrest and release of the Paris commu-
nity in April 1795, was closely connected to William Constable. On this see Colledge and
Walsh, A Book of Showings, p. 12.
57
58
For a detailed description of Grenehalgh’s annotations on this manuscript see Michael G.
Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, 2 vols, Analecta Carthusiana 85, 2 (1984),
pp. 499–510.
59
60
Vincent Gillespie, ‘Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and
the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The English Mystical
Tradition in England, Wales and Ireland, Papers read at Charney Manor, July 1999, Exeter
Symposium 7, pp. 241–68, p. 262. For further information on the spirituality of Syon, see
Roger Ellis, ‘Further Thoughts on the Spirituality of Syon Abbey’, in Pollard and Boenig,
Mysticism and Spirituality, pp. 219–43. For a particularly informative essay on the
Sheen–Syon connection and the role of the Carthusians in disseminating and preserving
mystical texts for the laity, see Cré, ‘Women in the Charterhouse?’
61
See The Book of Margery Kempe, p. 348, n. 245/31–2, and p. 349, n. 245/31, for information
on the importance of the monasteries of Sheen and Syon.
62
Gillespie, ‘Dial M for Mystic’, p. 241.
63
Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings, pp. 10–11.
227
de Pizan’s assiduous collection of positive images of women, it is likely that

for these communities of women Julian spoke to them and their bodies in a
way that other more androcentric writers could not.
Significantly in this context, we find a similar case emerging with the
so-called Westminster redaction of Julian’s Revelations, which until recently had
received very little attention in spite of its being the earliest extant witness to
the Long Text.64 This redaction seems to be the result of extensive expurgation
and editing of the original version and scholars have been generally at odds
about to which branch of the Long Text manuscripts it belongs.65 Whatever its
origins, however, the Westminster version remains only a partial reproduc-
tion of the Long Text, and has generally been considered to be of only minor
importance to Julian studies. Very recently, however, Hugh Kempster’s prob-
ing article as to its provenance appearing in the McEntire volume of essays,
in conjunction with his new edition published in Mystics Quarterly in 1997,
has rekindled interest in this text in which the female body is retained as an
insistent and active presence, as we shall see.66 Examining the Westminster
florilegium as a whole, Kempster suggests an audience which was committed
to the newly popular concept of the ‘mixed life’ and to a new type of piety
which allowed for a deep level of contemplative spirituality whilst still
remaining in the world.67 However, Kempster also suggests that such a highly
original and potentially dangerous text as Julian’s, produced as it was by a
highly skilled female theologian, would not be able to withstand the still-
dominant forces of conservatism and orthodoxy prevalent at this point in the
fifteenth century68 and that it would have needed rigorous editing in order to
be an acceptable aid for those intent on the mixed life. Kempster therefore
64
For an account of the provenance of the Westminster Manuscript, see Hugh Kempster,
‘Julian of Norwich: the Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love’, Mystics Quarterly 23, 4
(December 1997), pp. 177–202.
65
Beer and Glasscoe agree that it appears to belong to the same branch as the Paris manu-
script (Beer, Revelations, p. 28; Glasscoe, A Revelation of Divine Love, p. 106). Colledge and
Walsh, however, locate it as originating from the same ancestor as the Sloane manu-
scripts (A Book of Showings, p. 27). Kempster, the most recent editor of the Westminster
version, however, argues for the existence of a third distinct branch of provenance for the
Long Text, a view which is supported by Watson, who points out that the Westminster
text, whilst sometimes preferring the Sloane text to the Paris text, occasionally diverges
from both. Not only that, but the Short Text and the Paris text agree against Sloane most
of the time, suggesting that the Paris text is actually a more accurate representation of
Julian’s original than has previously been considered.
66
Hugh Kempster, ‘A Question of Audience: The Westminster Text and Fifteenth-
Century Reception of Julian of Norwich’, in McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays,
pp. 257–89.
67
Kempster points out that Archbishop Arundel, once so antipathetic to vernacular reli-
gious texts, was to sanction Nicholas Love’s translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,
written primarily for the laity and which specifically acknowledges the ‘mixed life’ as a
viable alternative to religious enclosure for the laity (‘A Question of Audience’, p. 262).
Whilst this remains worthy of note, nevertheless Arundel’s constitutions were intent on
regulating theological rather than devotional texts.
68
Kempster, ‘A Question of Audience’, p. 271.
228
concludes that the editor of the Westminster Text would probably have been
working on Julian’s writing with the laity in mind,69 and particularly those
amongst the laity who had a strong religious calling, a calling which in itself
would have increased the demand for spiritually edifying texts, as we have
seen in the case of Margery Kempe.
The findings of Norman Tanner in his study of wills in medieval Norwich
during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries70 would suggest that
very few people, if any at all amongst the laity, owned contemplative texts
during the period in question.71 Our knowledge about Margery Kempe and
her priest, however, would challenge this conclusion and suggest that such
texts were, in fact, available for the consumption of the laity. Similarly, in his
study of the period between 1440 and 1489, Tanner records only one contem-
plative book owner amongst the laity in Norwich but it is a record which never-
theless remains highly significant here.72 Margaret Purdans was a bourgeois
widow whose will is recorded as having been written in 1481 in which she
bequeaths three mystical texts to the Franciscan nuns of Bruisyard in Suffolk:
an English translation of De Doctrina Cordis sometimes attributed to Bishop
Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253) but now considered to have been written by Hugh
of Saint-Cher (1200–63),73 an ‘English book of Saint Bridget’ and, finally, ‘a
book called Hylton’. What is of particular interest, of course, is that two out
of these three mystical texts bequeathed in this isolated record are the same as
those documented by Margery Kempe as having been read to her, illustrating
what the likely market for such texts would have been. Moreover, the much
earlier findings of Margaret Deansely in this area are entirely contrary to
Tanner’s own – something of which Kempster provides an overview in his
69
Kempster, ‘A Question of Audience’, p. 268.
70
Tanner, The Church in Medieval Norwich.
71
Of Tanner’s sample of wills between 1370 and 1439, out of a total of 167 lay wills and 96
clerical bequests, only 16 books were left by lay people, of which 13 were liturgical in
nature and one scriptural. Tanner finds no evidence of the ownership of contemplative
texts by the laity.
72
Tanner, The Church in Medieval Norwich, p. 112.
73
De Doctrina Cordis has been a singularly underexamined text to date. However, recent
work by scholars such as Christiania Whitehead and Denis Renevey has done much to
redress this shortfall. See, in particular, Whitehead’s discussion of the architectural alle-
gory contained within this work in Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: A Study of
Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 100–1 and pp. 122–3; and Denis Renevey,
‘Household Chores in The Doctrine of the Heart: Affective Spirituality and Subjectivity’, in
Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones (eds), The Medieval Household in
Christian Europe, c.850–c.1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, International
Medieval Research, vol. 12 (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 167–85. The text in its English transla-
tion has been edited by M. P. Candon in the form of an unpublished doctoral thesis, The
Doctrine of the Hert, in which he asserts in his Introduction, pp. xlii–xliii, ‘Where an author
is mentioned the work is attributed to such diverse characters as Robert Grosseteste in
England, Gérard de Chartreux, Hughes le Cardinal, Gérard de Liège of the Order of
Preachers, Alphonse de Spire in Germany, Albert de Brescia, and Guido’. I am grateful to
Denis Renevey for clarifying this issue of attributed authorship and for furnishing me
with the reference.
229
essay.74 Deansely’s research suggests, not a dearth of lay ownership of con-

templative or mystical texts during the same period but, conversely, points
towards a steady increase in such ownership across the rest of England, a trend
which became much more pronounced in the third decade of the fifteenth
century. It therefore seems highly likely that the production of the Westminster
redaction of the Long Text reflects not a limited, but a growing demand, and
particularly a growing demand for accessible contemplative texts in the ver-
nacular amongst laywomen such as Margaret Purdans and Margery Kempe.
Another type of text which emerged alongside the contemplative texts
during this same period seems to have met with similarly widespread popu-
larity, namely the so-called ‘common-profit’ book. These books were commis-
sioned and circulated not only for the ‘comyn profite’ of the laity whose
access to such literature might be limited, but also to benefit the soul of the
donor.75 Kempster isolates one such owner of a ‘common-profit’ book, a John
Colop whose book included a compilation of Hilton’s works, The Scale of
Perfection and his Mixed Life, and various commentaries on the psalms. In this
respect, the content of this book would adhere closely to the Westminster flori-
legium in which the highly edited version of Julian’s Long Text appears.76 Not
only that, but as early as 1402 there appears to have been a ‘common-profit’
library established at York.77 Sometime after 1423 a public library was also
established in the Guildhall in London which extended the ‘common-profit’
concept of individual books to an entire collection housed under the same
roof, and seems to have been directed at the poor laity of both sexes.78 It may
well be that such an audience would have been particularly receptive to this
short redaction of Julian’s writing, containing as it does a much more imme-
diate and accessible version of a complex mystical treatise.
The concept of books being commissioned, compiled and bequeathed for
the profit of the common people takes on a much deeper significance in the
context of Julian’s writing, of course. As previously examined, Julian’s Long
Text is characterised by her assertion of its importance to her ‘evencristen’
(‘I was leryd to take it to al my even cristen’; LT, 51) and that her insights are
relevant to humanity in general rather than specifically to herself (‘al in
general and nothing in special’; LT, 51). The Short Text also reveals a dawning
74
Margaret Deansely, ‘Vernacular Books in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries’, The Modern Language Review 15 (1920), pp. 349–58, as examined by Kempster,
‘A Question of Audience’, pp. 264–6.
75
For an account and examination of the growth in popularity and ownership of these
books, see Wendy Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “Common-
Profit” Books: Aspects of Book Ownership and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century
London’, Medium Aevum 61 (1992), pp. 261–74.
76
The manuscript contains two extracts from commentaries on the psalms, ‘Qui Habitat’
and ‘Bonum Est’, one from Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and the abridged version of A
Revelation of Love.
77
Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock’, p. 263.
78
Scase, ‘Reginald Pecock’, pp. 268–70.
230
realisation of her experience’s potential to provide common profit to human-

ity when Julian tells her readers, ‘and I am sekere I sawe it for the profytte of
many oder’ (ST, 47). Indeed, as has been demonstrated, one reason for the
need to produce a second version of this text was her insight into the love of
God for humanity in general, rather than just for the privileged and the pious,
an insight which left her treatment of her experiences wanting in the Short
Text. By the time she reaches the end of the Long Text, however, Julian is able
to assert: ‘Thus I saw and vnderstode that our feith is our light in our night;
which light is God our endless day’ (LT, 132). She proceeds to explain that our
perception of this light is available if we become privy to the ‘wisdam of God’,
a wisdom which, as his chosen vehicle, Julian’s voice and text embodies and
which by implication, will allow her readers to benefit ‘profitably’ from its
pronouncements. Elsewhere in the text, Julian has been emphatic that ‘in al
this I was mekil sterid in charite to mine even cristen, that thei might seen and
knowyn the same that I saw; for I would it were a comfort to they, for al this
sight was shewid general’ (LT, 12–13). Julian’s voice as represented in this text
is both word and Word of God. As its female conduit, Julian renders it femi-
nine and she is entirely confident that its purpose is explicitly for the common
profit of humanity. Not only that, but in Julian’s treatment of her experiences
in the Long Text, Word and word become utterly conflated, so that the one
becomes indistinguishable from the other in Julian’s memory:
and therfore me behovith now to tellen iii propertes in which I am sumdele

esyd. The frest is the begynnyng of techyng, that I understod therein in the
same tyme; the ii is the inward lernyng that I have vnderstodyn therein
sithen; the iii al the hole revelation from the begynnyng to the end, that is to
sey, of this boke, which our lord God of his goodnes bryngeth oftentymes
frely to the syte of myn vnderstondyng. (LT, 74)
After so much time spent rethinking and reworking of the original vision-
ary material, it is evident that Julian is no longer clear about what it was she
originally saw.79 Now, in her estimation, ‘the hole revelation’ is conflated with
‘this boke’; seeing, listening, contemplating, speaking, and writing thus unite
in an unique and all-embracing absorption of the wisdom of God. In this
merging of voices, the voice of God, Julian’s voice and the variety of other
voices in the text combine to form an articulation of the prophetic insight
which will prove to be of ‘common-profit’ to all humanity and will continue
to be reworked with every subsequent reading. And, one such subsequent
79
This conflation between original experiences and their later textual expression is some-
thing examined by Nicholas Watson in his essay, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian
of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, in McEntire, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 61–90.
In particular see p. 74: ‘all her comments on the “text” of her showings – both her brief
responses and remarks as an actor in the drama and even her vastly extended medita-
tions as its narrator – turn into further “sights” and “showings”, thus in effect becoming
“text” themselves.’ See also Watson, ‘Composition’, p. 677.
231
‘reading’ or ‘performance’ of Julian’s Long Text was, of course, undertaken by

her first editor, the anonymous compiler of the Westminster redaction.
Moreover, in this text we see a fully empathetic desire to establish the author-
ity of a specifically female wisdom, something which is unequivocally
announced in the opening words and which sets the tone of the entire com-
pilation: ‘Oure gracious and goode Lorde God shewed me in party þe
wisdom and þe trewthe of þe soule of oure blessed Lady, Saynt Mary’.80 The
Virgin’s humility, represented here in terms of God’s ‘handmayden’ along
with her ‘lytyllnes’, genders the concept of wisdom in the same way as we
have seen it done in the Long Text. Here, however, it is further prioritised
because of its location at the start of the text, which in turn effects an associ-
ation between the concept of wisdom and Julian herself as author. Although
not specifically identified as female at this stage, the author is nevertheless gen-
dered female by means of an implied association between her use of the
words ‘me’, ‘wisdom’, ‘trewthe’ and ‘oure blessed Lady’, an association which
is corroborated at a later stage by means of the editor’s overt allusion to his
writer’s gender: ‘our Lord seyd to her thus . . .’, and ‘she seyd . . .’ (my
emphasis).81 Kempster considers the identification of the author as female at this
point to be an oversight on the part of the editor and that, probably meant as
an instruction or an aside for the scribe, it was subsequently erroneously
incorporated into the text itself.82 Nevertheless, whether a deliberate inclusion
or not, its appearance would suggest at least an internalisation on the part of
editor and/or scribe of Julian’s femaleness as relevant, and there is no doubt
that the rest of the material which this editor saw fit to include also serves
positively to gender author, text and voice as female. Almost entirely absent
from this text, for example, is the depiction of God as a father figure or as
authoritarian, and a large proportion of the text concentrates on the maternal
properties of the deity whose motherhood is explicitly analogous with wis-
dom, as we have seen: ‘þe deepe wysedome of þe Trynite is oure moder . . .’83
Even within the first hundred lines or so, God is represented emphatically in
terms of his ‘moder love’84 in an allusion which immediately follows on from
an account of Julian’s ‘hasyl nott’ insight85 and immediately precedes a repro-
duction of the intriguing ‘fine purse’ passage discussed previously.86 As
I have shown, both of these images have important feminine implications, as
does the subsequent ‘feyre delectable place’ excerpt with its wound/vagina
associations and its feminised blood and water.87 In the context of this highly
80
Westminster Text, p. 210.
81
82
Kempster, ‘A Question of Audience’, pp. 283–4.
83
84
85
Westminster Text, pp. 211–12.
86
87
232
abridged version of the Long Text then, the close proximity of all three pas-
sages serves to insist upon the feminisation of both text and context and to
prioritise the female wisdom proffered by its speaking voice. Not only that,
but the right of this female voice to speak out is asserted equally as insistently
in this text: ‘And oure Lorde wyll þat this be knowen of all his louers in erthe.
And þe more þat we knowe it, þe more shulde we beseke it, yf it be wysely
taken; and so is oure Lordis menyng’.88 Thus, the aforementioned explicit
identification of its author as female serves only to further validate a text
which has already fully validated itself and insisted upon the medium of the
female voice as appropriate, indeed essential, for the dissemination of divine
truth. In this context, far from being a diluted version of Julian’s insights, this
Westminster text is invaluable in providing its audience with the concen-
trated distillation of Julian’s intentions, including her celebratory use of the
female as hermeneutic and means of access to the feminine concept of divine
wisdom. It is thus highly likely that such a concept, although more diffuse in
the Long Text itself, is what attracted the various groups of exiled nuns to
Julian’s work and caused them to embark upon its careful copying and preser-
vation. No doubt Julian’s feminisation of both text and context, her use of her
own female voice and its eventual interchangeability with that of God, served
to reinforce these nuns’ confidence in their own particular female spirituality,
as I have suggested, alienated as they were from their country of origin once
the Reformation took hold in England and brought about the destruction of
the religious houses. Like Christine de Pizan, their work of preservation and
dissemination continued from exile behind their walls of stone.
Examined from this perspective it can be argued that it was Julian’s priori-
tising of female voice and body within her texts which was indirectly respon-
sible for their preservation and availability for us today. A scribal colophon at
the end of the Sloane text encapsulates this likelihood, addressed as it is
directly to Julian’s audience: ‘and thou, to whome this booke shall come, thanke
heyley and hartily our savior Crist Ihesu that he made these shewings and
revelations for the’ (LT, 135–6). No doubt such words would have carried home
the importance of this text to a female audience within a milieu of female spir-
ituality typified by the communities of Cambrai and Paris and unwittingly
reinforce a feminine reception to a feminised text.
Thus it would seem that the gynaecentric ‘core’ of Julian’s texts always
leads back to the female reader and continued female ‘performance’ of ‘this
booke’. In this context we can reinterpret and reapply the Ancrene Wisse author’s
behest to his anchoresses to be generous in the lending of their books with
which this section began. If, as he recognises, the lending of a contemplative
or meditational book is part of the act of faith and Christian charity, then
Julian’s ‘book’ as embodiment of the Word of God, is similarly redistributed,
88
233
shared in repeated and new performances. We recognise repeated perform-

ances within the pages of the various extant versions, in the careful preserva-
tion and copying of the manuscripts by communities of nuns, and finally in
the new generation of feminist scholars who have attempted to rescue Julian
from the realm of androcentric theology to which she had been allocated as a
‘token man’ by much twentieth-century criticism. Such responses and perform-
ances provide a lens through which we can recognise Julian as one of the most
enduring and accommodating examples of the prophetic female who is able
to plough the depths of a transhistorical and transcultural human anxiety, lay
bare its essence and offer her famous words of comfort which continue to be
of ‘common-profit’ to her readers of either sex and all genders: ‘but al shal be
wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele’ (LT, 38).
234
SMM5-Afterword.qxd 4/27/04 5:02 PM Page 235
AFTERWORD
‘Make now tablets of stone and other tablets of clay and write in them all
my life and your father’s which you have heard and seen from us.’1
So speaks Eve to her many children from the lonely heights of her deathbed.
According to an apocryphal tradition which records the post-Edenic life of
Adam, Eve and their offspring, on Adam’s death and prior to her own demise
Eve instructs her son, Seth, to set down their lives in tablets of clay and stone
in order to make permanent for posterity their transgression and suffering.
Although he knows no writing, following his mother’s death Seth’s hand is
guided by God as he writes the lives of the first mother and father into clay
and stone, becoming essentially the first scribe.
Within orthodox Judaeo-Christian tradition, of course, this inauguration of
writing was regarded as a patrilineal inheritance, with figures such as Moses,
Enoch, or sometimes even Adam himself as the originator of the written
script. Within the alternative tradition, however, to be found in the apoc-
ryphal Adam Books, Eve herself is quite explicitly depicted as the originator of
writing, in keeping with the written word’s later association with the fleshly,
seductive nature of women.2 The Latin version of this legend, known as the
Vita,3 seems to have enjoyed widespread influence and popularity throughout
the Middle Ages, as evidenced in a number of popular texts, ranging from the
Townely and Chester Cycle plays to the continenental Genesis B, and later
even re-emerging in the early modern period in Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost.4
A series of versions of the Vita written in Middle English and dating from
between 1300 and 1475 would also testify to its ongoing popularity, including
one which appears in the famous Auchinleck manuscript.5 Not all of these
1
M. D. Johnson (trans.), Life of Adam and Eve: A New Translation and Introduction, in
J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigraphia, 2 vols (London, 1985), vol. 2,
pp. 249–95.
2
On this tradition see Eric Jager, ‘Did Eve Invent Writing? Script and the Fall in The Adam
Books’, Studies in Philology 93, 3 (1996), pp. 229–50. Although his reading of Eve’s repre-
sentation in this tradition is essentially a masculinist one, his analysis is nevertheless a
useful one for an appraisal of woman’s position within the politics of the oral versus the
written word in the Middle Ages.
3
The translation of the Greek version of this text is known as the Apocalypse of Moses and
is included alongside the Vita in this edition for purposes of comparison. It differs con-
siderably from its Latin counterpart, including its omission of Eve’s inauguration of writing.
4
Johnson, The Adam Books, p. 256.
5
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS), pp. 139–47. Three
other Middle English versions can be found in Carl Horstmann, Sammlung Altenglischer
Legenden (Heilbron, 1878, reprinted Hildesheim, 1969) and two in Horstmann, ‘Nachträge
235
versions place the same emphasis on Eve’s initiation of writing, however,

although one account appearing in the Wheatley manuscript adheres closely
to the original apocryphal material. In this Wheatley version Eve instructs her
son: ‘ “Therefore heere þou, my sone Seeth: make þou tweyne tablys, of stoon
and of schynynge cley erthe, and wryte thereynne þe lijf of Houre fadir and of
me, and tho þinges that Hee han herd and seen of us” ’.6 The life of Adam and
Eve which is to be written down by Seth is one which has been characteristed
by sin, loss, and pain brought about by the libidinous appetite of the woman,
whose ‘lippis ben vnclene’, because of having eaten from ‘þe forboden tre’.7
Her licentiousness has led to pollution, death and exile from God, and her
prolific motherhood8 has served to perpetuate and multiply the anguished
suffering and disperse it throughout growing humanity. Even the words of
her mouth are a pollutant, to counter which, during their time of mutual
penance whilst submerged in the River Tigris, Adam instructs her to remain
silent in case her contagious breath further offend God: ‘ “go þou to þe flood
of Tygre, and bere a stoon wiþ þee, and stonde þereon in þe watir vp to þe
necke, and lete no word come out of þi mouþ” ’.9 Thus, fully implicated in her
transgression is her sexual appetite, her motherhood and her illicit female
knowledge as disseminated by means of her proscribed voice. It is this same
transgressive voice, however, which will dictate to Seth her life and set in
motion the whole redemptive process. In this sense, Eve’s coming to writing
constitutes the literal transformation of her suffering female body into a text
which will thus re-embody that same maternity, sexuality and voice. As the
dying matriarch, Eve consequently redeems herself by founding a transcrip-
tion of her own bodily suffering into a permanent written record, and writing
thus becomes her lasting progeny and final salutary gift to humankind.
In many ways this book has been concerned primarily with Eve’s legacy to
humankind within western patriarchal tradition, and the means by which these
two women writers under scrutiny – Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich –
succeeded in transforming the negative and inhibiting connotations of that
legacy into active agency. The quest for such agency – for themselves as holy
women, as writers, and for the authority of the texts they produced – involved
both a redefinition and redeployment of the female body to effect its success-
ful transformation into articulate and effective validatory hermeneutic.
zu den Legenden’, Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen 74 (1885).
In addition see Oxford, Trinity College MS 57, pp. 124–38; Bodleian Library, Bodley MS
Eng. poet. A.1 (Vernon MS, pp. 220–7); Wheatley MS: British Library Add. MS 39574
which has been edited by Mabel Day, The Wheatley Manuscript, EETS o.s. 155 (London, 1921),
pp. 76–99, and which is the manuscript which will be referred to in this afterword. For more
details about these manuscripts see Jager, ‘Did Eve Invent Writing?’, pp. 230–3, n. 4.
6
The Wheatley Manuscript, p. 97.
7
The Wheatley Manuscript, p. 82.
8
The Vita claims for her Seth, Cain and Abel, along with thirty other sons and thirty
daughters, p. 292.
9
The Wheatley Manuscript, pp. 81–2.
236
AFTERWORD
As such, each woman succeeded in a variety of ways of transforming Eve’s

vilified body into an agent of redemption and as a means of gaining and artic-
ulating direct access to God. In transforming female body into text in this way
they were each able to make accessible their own mystical knowledge of God
and disseminate it to their ‘evencristen’. In so doing, also like Eve, their own
physical and psychological anguishes have been rewritten onto the bodies
embedded within their texts, re-emerging in the body their feminised Christ,
for example, and allowing for the female body to perform a central role in the
universal drama of salvation. Thus, if Eve’s inauguration of writing was
necessitated by an eternal alienation from the immediacy of God’s voice in the
Garden because of her own ontological femaleness, if the only way of know-
ing God ever afterwards was to be through abstract symbol and script, so
now, by means of the embodied and mystical texts of Margery Kempe and
Julian of Norwich, direct access to God is restored to humankind. The Word:
once more made flesh by the mystic daughters of Eve.
When Eve had said this to her children, she stretched out her hands to
heaven, praying, and bent her knees to the ground and worshipped the
Lord, giving thanks, and gave up the spirit.10
10
Johnson, Life of Adam and Eve, p. 294.
237
SMM5-Bibliography.qxd 4/27/04 5:03 PM Page 238
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript Sources
British Library, London, MS Add. 37049
Colwich Abbey, MS 18, ‘Gasgoigne B’, a work composed by Dame Margaret
Gascoigne of Cambrai.
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS).
Glasgow, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 403 (V.3.1), an. 1544, ‘The Boke
Mad [by] a Woman Named Rota’.
London, Wellcome Institute Library MS 564, Henri de Mondeville, Chirurgia, pre-
ceded by a work on anatomy based on Mondeville and Lanfranc of Milan.
MS Mazarine 4058, a catalogue of the manuscript books of the Benedictine nuns
of Paris.
Oxford, Ashmolean Library MS 61, a collection of metrical romances, lays and
other poems in Old English.
Oxford, Trinity College MS 57.
Primary Sources
Aelred of Rivaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. John Ayto and Alexandra
Barratt, EETS o.s. 287 (London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1984).
The Anchor Bible Song of Songs, ed. Marvin H. Pope (New York: Doubleday, 1977).
Ancrene Wisse, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien, EETS o.s. 249 (London, New York and Toronto:
Oxford University Press, 1962).
The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. Rhodes Montague James (Oxford, 1924).
Aquinas, Thomas, De Regimine Principum ad Regem Cypri, in Opera Omnia (Parma,
1864), vol. 16.
——, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, vol. 43, ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby (London and
New York: Blackfriars, 1963).
——, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, vol. 45, ed. and trans. Roland Potter (London and
New York: Blackfriars, 1970).
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (London and Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1963).
Augustine, City of God against the Pagans, 7 vols, ed. E. H. Warmington, Loeb
Classical Library (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1968).
——, Enarationes in Psalmos, ed. D. Eligius Dekkers and Iohannes Fraipoint, CCSL
40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956).
Bale, John, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie, quam Nunc Angliam & Scotiam
Uocant, Catalogus (Basle, 1557–9).
Barratt, Alexandra (ed.), Women’s Writing in Middle English, (London: Longman,
1992).
238
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. J. McClure and R. Collins
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Beowulf, ed. C. L. Wrenn and W. F. Bolton (London: Harrap, 1973).
Birgitta of Sweden, Liber Celestis of St Bridget, ed. Roger Ellis, EETS o.s. 291 (Oxford:
——, Tractus de Summis Pontificibus, ed. Arne Jönssen (Lund: Lund University
Press, 1997).
Blamires, Alcuin, Karen Pratt and C. W. Marx (eds), Woman Defamed and Woman
Defended (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Blumenfeld-Kosinki, Renate (ed.), The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (New
York and London: Norton, 1997).
Bokenham, Osbern, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary Sergeantson from MS
Arundel 327, EETS o.s. 206 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938).
Burleigh, John H. S. (trans.), Augustine: Earlier Writings, Library of Christian
Classics 6 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953).
Capgrave, John, The Life of Katherine of Alexandria, ed. Carl Horstman, EETS o.s.
100 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1893).
Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke (London: SPCK, 1980).
Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson (Oxford: Oxford
——, The Wife of Bath, ed. Peter G. Beidler (Boston and New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1996).
The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS s.s. 3
(London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974).
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richard
(New York: Persea Books, 1982).
——, Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, ed. Angus J. Kennedy and Kenneth Varty, Medium
Aevum Monographs, n.s. ix (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Language
and Literature, 1977).
——, The Epistle of Othea, ed. Curt F. Buhler, trans. Stephen Scrope, EETS o.s. 264
(London: Oxford University Press, 1970).
The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, EETS o.s. 218 (London: Oxford
Corner, G. W. (ed.), Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages, Carnegie Institution
of Washington Publication no. 364 (Washington: National Publishing Company,
1927).
Davis, Norman (ed.), The Paston Letters, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958, repr. Oxford
The Digby Plays: The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian Mss Digby 133 and
E Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy and Louis B. Hall Jr, EETS
o.s. 283 (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1982).
Gardner, Edmund G., The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical
Treatises Printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521 (London: Chatto and Windus;
New York, Duffield, 1910).
Genesis (A and B), in The Junius Manuscript, ed. George Philip Krapp (London:
Routledge; Columbia: Kegan Paul, 1931), pp. 3–87.
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmerman, vol. 39 (New York:
Fathers of the Church, 1959).
239
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois,
5 vols, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1914–1924).
Guy de Chauliac, Inventarium sive Collectorium Parvis Chirurgicalis Medicinae, ed.
Margaret S. Ogden, EETS o.s. 265 (London, New York and Toronto: Oxford
Hali Meiðhad, ed. Bella Millett, EETS o.s. 284 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1982).
Harford, Dundas, Comfortable Words for Christ’s Lovers (London: H. R. Allenson,
1925).
Hildegarde of Bingen, Hildegarde von Bingen’s Mystical Visions: Translated from
Scivias, trans. Bruce Hozeski (Santa Fe: Bear and Co., 1986).
Hilton, Walter, The Ladder of Perfection, ed. and trans. Leo Sherley-Price
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988).
——, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western
Michigan University Press for TEAMS, 2000). Online at http://www.lib.
rochester.edu/camelot/teams/hilfr1.htm
Horstmann, Carl (ed.), ‘Nachträge zu den Legenden’, Archiv für das Studium der
neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen 74 (1885).
Isidorus Hispalensis Episcopus, Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri xx, 2 vols, ed.
W. M Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).
Jean de Meun, Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton: Princeton
Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Frances Beer
(Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag, 1978).
——, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols, ed. Edmund
Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1978).
——, A Revelation of Love, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press,
1993).
——, Revelations of Divine Love Shewed to a Devout Ankres by Name Julian of Norwich,
ed. Roger Huddleston (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927).
——, ‘Julian of Norwich: The Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love’, ed. Hugh
Kempster, Mystics Quarterly 23, 4 (1997), pp. 177–202.
——, The Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich, ed. James Walsh (London:
Catholic Truth Society, 1961).
——, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Warrack (London: Methuen, 1901).
Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe, 1436, trans. William Butler-Bowden
(London, 1944).
——, The Book of Margery Kempe: An Abridged Translation, ed. and trans. Liz Herbert
McAvoy (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003).
——, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sandford Brown Meech and Hope Emily
Allen, EETS o.s. 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1997).
——, The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism, ed. and
trans. Lynn Staley (New York and London: Norton, 2001).
——, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. B. A. Windeatt (Harlow and New York:
Longman, 2000).
——, The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. B. A. Windeatt (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1985).
240
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version Derived from the
Trotula Texts, ed. Alexandra Barratt (Turnhout and Cheltenham: Brepols, 2001).
Langland, William, Piers Plowman, ed. William Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976).
The Life of Adam and Eve, trans. M. D. Johnson, in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols (London, 1985).
Larrington, Carolyne (ed.), Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook,
(London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth-Century Recluse, trans. C. H. Talbot
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1959).
Lotario dei Segni, De Miseria Condicionis Humane, ed. Robert E. Lewis, The
Chaucer Library (London: Scolar; Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia
Press, 1978).
Ludus Coventriae or the Plaie called Corpus Christi, ed. K. S. Block, EETS e.s. 120
(London: Oxford University Press, 1922).
Manning, Robert, Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Hours of His Passion,
ed. J. Meadows Cowper, EETS o.s. 60 (London, Oxford University Press, 1875).
Mechthild von Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Divinity, trans. Susan Clark
and Christiane Mesch Galvani (New York and London: Garland, 1991).
Meditations on the Life and Passion of Christ, from British Museum Additional
MS 11307, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn, EETS o.s. 158 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1921).
Millett, Bella, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (eds), Medieval English Prose for Women:
From the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS e.s. 19 (London: Trübner,
1873).
The N-Town Play, from Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols, EETS
s.s. 11 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Nicholas, H. (ed.), Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vol. 4 (London,
1834–7).
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols (London:
Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983–5).
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library (London:
Heinemann and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).
Parker, Roscoe E. (ed.), Middle English Stanzaic Versions of the Life of Saint Anne,
EETS o.s. 174 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928).
Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–1864).
Plato, Timaeus, trans. R. C Bury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1966).
Prosalegenden: die Legenden des MS. Douce 114, ed. Carl Horstmann, Anglia 8 (1885),
pp. 102–96.
Raymond of Capua, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. Conleth Kearns
(Wilmington: Glazier, 1980).
Roberts, A., and J. Donaldson (eds), Tertullian: A Select Library of the Ante-Nicene
Fathers of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1951).
Rowland, B. (ed.), Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health: The First Gynecological
Handbook (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1981).
Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden, ed. Carl Horstmann (Heilbronn: Gebr. Henniger,
1878; reprinted Hildesheim: George Olms, 1969).
241
The South English Legendary, from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 145 and
British Museum MS Harley 2277 with variants from Bodley MS Ashmole 43
and British Museum MS Cotton Julius D. IX, d’Evelyn, ed. Charlotte and Anna
J. Mill, EETS o.s. 235 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956).
Tanner, Norman (ed.), Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, edited for the
Royal Historical Society from Westminster Diocesan Archives MS. B.2
(London: Royal Historical Society, 1977).
The Towneley Plays, ed. George England from the unique MS with side notes and
introduction by Alfred W. Pollard, EETS e.s. 71 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1897).
Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–IV, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (London:
Heinemann, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957).
de Voragine, Jacobus, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger, 2 vols (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983).
The Wheatley Manuscript: A Collection of Middle English Verse and Prose Contained in
a Manuscript Now in the British Museum Add. Mss. 39574, ed. Mabel Day, EETS
o.s.155 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921).
Wilson, Katharina (ed. and trans.), Hrosvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of the
Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998).
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans (eds),
The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520
(Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999).
Secondary Sources
Abulafia, David, Michael Franklin and Miri Rubin (eds), Church and City, 1000–1500
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Aers, David, and Lyn Staley, Community, Gender and Identity: English Writing
1360–1430 (London: Routledge, 1988).
—— (ed.), Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History (Brighton: Harvester,
1986).
—— Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in the Late Medieval English
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Alford, John A., ‘The Wife of Bath versus the Clerk of Oxford: What Their Rivalry
Means’, The Chaucer Review 21 (1986), pp. 108–32.
Allen, Hope Emily (ed.), English Writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole, 1290?–1349
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1931).
Ariès, Philippe, Western Attitudes towards Death from the Middle Ages to the Present,
trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974).
Armstrong, Elizabeth Psakis, ‘Understanding by Feeling in Margery Kempe’s
Book’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York:
Garland, 1992), pp. 17–35.
Ashley, Kathleen M., and Pamela Sheingorn (eds), Interpreting Cultural Symbols:
Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, Georgia and London: University of
Georgia Press, 1990).
Astell, A., ‘Feminine Figurae in the Writings of Richard Rolle: A Register of Growth’,
Mystics Quarterly 15, 3 (1989) pp. 117–24.
242
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Astell, A., The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell
Aston, Margaret, ‘Lollard Woman Priests?’, Journal of Ecclesiastic History 31, 4
(October, 1980), pp. 441–61.
—— and Colin Richmond (eds), Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages
(Stroud and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
Atkinson, Clarissa, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and World of Margery Kempe (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1983).
——, The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell
——, ‘Precious Balsam in Fragile Glass: The Ideology of Virginity in the Later
Middle Ages’, Journal of Family History 8 (1983), pp. 131–43.
Baker, Denise Nowakowski, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Baker, Derek (ed.), Medieval Women (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).
Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1968).
Barratt, Alexandra, ‘ “In the Lowest Part of our Need”: Julian and Medieval
Gynecological Writing’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of
Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 240–56.
——, ‘Margery Kempe and the King’s Daughter of Hungary’, in Sandra McEntire
(ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1992),
pp. 189–201.
——, ‘ “The Woman Who Shares the King’s Bed”: The Innocent Eroticism of Gertrud
the Great of Helfta’, in Susannah Chewning (ed.), Intersections of Religion and
Sexuality: The Word Made Flesh (London: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 105–17.
Bartlett, Anne Clark, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in
Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1995).
Beattie, Cordelia, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones, The Medieval Household
in Christian Europe, c.850–c.1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body,
International Medieval Research, vol. 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).
Beckwith, Sarah, ‘A Very Material Mysicism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery
Kempe’, in David Aers (ed.), Community, Gender and Identity: English Writing
1360–1430 (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 34–57.
——, ‘Problems of Authority in Late Medieval English Mysticism: Language,
Agency, and Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 4, 1 (1992),
pp. 172–99.
Beer, Frances, Woman and the Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages (Cambridge:
Boydell, 1992).
Bennett, Jacob, ‘The Mary Magdalene of Bishop’s Lynn’, Studies in Philology 75, 1
(1978), pp. 1–9.
Bennett, Judith, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in
Brigstock before the Plague (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1989).
——, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jean, F. O’Barr, B. Anne Vilen and Sarah Westphal-Wihl
(eds), Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989).
243
Berger, Pamela, The Goddess Obscured: Transformations of the Grain Protectress from
Goddess to Saint (Hale: Beacon Press, 1988).
Bestul, Thomas H., ‘Antecedents: The Anselmian and Cistercian Contributions’, in
Willam F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval
England (Cambridge and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 1–20.
Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy
Tales (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).
Biller, Peter, and Anne Hudson (eds), Heresy and Literacy (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Billington, Sarah, and Miranda Green (eds), The Concept of the Goddess (New York:
Routledge, 1996).
Bitterling, Klaus, ‘Margery Kempe and English “steorte” in Germany’, Notes and
Queries 43 (241), 1 (1996), pp. 21–2.
Blamires, Alcuin, ‘Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy and
Saints’ Lives’, Viator 26 (1995), pp. 135–52.
Blomefield, Francis, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of
Norfolk, 5 vols (Fersfield and Lynn, 1739–75), vol. 2, The History of the City and
County of Norwich (Norwich, 1745).
Boenig, R., ‘The God as Mother Theme in Richard Rolle’s Biblical Commentaries’,
Mystics Quarterly 10, 4 (1984), pp. 171–4.
Boswell, John, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western
Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York and Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1988).
Bottigheimer, Ruth (ed.), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986).
Bowers, Terence N., ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, Studies in Philology 97, 1 (2000),
pp. 1–28.
Bradley, Ritamary, ‘Julian of Norwich: Everyone’s Mystic’, in William F. Pollard and
Robert Boenig (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge
and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 139–58.
——, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (London: Harper
Collins, 1992).
——, ‘Mysticism in the Motherhood Similitude of Julian of Norwich’, Studia
Mystica 8 (1985), pp. 4–14.
——, ‘Julian of Norwich: Writer and Mystic’, in Paul Szarmarch (ed.), An Introduction
to the Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany: State of New York Press, 1984).
——, ‘The Motherhood Theme in Julian of Norwich’, 14th Century English Mystics
Newsletter 2, 4 (1976), pp. 25–30.
Brewer, Derek, ‘The Gospels and the Laws of Folktale’, Folklore 9 (1979), pp. 37–52.
Britnell, R. H., The Commercialisation of English Society 100–1500 (Cambridge and
Brooke, Christopher N. L., The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989).
Brown, Peter, The Body, and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, repr. London: Faber,
1993).
Brownlee, Kevin, ‘Structures of Authority in Christine de Pizan’s Ditié de Jehanne
d’Arc’, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinki (ed.), The Selected Writings of Christine de
Pizan (New York and London: Norton, 1997), pp. 371–90.
244
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burns, George, ‘Margery Kempe Reviewed’, The Month 171 (1938), pp. 238–44.
Burns, Jane, ‘This Prick which is Not One: How Women Talk Back in Old French
Fabliaux’, in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury (eds), Feminist Approaches to
the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993), pp. 188–212.
Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York and London:
Routledge, 1997).
——, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993).
——, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and
New York: Routledge, 1990).
Bynum, Caroline Walker, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books,
2001).
——, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval
Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
——, Holy Feast Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1987).
——, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1982).
——, ‘Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 31 (1980), pp. 1–17.
Cadden, J., The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages; Medicine, Science and
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Cameron, Deborah, The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader (London: Routledge,
1990).
Camille, Michael, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (London:
Laurence King, 1998).
——, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Canetti, Elias, Crowds and Power, trans., Carol Stewart (London: Gollancz, 1962;
repr. London: Phoenix, 2000).
Capek, Karel, Nine Fairy Tales and One More Thrown in for Good Measure, trans.
Dagmar Hermann (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990).
Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
—— and Elizabeth Kirk (eds), Acts of Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts
700–1600 (Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1982).
de Certeau, Michel, Heterologies: Discourse of the Other (Minnesota: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1993).
——, ‘Mystique au XVII siècle: la probleme du language mystique’, in L’Homme
devant Dieu: mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac, vol. 2 (Paris: Aubier,
1964).
Chance, Jane (ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1996).
Chewning, Susannah Mary (ed.), Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The
Word Made Flesh (London: Ashgate, 2004).
——, ‘Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: “a Time . . . of Veiled Infinity” ’,
in Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women in Their Communities (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1997), pp. 116–37.
245
Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of

Gender (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1978).
Cixous, Hélène, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de
Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney
and Tokyo: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), pp. 245–64.
Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford and
Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1979; various repr.).
Clarkson, Leslie, Death, Disease and Famine in Pre-Industrial Europe (Dublin: Gill
and McMillan, 1975).
Cleve, Gunnel, ‘Semantic Dimensions in Margery Kempe’s Whyght Clothys’,
Mystics Quarterly 12 (1986), pp. 162–70.
Clifford, R. J., The Wisdom Literature (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998).
Coiner, Nancy, ‘The “homely” and the heimliche: The Hidden, Doubled Self in
Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, Exemplaria 5, 2 (1993), pp. 305–23.
Coleman, Thomas, English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century (London: The Epworth
Press, 1938).
——, ‘Margery Kempe: Medieval Mystic, Evangelist and Pilgrim’, The London
Quarterly and Holborn Review 162 (1937), pp. 498–502.
Colledge, Eric, The Medieval Mystics of England (London: Murray, 1962).
Corless, Roger, ‘The Dramas of Spiritual Progress: The Lord and the Servant in
Julian’s Showings 51 and the Lost Heir in Lotus Sutra 4’, Mystics Quarterly 11
(1985), pp. 65–75.
Coulton, G. G., Five Centuries of Religion, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1923).
Craymer, Suzanne, ‘Margery Kempe’s Imitation of Mary Magdalene and the Digby
Plays’, Mystics Quarterly 19 (1993), pp. 173–81.
Cré, Marleen, ‘Women in the Charterhouse? Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of
Divine Love and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls in British Library, MS
Additional 37790’, in Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing
Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 44–62.
Cross, Claire, ‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’, in Donald Baker (ed.), Medieval Women
(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1978).
Darwin, F. D. S, The English Mediaeval Recluse (London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 1944).
Davidson, Roberta, ‘Suspicion of the Sibyl: Truth and Authority in Le Livre de la
Cité des Dames’ (unpublished paper).
Deansely, Margaret, ‘Vernacular Books in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries’, The Modern Language Review 15 (1920), pp. 349–58.
Degh, Linda, Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centred Study of Narration (Helsinki:
Academia Scientarum Fennica, 1995).
——, Folktales and Society: Storytelling in a Hungarian Peasant Community
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969).
Delamare, François, and Bernard Guineau, ‘Les Matériaux de la couleur’, Beaux-
Arts Magazine 189 (2000), pp. 39–44.
Delany Sheila, ‘ “Mothers to think back through”: Who are They? The Ambiguous
Example of Christine de Pizan’, in Renate Bomenfeld-Kosinki (ed.), The Selected
Writings of Christine de Pizan (New York and London, 1997), pp. 312–28.
246
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Delany Sheila, ‘Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery
Kempe’, in Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All
Her Sect (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 72–87.
Dickman, S., ‘A Showing of God’s Grace: The Book of Margery Kempe’, in William F.
Pollard and Robert Boenig (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England
(Cambridge and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 159–76.
——, ‘Margery Kempe and the Continental Tradition of the Pious Woman’, in
Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers Read
at Dartington Hall, July 1984: Exeter Symposium 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
1984), pp. 150–68.
Dillon, Janet, ‘Holy Women and Their Confessors or Confessors and Their Holy
Women?’, in Rosalynn Voaden (ed.), Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental
Holy Women in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996).
Distelbrink, Balduinus, Bonaventurae Scripta Authentica, Dubia vel Spuria Critice
Recensita, Subsidia Scientifica Franciscalia 5 (Rome, 1975).
Dixon, Laurinda S., ‘The Curse of Chastity: The Marginalization of Women in
Medieval Art and Medicine’, in Robert Edwards and Vickie Ziegler (eds), Matrons
and Marginal Women in Medieval Society (Cambridge: Boydell, 1995), pp. 49–74.
Doyle, I. A., ‘English Books in and out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII’,
in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (eds), English Court Culture (London:
Duckworth, 1983), pp. 163–81.
Dronke, Peter, Hermes and the Sibyls (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
——, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Text from Perpetua (d. 203)
to Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
——, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970).
Duby, Georges, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
Eberley, Susan, ‘Margery Kempe, St. Mary Magdalene and Patterns of
Contemplation’, Downside Review: A Quarterly of Catholic Thought 107, 368 (1989),
pp. 209–33.
Edwards, Robert R., and Vickie Ziegler (eds), Matrons and Marginal Women in
Medieval Society (Cambridge: Boydell, 1995).
Ehrenschwendtner, Marie-Luise, ‘Puellae Litterae: The Use of the Vernacular in the
Dominican Convents of Southern Germany’, in Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women
in Their Communities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), pp. 49–71.
Elliott, Dyan, ‘Authorizing a Life: The Collaboration of Dorothea of Montau and
John Marienwerder’, in Catherine M. Mooney (ed.), Gendered Voices: Medieval
Saints and their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1999), pp. 168–91.
——, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton
Elliott, J. K. (ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian
Literature in an English Translation based on M. R. James (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
Ellis, Roger, ‘Further Thoughts on the Spirituality of Syon Abbey’, in William F.
Pollard and Robert Boenig, Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England
(Cambridge and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 219–43.
Ellman, Mary, Thinking about Women (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1968).
247
Erler, Mary C., ‘Mary Kempe’s White Clothes’, Medium Aevum 62, 1 (1993),
pp. 78–85.
Evans, Ruth, and Lesley Johnson (eds), Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature:
The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London: Routledge, 1994).
Ezell, Margaret, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Fanous, Samuel, ‘Measuring the Pilgrim’s Progress: Internal Emphases in The Book
of Margery Kempe’, in Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing
Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 157–76.
Farley, Mary Hardman, ‘Her Own Creatur: Religion, Feminist Criticism, and the
Functional Eccentricity of Margery Kempe’, Exemplaria 11, 1 (Spring 1999),
pp. 1–21.
Ferrante, J., Woman as Image in Mediaeval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to
Dante (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975).
Fienberg, Nona, ‘Thematics of Value in the Book of Margery Kempe’, Modern
Philology 87, 2 (1989), pp. 132–41.
Finke, Laurie, ‘ “All is for to selle”: Breeding Capital in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue
and Tale’, in Peter G. Beidler (ed.), The Wife of Bath (Boston and New York:
Bedford Books, 1996), pp. 171–88.
Finnegan, Mary Jeremy, The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics (Athens, Georgia
and London: University of Georgia Press, 1991).
Finucane, R. C., Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (London:
Dent, 1971).
Fite, Patricia P., ‘To “Sytt and Syng of Luf Langyng”: The Feminine Dynamic of
Richard Rolle’s Mysticism’, Studia Mystica 14 (1991), pp. 13–29.
de Ford, Sara, ‘Mystical Union in the Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle’, in Marion
Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers read at
Dartington Hall, July 1980: Exeter Symposium 1 (Exeter: University of Exeter
Press, 1980), pp. 173–201.
Fradenburg, Louise, and Carla Freccero (eds), Premodern Sexualities (New York
and London: Routledge, 1996).
Frantzen, Allen J. (ed.), Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and
Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany: State of New York Press, 1991).
Freud, Sigmund, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, ed. Philip Rieff (New York:
Collier Books, 1993).
Fries, Maureen, ‘Margery Kempe’, in Paul Szarmach (ed.), An Introduction to the
Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984),
pp. 217–35.
Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (New York and
London: Routledge, 1989).
Gibson, Gail McMurray, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in
the Late Middle Ages (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Gilchrist, Roberta, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women
(London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
——, ‘Medieval Bodies in the Material World: Gender, Stigma and the Body’, in
Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester and
New York: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 3–61.
248
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gilchrist, Roberta, ‘The Archaeology of Medieval English Nunneries: A Research

Design’, in Roberta Gilchrist and Harold Mytum (eds), The Archaeology of Rural
Monasteries (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989).
Gillespie, Vincent, ‘Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey
and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The
Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales, Papers read at Charney
Manor, July 1999: Exeter Symposium 7 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999),
pp. 241– 68.
Gimbutas, Maria, The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of
Western Civilization (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).
——, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1982).
Glasscoe, Marion (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales,
Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 1999: Exeter Symposium 7 (Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 1999).
——, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London: Longman, 1993).
—— (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers read at Dartington
Hall, July 1987: Exeter Symposium 4 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987).
—— (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition, Papers read at Dartington Hall, July
1984: Exeter Symposium 3 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1984).
—— (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers read at Dartington
Hall, July 1980: Exeter Symposium 1 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1980).
le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Scolar
Press, 1984).
Goldberg, P. J. P., ‘Pigs and Prostitutes: Streetwalkers in Comparative Perspective’,
in Katherine J. Lewis, Noel James Menunge and Kim M. Phillips (eds), Young
Medieval Women (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 172–93.
Goodman, Anthony, Margery Kempe and Her World (London, New York, Toronto
etc.: Longman, 2002).
——, ‘The Piety of John Brunham’s Daughter of Lynn’, in Derek Baker (ed.),
Medieval Women (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), pp. 347–58.
Green, Monica, ‘Women’s Medical Practice and Care in Medieval Europe’, in Judith
Bennett et al. (eds), Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 39–78.
Greene, Miranda J., Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers (London: British
Museum Press, 1995).
Grosz, Elizabeth, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994).
——, Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (Sydney and Boston: Allen and
Unwin, 1989).
Hagan, Susan K., ‘St. Cecelia and St. John of Beverly: Julian of Norwich’s Early
Model and Late Affirmation’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book
of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 91–114.
Hall, D. J., English Medieval Pilgrimage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
Hamington, Maurice, Hail Mary (London: McCrimmon Publishing, 1995).
Hanawalt, Barbara, ‘At the Margin of Women’s Space’, in Peter Edwards and
Vickie Zeigler (eds), Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society (Cambridge:
Boydell, 1995), pp. 1–17.
249
Hanawalt, Barbara, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in

History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
—— (ed.), Women and Work in Pre-industrial Europe (Bloomington: Indiana
——, and Michal Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis and
London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Hanning, R. W., The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1959).
Harper, Stephen, ‘ “So euyl to rewlen”: Madness and Authority in The Book of Margery
Kempe’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 98, 3 (1997), pp. 53–61.
Harvey, Nancy Lenz, ‘Margery Kempe: Writer as Creature’, Philological Quarterly
71, 2 (1992), pp. 173–84.
Harwood, Britton J., and Gilliam R. Overing (eds), Class and Gender in Early English
Literature: Intersections (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1984).
Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Riverhead Books,
1993).
Havard, Donald D., Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their
Posterity (Berkley: University of California Press, 1980).
Healy, Margaret, ‘Monstrous Tyrannical Appetites: “and what wonderfull mon-
sters have there now lately ben borne in Englande?” ’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy
and Teresa Walters (eds), Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite
in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: Cardiff University Press, 2002),
pp. 157–69.
Heffernan, Thomas J. (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1985).
Hirsch, David, The Revelations of Margery Kempe, Medieval and Renaissance
Authors 10 (Leiden, New York, Kobenhaven, Koln: E. J. Brill, 1988).
Holbrook, Sue Ellen, ‘Margery Kempe and Wynkyn de Worde’, in Marion
Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers read at
Dartington Hall, July 1987: Exeter Symposium 4 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer,
1987), pp. 27–46.
Holloway, Julia Bolton, ‘Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval
England’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York:
Garland, 1992), pp. 203–21.
——, Joan Bechtold and Constance S. Wright (eds), Equally in God’s Image: Women
in the Middle Ages (New York: Peter Lang, 1990).
Howell, Martha C., Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Howes, Laura L, ‘Margery Kempe’s Last Child’, Modern Philology 90, 2 (1992),
pp. 220–5.
Hudson, Anne, ‘Laicus litteratus: The Paradox of Lollardy’, in Peter Biller and
Anne Hudson (eds), Heresy and Literacy 1000–1530 (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 22–36.
——, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford and
New York: Clarendon, 1988).
——, ‘Some Aspects of Lollard Book Production’, in Derek Baker (ed.), Schism,
Heresy and Religious Protest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
250
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hughes, Diane Owen, ‘Regulating Women’s Fashion’, in Christiane Klapisch-Zuber

(ed.), Silences of the Middle Ages, A History of Women II (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press, 1992), pp. 136–58.
Hughes, J., Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire
(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988).
Irigaray, Luce, ‘La Mystèrique’, in Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 191–202.
——, This Sex which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1985).
Jacquart, D., and C. Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans.
Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).
Jager, Eric, ‘Did Eve Invent Writing? Script and the Fall in The Adam Books’, Studies
in Philology 93, 3 (1996), pp. 229–50.
Jantzen, Grace, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge
Jewell, Helen, Women in Medieval England (Manchester and New York: Manchester
Jones, Ann Rosalind, ‘Writing the Body: Toward the Understanding of l’écriture
feminine’, in Elaine Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women,
Literature and Theory (London: Virago, 1986), pp. 361–77.
Jones, Catherine, ‘The English Mystic, Julian of Norwich’, in Katharina M. Wilson
(ed.), Medieval Women Writers (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1984).
Karras, Ruth Mazo, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
——, ‘Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend’, Journal of the History of
Sexuality 1, 1 (1990), pp. 3–32.
Kay, Sarah, and Miri Rubin (eds), Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester and
New York: Manchester University Press, 1994).
Kaye, Joel, ‘The Impact of Money on the Development of Fourteenth-Century
Scientific Thought’, Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), pp. 251–70.
Keen, M. H., ‘A Question of Audience: The Westminster Text and Fifteenth-Century
Reception of Julian of Norwich’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book
of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 257–89.
——, England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973).
Keiser, Elizabeth B., Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia: The Legitimation of
Sexual Pleasure in Cleanness and Its Contexts (New Haven and London: Yale
Kettle, Ann J., ‘Ruined Maids: Prostitutes and Servant Girls in Later Medieval
England’, in Robert R. Edwards and Vickie Zeigler (eds), Matrons and Marginal
Women in Medieval Society (Cambridge: Boydell, 1995), pp. 19–31.
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, and Pamela J. Walker (eds), Women Preachers and Prophets
through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:
King, Karen, ‘Prophetic Power and Women’s Authority: The Case of The Gospel of
Mary (Magdalene)’, in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of
Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley,
Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 21–41.
251
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane (ed.), Silences of the Middle Ages, A History of Women II

(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992).
——, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1985).
Knowles, David, The English Mystical Tradition (London: Burns and Oates, 1961).
Kraman, Cynthia, ‘Communities of Otherness in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale’, in
Diane Watt (ed.), Women in Their Communities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1997), pp. 138–54.
Kristeva, Julia, ‘Stabat Mater’, in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 160–86.
——, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. S. Roudiez (New York and
Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1982).
——, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. L. S. Roudiez
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
Lambert, M. D., Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (London:
Edward Arnold, 1977).
Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1990).
Lavezzo, Kathy, ‘Sobs and Sighs between Women: the Homoerotics of
Compassion in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Louise Fradenburg and Carla
Freccero (eds), Premodern Sexualities (New York and London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. 175–98.
Lawes, Richard, ‘Psychological Disorder and the Autobiographical Impulse in
Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve’, in Denis Renevey
and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and
Textual Practices in Late Medieval England (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
2000), pp. 217–43.
——, ‘The Madness of Margery Kempe’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval
Mystical Tradition in England, Wales and Ireland, Papers read at Charney Manor,
July 1999: Exeter Symposium 7 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 147–67.
Lawton, David, ‘Voice, Authority and Blasphemy in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in
Sandra McEntire (ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland,
1992), pp. 93–115.
Leech, Ken, and Benedicta Ward, Julian Reconsidered (Oxford: SLG Press, 1988).
Leff, Gordon, Heresy in the Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent
c.1250–1450 (Manchester: Barnes and Noble, 1967).
Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
——, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Lerner, Robert E., ‘Medieval Prophecy and Religious Dissent’, Past and Present 72
(1976), pp. 3–24.
Levron, Jacques, Le Diable dans l’art (Paris: A. Picard, 1935).
Lewis, Katherine J., Noel James Menunge and Kim. M. Phillips (eds) Young
Medieval Women (Stroud: Sutton Press, 1999).
Lichtman, Maria R., ‘ “I desyrede a bodylye syght”: Julian of Norwich and the Body’,
Mystics Quarterly 17, 1 (1991), pp. 12–19.
Lochrie, Karma, Peggy McCraken and James A. Schultz (eds), Constructing Medieval
Sexuality, Medieval Cultures, vol. 11 (Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997).
252
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lochrie, Karma, ‘Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies’, in Lochrie et al. (eds),

Constructing Medieval Sexuality, (Minneapolis and London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 180–200.
——, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
——, ‘The Language of Transgression: Body, Flesh and Word in Mystical Discourse’, in
Allen J. Franzen (ed.), Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and
Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1991), pp. 115–40.
——, ‘The Book of Margery Kempe: The Marginal Woman’s Quest for
Literary Authority’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 16 (1986), pp.
33–55.
Lomperis, Linda, and Sarah Stanbury, Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval
Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
Luango, Thomas, ‘Catherine of Siena: Rewriting Female Holy Authority’, in
Lesley Smith and Jane Taylor (eds), Women, the Book and the Godly (Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 89–111.
Luthi, Max, Once upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales (Bloomington: Indiana
Lynch, Joseph H., The Medieval Church: A Brief History (London and New York:
Longman, 1992).
Maclean, Ian, The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism
and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980).
Mahoney, Dhira B., ‘Margery Kempe’s Tears and the Power over Language’, in
Sandra McEntire (ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland,
1992), pp. 37–50.
Makowski, Elizabeth, ‘Mulieres Religiosae, Strictly Speaking: Some Fourteenth-
Century Canonical Opinions’, The Catholic Historical Review 85, 1 (January 1999),
pp. 1–14.
Malvern, Marjorie, Venus in Sackcloth: The Magdalene’s Origins and Metamorphosis
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975).
Mancor, Neil, ‘Tradition in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs’,
Reading Medieval Studies 221 (1995), pp. 53–67.
Mann, A. T., and J. T. Lyle, Sacred Sexuality (Shaftsbury, Rockport and Brisbane:
Element Books, 1995).
Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, New French Feminisms (New York,
London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo: University of Massachusetts Press,
1980).
Maslow, Abraham, Religions, Values and Peak Experiences (Harmondsworth and
New York: Penguin, 1976, various repr.).
Mason, Mary G., ‘The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers’, in James
Olney (ed.), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980), pp. 207–35.
Matter, Ann, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity
——, ‘My Sister, My Spouse: Women-identified Women in Medieval Christianity’,
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2 (1986).
253
McAvoy, Liz Herbert, ‘Virgin, Mother, Whore: The Spiritual Sexuality of Margery
Kempe’, in Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word
Made Flesh, ed. Susannah Mary Chewning (London: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 119–36.
McAvoy, Liz Herbert, ‘ “Closyd in a hows of ston”: Anchoritic Discourse and The
Book of Margery Kempe’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mari Hughes-Edwards
(eds), Intersections of Gender and Enclosure: Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, forthcoming, 2004).
—— and Teresa Walters (eds), Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous
Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2001).
——, ‘ “Ant nes he him seolf recluse i maries wombe?”: Julian of Norwich, the
Anchorhold and Redemption of the Female Body’, in Liz Herbert McAvoy and
Teresa Walters (eds), Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001),
pp. 128–43.
——, ‘Margery’s Last Child: A Refutation’ Notes and Queries n.s. 46 (1999),
pp. 181–3.
——, ‘ “The moders service”: Motherhood as Matrix in Julian of Norwich’, Mystics
Quarterly 24, 4 (1998), pp. 181–97.
McEntire, Sandra (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (New York and London:
Garland, 1998).
—— (ed.), Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1992).
McEwen, John, Paula Rego (London: Phaidon, 1992).
McGinn, Bernard (ed.), Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystic: Hadewijch of Brabant,
Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York: Continuum Publishing,
1994).
——, ‘Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle
Ages’, in Julius Kirshner and Suzanne Wemple (eds), Women in the Medieval
World: Essays in Honor of J. H. Mundy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 8–35.
McHardy, A. K., ‘De Heretico Comburendo, 1401’, in Margaret Aston and Colin
Richmond (eds), Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton
Publishing; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 112–26.
McIlwain, James, ‘The “bodelye syeknes” of Julian of Norwich’, Journal of Medieval
History 10 (1984), pp. 167–80.
McInerney, Maud Burnett, ‘ “In the Meyden’s Womb”: Julian of Norwich and the
Poetics of Enclosure’, in John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (eds),
Medieval Mothering (London and New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 157–99.
McNamer, Sarah, ‘The Exploratory Image: God as Mother in Julian of Norwich’s
Revelations of Divine Love’, Mystics Quarterly 15, 1 (1989), pp. 21–8.
McSheffery, Shannon, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities,
1420–1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
Meale, Carol, ‘ “This is a deed bok, tother a quick”: Theatre and the Drama of
Salvation in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (eds),
Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 49–67.
——, Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge
Metcalf, Stephen, The Later Middle Ages (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981).
254
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Millett, Bella, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Denis Renevey and
Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual
Practices in Late Medieval England (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000),
pp. 21–40.
Minnis, A. J., Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later
Middle Ages (London: Scolar, 1984).
Moi, Toril, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London and New York:
Methuen, 1985).
Mooney, Catherine M., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters
Morris, Bridget, Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Cambridge: Boydell, 1999).
Morris, Colin, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1987).
Morrison, Susan Signe, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as
Public Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).
Mueller, Janel M., ‘Autobiography of a New “Creatur”: Female Spirituality, Selfhood
and Authorship in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women
in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: A Literary and Historical Perspective (Syracuse,
New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 155–71.
Muir, Lynette R., ‘Women on the Medieval Stage: The Evidence from France’,
Medieval English Theatre 7, 2 (1985), pp. 107–19.
Murphy, Cullen, The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times
and Our Own (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1998).
Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999).
Neff, Amy, ‘The Pain of Compassio: Mary’s Labour at the Foot of the Cross’, Art
Bulletin 80 (1998), pp. 254–7.
Nelson, Janet L., ‘Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages’, in W. J. Sheils
and Diana Wood (eds), Women in the Church, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990), pp. 53–78.
Neuberger, Verena E., Margery Kempe: A Study in Early English Feminism (Zurich
University Dissertation, Berlin: Peter Lang, 1994).
Newman, Barbara, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion
and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
——, Sister of Wisdom: Hildegarde’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
Norris, Juhani, Names of Body Parts in English, 1400–1500 (Tuusula: Finnish Academy
of Science and Letters, 1988).
O’Mara, Veronica, ‘A Middle English Text by a Female Scribe’, Notes and Queries
37, 4 (1990), pp. 396–8.
Olney, James, Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton: Princeton
Orme, Nicholas, Medieval Children (Yale: Yale University Press, 2003).
Otis, Leah Lydia, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution
in Languedoc (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
Owen, Hywel, et al. (eds), ‘The Upholland Author’, Downside Review 107, 369 (1989),
pp. 274–92.
Owensby, Walter L., Economics for Prophets (Grand Rapids: Ferdmans, 1998).
255
Pagels, Elaine, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1988).
——, The Gnostic Gospels (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1979).
Parke, H. W., Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge,
1988).
Parsons, John Carmi, and Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Medieval Mothering (London and
New York: Garland, 1996).
Partridge, Eric, Origins: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (London:
Routledge and K. Paul, 1996).
Patterson, Lee, ‘ “For the wyves love of Bathe”: Feminine Rhetoric and Poetic
Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury Tales’, Speculum 58 (1983),
pp. 656–95.
——, Chaucer and the Subject of History (London: Routledge, 1991).
Payne, J. F., ‘On an Unpublished English Anatomical Treatise of the Fourteenth
Century and Its Relation to the “Anatomy” of Thomas Vicary’, by J. F Payne, MD,
Physician to St Thomas’s Hospital’, British Medical Journal 1 (1896), pp. 200–3.
Pelphrey, Brant, Christ Our Mother: Julian of Norwich (Wilmington: Longman and
Todd, 1989).
Petroff, Elizabeth Alvida, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Petroff, Elizabeth Alvida, ‘Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for
Dialogue’, in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 139–60.
Plascow, Judith, and Carole P. Christ (eds), Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in
Feminist Spirituality (London: Harper Collins 1987).
Poliakov, Leon, The History of Anti-Semitism, trans. Richard Howard (Oxford:
Pollard, William F., and Boenig, Robert (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval
England (Cambridge and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997).
Power, E., Medieval Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Quilligan, Maureen, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des
Dames (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Réau, Louis, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien, Tome 11 (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1956).
Reed, Teresa, Shadows of Mary: Reading the Virgin Mary in Medieval Texts (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2003).
Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophesy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford,
Clarendon, 1969).
Reiling, J., Hermas and Christian Prophecy: A Study of the Eleventh Mandate (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1973).
Reiter, Rayna (ed.), Towards an Anthropology of Women (New York and London:
Monthly Review Press, 1975).
Renevey, Denis, ‘Margery’s Performing Body: The Translation of Late Medieval
Discursive Religious Practices’, in Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead
(eds), Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late
Medieval England (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 197–216.
——, and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Writing Religious Women: Female
Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 2000).
256
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reynaert, J., ‘Hadewijch: Mystic Poetry and Courtly Love’, in E. Kooper (ed.),
Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), pp. 208–25.
Richards, Peter, The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs (Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 1977).
Riches, Samantha and Sarah Salih (eds), Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and
Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 2002).
Riddy, Felicity, ‘ “Women talking about the things of God”: A Late Medieval Sub-
culture’, in Carole Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain 1150–1500
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 104–27.
Riehle, Wolfgang, The Middle English Mystics (London: Routledge, 1981).
Rigby, S. H., English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).
Roberts, N., Whores in History (London: Harper Collins, 1993).
Robertson, Elizabeth, ‘Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality
in the Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in Linda Lomperis and
Sarah Stanbury (eds), Femininst Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature
(New York and London: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 142–67.
Robinson, James M., ‘Jesus as Sophos and Sophia: Wisdom Tradition and the
Gospels’, in Robert L. Wilken (ed.), Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early
Christianity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1975), pp. 1–16.
Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early
Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994).
Rose, Christine, and Elizabeth Robertson (eds), Representing Rape in Medieval and
Early Modern Literature (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2002).
Rose, Linda, ‘The Voice of a Saintly Woman: The Feminine Style of Julian of
Norwich’s Showings’, Woman and Language 16, 1 (1993).
Rose, Mary Beth (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: A Literary
and Historical Perspective (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press,
1986).
Ross, Robert C., ‘Oral Life, Written Text: The Genesis of The Book of Margery Kempe’,
Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), pp. 226–37.
Rossiaud, Jacques, Medieval Prostitution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
Rowe, Karen E., ‘To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale’, in
Ruth B. Bottigheimer (ed.), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), pp. 53–74.
Rowell, Geoffrey (ed.), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism
(Wantage: Ikon, 1992).
Rubin, Gayle, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex’, in
Rayna Reiter (ed.), Towards an Anthropology of Women (New York and London:
Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 157–210.
Rubin, Miri, ‘Religious Culture in Town and Country: Reflections on a Great
Divide’, in David Abulafia et al. (eds), Church and City, 1000–1500 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 3–22.
——, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
Ruddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London: Women’s
Press, 1989).
257
Russell, Jeffrey Burton, Satan and the Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1981).
——, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (London
and Scarborough, Ontario: Cornell University Press, 1977).
Ruud, Jay, ‘ “I wolde for thy loue dye”: Julian, Romance Discourse and the
Masculine’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (New York
and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 183–205.
Sahlin, Claire L., ‘Gender and Prophetic Authority in Birgitta of Sweden’s
Revelations’, in Jane Chance (ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), pp. 69–95.
Salih, Sarah, ‘Staging Conversion: The Digby Saint Plays and The Book of Margery
Kempe’, in Samantha Riches and Sarah Salih (eds), Gender and Holiness: Men,
Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London, 2002), pp. 121–34.
——, Versions of Virginity (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001).
Sargent, Michael G., ‘James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic’, Analecta Carthusiana 85,
2 (1984), pp. 499–510.
Scase, Wendy, ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “Common-Profit”
Books: Aspects of Book Ownership and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century
London’, Medium Aevum 61 (1992), pp. 261–74.
Scattergood, J., ‘Fashion and Morality in the Middle Ages’, in Reading the Past:
Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996),
pp. 240–50.
Scattergood, V. J., and J. W. Sherborne (eds), English Court Culture (London:
Duckworth, 1983).
Scherb, Victor, ‘Worldly and Sacred Messengers in the Digby Mary Magdalen’,
English Studies 73 (1992), pp. 1–9.
Schoedel, William R., ‘Jewish Wisdom and the Formation of the Christian Ascetic’,
in Robert L. Wilken (ed.), Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity
(Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1975), pp. 169–99.
Schoenfeldt, Michael C., Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and
Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert and Milton (Cambridge and New York:
Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts, ‘The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial
Mutilation’, in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance:
A Literary and Historical Perspective (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1986), pp. 29–72.
Scott, Karen, ‘Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of
Capua on the Mystic’s Encounter with God’, in Catherine M. Mooney (ed.),
Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 136–65.
Shahar, S., Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
——, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen,
1990).
Sheehan, Michael M., Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996).
Sheils, W. J., and Diana Wood (eds), Women in the Church (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
Shrewsbury, J. F. D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge:
258
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Siegel, Rudolph E., Galen’s System of Physiology and Medicine: An Analysis of his
Doctrines and Observations on Bloodflow, Respiration, Humours and Internal Diseases
(Basel and New York: Karger, 1968).
Sinanoglou, Leah, ‘The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the
Corpus Christi Plays’, Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 491–509.
Sissa, Giulia, Greek Virginity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass. and
London: Harvard University Press, 1990).
Smith, Lesley, and Taylor, Jane H. M. (eds), Women, the Book and the Godly
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995).
Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1970).
Spain, Daphne, Gendered Spaces (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1992).
Spurgeon, Caroline, Mysticism in English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
Staley, Lynn, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1994).
——, ‘Margery Kempe as Social Critic’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
22 (1992), pp. 159–84.
——, ‘The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the
Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe’, Speculum 66, 4 (1991),
pp. 820–38.
Stanton, Domna (ed.), The Female Autograph (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987).
Stargardt, Ute, ‘The Beguines of Belgium, the Dominican Nuns of Germany, and
Margery Kempe’, in J. Heffernan (ed.), The Popular Literature of Medieval England
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), pp. 277–313.
Stiller, Nikki, Eve’s Orphans: Mothers and Daughters in Medieval Literature (Westport
and London: Greenwood Press, 1980).
Stone, Merlin, The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women’s Rites (London: Virago,
1976).
Stone, Robert Karl, Middle English Prose Style: Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich
(The Hague: Mouton, 1970).
Strohm, Paul, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation
1399–1422 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).
Swanson, R. N., Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge and
Szarmach, Paul (ed.), An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1984).
Szell, Timea K., ‘From Woe to Weal and Weal to Woe: Notes on the Structure of The
Book of Margery Kempe’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.) Margery Kempe: A Book of
Essays (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 73–91.
Szövérffy, Joseph, ‘Peccatrix Quondam Femina: A Survey of the Mary Magdalene
Hymns’, Traditio 19 (1963), pp. 79–146.
Tannahill, Reay, Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex (London: Abacus,
1975).
Tanner, Norman, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984).
259
Tasioulas, J. A., ‘Between Doctrine and Domesticity: The Portrayal of Mary in the
N-Town Plays’, in Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women in Their Communities (Cardiff:
Cardiff University Press, 1997), pp. 222–45.
Temkin, Owsei, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell
Tentler, Thomas N., Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1977).
Thomson, John A. F. (ed.) Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester,
UK; Wolfboro, NH, USA: Sutton, 1988).
Thurston, Herbert, ‘Margery the Astonishing’, The Month 2 (1936), pp. 446–56.
Tinsely, David F., ‘Julian’s Diabology’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich:
A Book of Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1978) pp. 207–37.
Tobin, Frank, ‘Henry Suso and Elsbeth Stagel: Was the Vita a Cooperative Effort?’,
in Catherine M. Mooney (ed.), Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their
Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 118–35.
Todd, Janet, Feminist Literary History: A Defence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1978).
Uhlman, Diane, ‘The Comfort of Voice, the Solace of Script: Orality and Literacy
in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Studies in Philology 91 (1994), pp. 50–69.
Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual
Consciousness (London: Methuen, 1926).
Voaden, Rosalynn, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in
the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: York Medieval Press,
1999).
——, ‘All Girls Together: Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta’, in Diane Watt
(ed.), Medieval Women in Their Communities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1997), pp. 131–43.
—— (ed.), Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval
England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996).
Wallace, David, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in
England and Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
Ward, Benedicta, ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (eds),
Julian the Solitary (Oxford: SLG Press, 1988), pp. 11–35.
——, Harlots of the Desert: Studies of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Oxford:
Mowbray, 1987).
Warner, Marina, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (London:
Chatto and Windus, 1994).
——, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Picador,
1990).
——, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Weidenfield
and Nicolson, 1985).
Warren, Ann. K., Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Los Angeles and
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Watson, Nicholas, ‘The Politics of Middle English Writing’, in Jocelyn Wogan-
Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans (eds), The Idea of the
Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520 (Exeter:
Exeter University Press, 1999), pp. 331–52.
260
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Watson, Nicholas, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation

of Love’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (London and
New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 60–90.
——, ‘ “Yf wommen be double naturally”: Remaking “Woman” in Julian of
Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Exemplaria 8, 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 1–34.
Watson, Nicholas, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England:
Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions
of 1409’, Speculum 70, no. 4 (1995), pp. 822–65.
——, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68
(1993), pp. 637–83.
——, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
——, ‘The Methods and Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion’, in
Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Papers Read
at Dartington Hall, July 1987: Exeter Symposium 4 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
1987), pp. 132–53.
Watt, Diane (ed.), Medieval Women in Their Communities (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1997).
——, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
(Cambridge and Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer, 1997).
Webb, Diana, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe (London: Palgrave, 1999).
Weisheipl, A., Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life, Thought and Work (Oxford: Blackwell,
1975).
Weissman, Hope Phyllis, ‘Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Hysterica Compassio in
the Late Middle Ages’, in Mary Carruthers and Elizabeth Kirk (eds), Acts of
Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts 700–1600 (Norman: Pilgrim Books, 1982),
pp. 201–17.
Whitehead, Christiania, Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003).
Wiethaus, Ulrike (ed.), Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of
Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press,
1993).
Wilken, Robert L. (ed.), Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre
Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975).
Wilson, Janet, ‘Margery and Alison: Women on Top’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.),
Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 223–37.
Wilson, Katharina M. (ed.), Medieval Women Writers (Manchester: Manchester
Windeatt, B. A., ‘Julian of Norwich and Her Audience’, Review of English Studies 8
(1977), pp. 1–17.
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, et al. (eds), Medieval
Women: Texts and Contexts in Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000).
Wood, Charles T., ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma: Sin, Salvation and the Menstrual Cycle
in Medieval Thought’, Speculum 56 (1981), pp. 710–27.
Wood, James, Wisdom Literature: An Introduction (London: Duckworth, 1979).
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1945).
Zeigler, Philip, The Black Death (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).
261
SMM5-Index.qxd 4/27/04 5:09 PM Page 263
INDEX
Aachen 114, 115 Aston, Margeret 179, 180 n.45, 181, 182
Abbott, Christopher 68 n.18 n.61, 184, 185 n.71, 193 n.98
abjection 67, 117, 139–45, 152, 164 Atkinson, Clarissa 22, 36 n.29, 40 n.37,
Abulafia, David 102 n.33 41 n.40, 44 nn.44, 46, 47, 48, 45,
Adam 1, 2, 135, 173, 235, 236 46, 53 nn.71, 74, 60 n.93, 74 n.42,
Adam Books 235 91 n.88, 175
adultery 104–5, 108 Auchinleck manuscript 235
Margery’s attempt at 34 n.22, 121–2 Augustine, Saint 86, 135–6, 137, 145, 189
Aelred of Rievaulx n.86, 190
De Institutione Inclusarum 166 Ayto, John 166 n.120
Aeneas 208
Aers, David 13, 22 n.67, 29 Baker, Denise Nowakowski 86, 156 n.90,
Alcuin 168 n.124, 211 n.15
Mass of the Holy Wisdom 218 Baker, Derek 38 n.32
Alford, John A. 170 n.3 Baker, Donald L. 122 n.111, 126 n.125,
Allen, Hope Emily 2 n.9, 20 n.62, 179 n.39
52–3 n.71, 123, 127, 183, 184 Bakhtin, Mikhail 110, 111
Alnwick, Bishop 181 n.58 Baldick, Robert 54 n.76
Ambrose, Saint 162 Bale, John 182
Amherst manuscript 224–5, 226–8 Barratt, Alexandra 22 n.69, 23,
Anatomia Cophonis 82 n.69 44–5 n.49, 66 n.6, 81 n.65, 133 n.9,
anchoritic life 70–72 144 n.56, 150, 215 n.17
Sibyl and 207–10 Barthes, Roland 19
see also enclosure, female Bartlett, Anne Clark 165–6
Ancrene Wisse 70, 71, 72, 80 n.64, 135, Beattie, Cordelia 229 n.73
136–7, 138, 163 n.115, 166, 170, Beaufort, Henry 184
172, 175, 207 n.6, 209–10, 233 Beaufort, Joan de (Lady Westmorland)
angels 190 184
Anne, Saint 44, 51, 91 Beckwith, Sarah 3 n.10, 22
Anselm of Canterbury 156 bed imagery 151
Antioch 137 Bedford, Duke of 184, 185
anus 140 Beer, Frances 22 n.69, 71 n.26
appetite, uncontrolled female 1–2 Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine
Aquinas, Saint Thomas 86 n.78, 101–2 Love (ed.) 2 n.9, 228 n.65
Summa Theologiae 102, 142–3, 174, 190 beggars, Margery rescued by 116
architectural allegory 71 n.27, 229 n.73 beguines 4, 66, 152
Ariès, Philippe 54 n.76, 76 n.52 Beidler, Peter G. 104 n.46
Aristophanes 189 Benedictine nuns 225–6, 233
Aristotle 9, 16, 73, 80, 134, 143 Bennett, Jacob 122
Arundel, Thomas, Archbishop of Bennett, Judith M. 28, 37 n.31, 39
Canterbury 172 n.8, 180, 181, Benson, Larry 48 n.61
182, 183, 228 n.67 Berger, Pamela 26 n.81
Ashley, Kathleen M. 44 n.47 Bernard of Clairvaux 11, 83 n.71,
‘asseth’, Julian’s use of 162 125 n.122, 136, 168 n.124
Astell, Ann 125 n.122, 126–7 Bernau, Anke 147 n.65
263
Bestul, Thomas H. 156 n.91, 162 n.113 Butler, Judith 8, 15, 19, 20, 28–9, 39, 103,
Bettelheim, Bruno 59 n.91, 60 n.94 108 n.61, 110
Beverley, Margery’s trial in 183–5, 192–4 Butler-Bowden, William 20, 21, 201 n.113
Biddick, Kathleen 12 nn.39, 40, 15, Bynum, Caroline Walker 3 n.10, 11–12,
48 n.61, 49 n.65 15, 28, 47–8 n.61, 49, 56, 65–6,
Biller, Peter 180 n.43 73 n.35, 74 n.46, 75, 85 n.75,
binary oppositional concepts, disruption 125 n.120, 126 n.127, 128 n.134,
of 89, 95, 113, 145 132 n.2, 145 n.58, 164 n.116,
Birgitta of Sweden 44–7, 186, 187, 167 n.123, 194 n.100
195, 210
Revelations 180, 200 Cadden, Joan 9 n.28, 37 n.29, 73 nn.35,
Bishop’s Lynn 36, 84 n.74, 106 n.56
Margery’s early life in 96–7, 120–21 Caister, Richard 172 n.8, 182, 198, 222
play cycles performed in 122–3 Calvary 52, 53
Bitterling, Klaus 114 n.76 Cambrai, Benedictine nuns at 225–6, 233
Black Death 96 Camille, Michael 139 n.38
Blamires, Alcuin 2 n.6, 186 n.73, Candon, M.P. 229 n.73
187 n.78, 193 n.98 Canetti, Elias 48 n.61
blind spot (lacuna) 103, 113, 141, 146, Canterbury, Margery’s trial in 59 n.90,
157, 185 183
Blomefield, Francis 225 Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer) 4, 48 n.61,
blood 80–82, 85, 138, 151, 153, 158, 160, 91, 96–7, 103–4, 105 n.54, 109, 140,
168, 232 148, 170–71, 180 n.50
see also menstruation Capek, Karel 59 n.92
blue robes 90–91 Caritas 219
Blume, C. 119 n.97 Carruthers, Mary 22 n.67
Blumenfeld-Kosinki, Renate 223 n.41, Carthusians 227
224 n.42 Catherine of Siena 177, 200, 210
Blunt, John Henry 181 n.56 Catholicism 74
Boccaccio, Giovanni Cavell, Robert 37 n.30
De Mulieribus Claris 207 Cecilia, Saint 147–9, 150, 158, 167, 169,
Boenig, Robert 139 n.33, 156 n.91, 172, 215
227 n.60 Certeau, Michel de 13–14
Bokenham, Osbern 121, 122 Chambers, R.W. 201 n.113
Bonaventure, Saint 48 n.63, 180 Chance, Jane 210 n.13
Boswell, John 61 n.97 Charlesworth, J.H. 235 n.1
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. 60 n.92 Chastity, Margery’s vow of 32, 37, 52,
Bowers, Terence N. 4, 52 n.69 106–9, 128 n.34
Bradley, Ritamary 22 n.69, 139 n.33, Chaucer, Geoffrey 153
162–3 Canterbury Tales 4, 48 n.61, 91, 96–7,
breast milk 48 n.61, 49, 74, 80 103–4, 105 n.54, 109, 140, 148,
Brewer, Derek 59 n.92 170–71, 180 n.50
Bridget, Saint see Birgitta of Sweden Chester Cycle plays 1–2, 235
Britnell, R.H. 96, 102 Chewning, Susannah Mary 66 nn.6, 12
Brooke, Christopher N.L. 107 n.59 child sacrifice 44, 48
brothels 101 childbirth 15, 17, 32, 54, 150
Brown, Peter 135 nn.21, 23 birth of Margery’s first child 33, 117
Brownlee, Kevin 223 n.41 illness following 10, 35–40
Buhler, Curt F. 191 n.90 birth of Margery’s last child 107, 202
Burleigh, John H.S. 86 n.77 in Julian’s writing 69, 80–81
burning of heretics 182 chora 31, 67
Burns, Jane E. 191 n.92 Christina Mirabilis 155
264
INDEX
Christina of Markyate 25, 91 n.89 Coulton, G.G. 137 n.29

Christine de Pizan 219, 226, 227–8, 233 counterdiscourses 166–7
Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc 222–4 court records 105–6
Livre de la Cité des Dames 191–2, 193 de Courtivron, Isabelle 17 n.52
Chrysostom, John 137 courtly love 154, 166
Church, Christian Cowper, J. Meadows 53 n.72
confession emphasised by 118 Craymer, Suzanne 117 n.80, 120–22
expectations imposed on women by Cré, Marleen 175 n.21, 227 n.60
28, 36 n.29, 41–2, 53 de Cressy, Serenus 225–6
hypocrisy of men within 115, 139 n.37 Cross, Claire 179 n.39, 185 n.71
and profit economy 97–8 crucifix 24, 64, 76, 171
prostitution tolerated by 101–2 crying see weeping
churches Custance 91
architecture of 71 n.27
dedicated to Virgin Mary 79 Dahlberg, Charles 140 n.40
female voice depicted in 173, Dale, Judith 154
193 n.97 Davidson, Roberta 192 n.95
Cixous, Hélène 17 n.52, 64 n.1, 89 nn.83, Davies, G.M. 119 n.97
84, 95, 208 Davis, Mary Beth 41 n.41
Clanchy, M.T. 176–7 Davis, Norman 153 n.78
Clark, Susan 66 n.9 Day, Mabel 236 n.5
Clifford, R.J. 216 n.19 De Doctrina Cordis (Hugh of Saint-Cher)
Cloud of Unknowing 137, 140 229
Cobham, Lord see Oldcastle, John De Heretico Comburendo (1401) 182
(Lord Cobham) deafness 171
Coiner, Nancy 14 n.42 Deansely, Margaret 220–30
Coleman, T.W. 21 n.66, 25 n.77, 114 deathbed ritual, medieval 76
Colledge, Edmund 21, 22 n.68, 139 nn.33, defecation 139, 140, 142, 144, 145
36, 141 n.48, 142 n.52, 154 n.81, Degh, Linda 60 n.92
225–6, 228 n.65 Dekkers, D. Eligius 136 n.24
Colop, John 230 Delamare, François 91 n.86
commodity, female body as 99–106 Delany, Sheila 34 n.21, 104 n.47, 224
in Julian’s writing 145–69 Des Cleres Femmes (medieval French
in Margery’s writing 106–30, 146–7 translation) 207
‘common-profit’ books 230 devil see Satan
commonality, Julian’s use of 164–9 devotional doll 55–8, 194
confession, Church’s emphasis on 118 Digby Plays 117 n.80, 122–3,
confessors, Margery’s 35, 36–7, 47 n.60, 125–6, 187
49, 50, 114 Dillon, Janet 35 n.26, 203
Constable, Barbara 226 Dinah 135
Constable, Mary Joseph 226 n.56 discretio spirituum 196, 197, 212–13
Constable, William 225, 226 divine love, Julian’s insight into 86,
constructionism 15–16, 17, 19 205–7, 220, 221, 231
contemplative texts, lay ownership of Dixon, Laurinda S. 83 n.70
229–30 doll, devotional 55–8, 194
contemptus mundi 136–7, 138 domestic space, female 3, 5–6, 7–8, 39,
Copeland, Rita 6 n.22 42, 43, 193
Corner, G.W. 82 n.69 Dorothea of Montau 177
Cornford, Francis Macdonald 83 n.70 Douglas, Mary 5
Corpus Christi plays 123 Doyle, A.I. 181
corruption, human body as site of 136–8, dress code, female 110 n.67
141, 157 Droitture 191
265
Dronke, Peter 10 n.34, 11 n.35, 178 n.37, in Margery’s writing 106–30, 146–7
188 n.81, 219 n.31 discourses adopted by Julian 68, 95,
Duby, Georges 107 n.58 131–4, 138–69
discourses adopted by Margery
East Anglia, Margery’s trial in 182 106–30, 146–7
eating, pleasure of 142–3 flesh synonymous with 32 n.17,
Eberley, Susan 117 n.80 135–45, 152, 157, 169
Ecclesia 218, 219, 220 grotesque 110, 111, 191
Edwards, Robert R. 3 n.12, 83 n.70, leakages from 80, 170, 175,
110 n.67 189 n.84, 191
Ehrenschwendtner, Marie-Luise 83 n.71 maternal 18–19, 31
Elizabeth of Hungary 44–5, 46, 197 n.105 as site of contested meanings 30
Elliott, Dyan 177 n.31 subsumed by voice 208–12
Elliott, J.K. 78 n.56 suffering of 32 n.17, 36, 134,
Ellis, Roger 46 n.57, 227 n.60 150, 163, 236
enclosure, female theories of 8–20, 72–4, 82–3, 133, 134–5
anchoritic life 70–72, 207–10 see also female voice
male desire for 7–8 female gaze 135
society and 64–70 female sexual organs 17, 84 n.73, 143–4,
womb as site of 65, 66–7, 71–2, 80, 145, 167, 168, 232
82–5, 91 female solidarity 193–5
‘eorðe’ 141, 143 female space, contravention of 2–8
Erhler, Mary C. 59 n.87 see also domestic space, female
erotic imagery female voice
Julian’s use of 152–3, 167–9 body subsumed by 208–12
Margery’s use of 126–30 in Book of Margery Kempe 171–2,
essentialism 15–16, 17, 31 175–204
Eucharist 48–9 in Canterbury Tales 170–71
Evans, Ruth 34 n.21, 104 n.47, 147 n.65, in Julian’s texts 207, 210–15, 220–22,
181 n.50 224–34
Eve medieval attitudes to 172–5
transgression of 1–2, 9, 27, 37, 39–40, preservation and dissemination of
54, 130, 135, 173, 236 222–34
writing initiated by 235–7 sapiential theology and 191, 216–22
exchange value, women’s 99–100, see also prophets, female
102, 146 fiend, Julian’s encounter with 153–62
excrement, woman likened to Finke, Laurie 104
137, 142, 186 Finnegan, Mary Jeremy 65 n.3
Finucane, R.C. 52 n.69
fabliau tradition 191 fissures 18, 24, 32 n.17, 40, 62, 112, 134,
Fairclough, H. Rushton 189 n.85 135–6, 141, 168
fairy stories 59–60 flesh, female body synonymous with
Fanous, Samuel 33 n.19, 200 n.110 32 n.17, 135–45, 152, 157, 169
Farge, James L. 107 n.60 Florentyne, Margaret 194
Farley, Mary Hardman 35 n.28 fluids, body 74, 80, 85 n.75
Feast of Fools 111 see also blood; lactation; menstruation;
female body weeping
as authoritative literary tool 3, 12, 24, food
26, 30, 68, 81–2, 95, 134, 146–7, 153, pleasure associated with 142–3
161–2, 170–71, 172, 200–201, 203–4 women linked with 47–8 n.61, 194–5
as commodity 99–106 de Ford, Sara 152 n.77
in Julian’s writing 145–69 fornication 101, 108
266
INDEX
fostering, extra-mural 61 n.97 Grenehalgh, James 227

Fradenburg, Louise 22 n.67 Greystoke, Lady Elizabeth 184
Fraipoint, Iohannes 136 n.24 Griselda 91
Francis, Saint 97 n.8 Grosseteste, Bishop 229
Franzen, Allen J. 2, 175 n.23 Grosz, Elizabeth 31 nn.14, 15
Freccero, Carla 22 n.67 grotesque female body 110, 111, 191
Fries, Maureen 35 n.27, 179–80 n.42 Guineau, Bernard 91 n.86
Fuss, Diana 15–16, 17 Guy de Chauliac 159
gynaecentric imagery 67, 83–5
Galen 8–10, 73, 134
Galvani, Christiane Mesch 66 n.9 Hadewijch of Brabant 152
Gardner, Edmund G. 21 n.65 Hagan, Susan K. 147, 155
Gascoigne, Margaret 226 n.53 hagiographic texts, discerning ‘voice’ in
gender as performance 19–20, 28–9, 39, 177, 196
50–58, 112, 123–5, 130 Hali Meiðhad 141, 143
gender difference theories 15–19 Hall, D.J. 52 n.69
gender stereotyping 23–4 Hall, Louis B. Jr 122 n.111
Genesis B 235 Hamington, Maurice 74, 79 n.57
genitalia see sexual organs Hanawalt, Barbara A. 3, 7, 32 n.18, 110
Germany, Margery’s visit to 114–16 n.67, 206 n.3
Gerson, Jean 223 n.39 Hanning, R.W. 10 n.34
Gertrude the Great 65, 66 n.6 harlot saints 118–19, 148
gestation 15, 17, 18, 31, 64, 67 Harper, Stephen 36 n.28
Gibson, Gail McMurray 98 n.13, Haskins, Susan 54 n.75, 104 n.49, 117
122 n.112, 123 n.116 nn.80, 81, 118 nn.83, 84, 91, 119
Gilbert Anglicus 159 nn.92, 95, 96, 126 n.126,129 n.136,
Gilby, Thomas 102 n.31, 142 n.49 146, 186 n.73
Gilchrist, Roberta 7 n.24, 71 nn.27, 28, 30 hazelnut 83–4
Gill, G.C. 17 n.52 Healy, Margaret 111 n.72
Gill, Miriam 51 n.66 Heffernan, J. 21 n.66
Gillespie, Vincent 227 Helfta, cult of Sacred Heart at 65, 82
Gimbutas, Marija 26 n.81, 72 n.33 hell 87, 158
Glasscoe, Marion 22 n.69, 23, 35 n.28, Henry IV 184
52 n.69, 72 n.32, 152 n.77, 227 n.60 Heraclitus 189
Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love heresy see Lollardy
(ed.) 2 n.9, 69 nn.20, 22, 154 n.81, Hermann, Dagmar 59 n.92
221 n.36, 226, 228 n.65 Hildegarde of Bingen 49 n.64, 177, 219
goddesses 72, 95 Hilton, Walter 21, 25, 162, 180, 230
Godhead Hirsch, David 29
Margery’s marriage to 42, 126, 128 Hodgson, Phyllis 137 n.27
male and female united within 95 Holloway, Julia Bolton 35 n.27,
le Goff, Jacques 97 n.10 45 n.53
Goldberg, P.J.P. 101 Holy Spirit, Margery filled with 128,
Goldhammer, Arthur 97 n.10, 188 n.81 171, 199, 200
Goodman, Anthony 34 n.21, 38 n.32, homoeroticism 57
96 n.6 Horstmann, Carl 205 n.2, 235–6 n.5
Gospels, Margery’s knowledge of 59 n.92 Howard, Donald R. 38 n.32, 52 n.71
Gossaert, Jan 49 n.65 Howard, Richard 160 n.109
Gottfried (scribe) 177 Howell, Martha C. 39 n.33
Granger, William 45 n.50 Howes, Laura L. 202 n.116
Green, Monica 37 n.31 Hozeski, Bruce 219 n.32
Gregory the Great 157 Hudson, Anne 59 n.89, 179–80
267
Hugh of Saint-Cher 110, 123, 128–30, 176, 187–8,

De Doctrina Cordis 229 200–201, 203
Hughes, Diane Owen 58 n.87 as Margery’s lover 106–8, 124,
Hughes, J. 69 n.19 126–30, 166, 201
Hughes-Edwards, Mari 20 n.63 as mother 49, 74–5, 79, 81, 83, 85, 86,
humility topos 6, 66, 197 89–95, 131, 138, 161, 166, 220–21,
adopted by Julian 8, 67–8, 232
151–2, 211 Passion of 48, 52–4, 72 n.32, 77, 80–82,
humoral theory 9–10 118, 123–4, 129, 132, 150, 156,
hymns, medieval 119–20, 130 157–60, 166, 201
hypocrisy, Margery’s perceived 172 public ministry of 150, 218
‘hysterical’ behaviour, Margery’s 20, Sacred Heart of 65, 82
21–2, 52–5, 57, 114, 115, 123–5, Shulamite as bride of 125–6, 128–9,
171, 187, 200 151 n.72
Jewell, Helen 69 n.23
imitatio Christi 25, 49, 78, 150, 155, 218 Jews 151, 160–61, 216–17
imitatio Mariae 19, 40, 49, 52–5 Joan of Arc 184 n.66, 222–4
‘in honde’ 105, 110 John of Gaunt 184, 185
individuality John of Salisbury 203
loss of, in redemptive process 121–2 Johnson, Lesley 34 n.21, 104 n.47
sense of 10–12 Johnson, Lynn Staley 3 n.10
interdiction 201–3 Johnson, M.D. 235 nn.1, 4, 237 n.10
interpellatative practices, patriarchal Jones, Catherine 160 n.106
103, 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114–15 Jones, Sarah Rees 229 n.73
Irigaray, Luce 13, 15, 16–18, 20, 99–100, Joseph, Saint 105
103 nn.40, 41, 146 jouissance, female 31, 57, 79, 94, 166
Isaac 44 Julian of Norwich
Ita of Hohenfels 155 anchoritic enclosure (in 1390s) 22,
68 n.18, 69
Jacquart, Danielle 10 n.31, 73, 74 n.47, anchoritic life of 70–72
85 n.75 death 69
Jager, Eric 235 n.2, 236 n.5 discourses of female body adopted by
James, Rhodes Montague 157 n.98 68, 95, 131–4, 138–69
Jansen, Katherine Ludwig 186, 187, 188, discourses of motherhood adopted by
191 n.92, 193 n.97 18–19, 23, 64–95, 131, 138, 161,
Jean de Meun 140 166, 220–21, 232
Jerusalem, Margery’s pilgrimage to 51, encounter with fiend 153–62
52–8, 109–12, 126, 171, 194–5 identification with Mary Magdalene
Jesus Christ 146, 149
birth of 189 illness suffered by 10, 64–5, 75–8, 90,
blood of 49, 80–82, 85, 138, 151, 153, 149, 150, 153, 163, 212, 214–15
159, 160, 168 life before enclosure 22–3, 68–70, 131,
female devotion to manhood of 24, 144
132, 136, 166 Margery’s meeting with 171–2, 198–9,
Julian’s fear of losing 77, 90 213
Julian’s visions of 76–8, 80–82, 86, 88, as prophet 212–15, 220–22
90, 93, 132, 160, 165, 205–7 risk-taking by 16
mystical union with Christ 150–53, spaces occupied by 5–6, 8, 77
163, 167–9 visions of Christ 76–8, 80–82, 86, 88,
as lover of humanity 167–9 90, 93, 132, 160, 165, 205–7
Margery’s conversations with 38, mystical union with Christ 150–53,
39–40, 46–8, 57 n.83, 62, 107–8, 163, 167–9
268
INDEX
Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love Keen, M.H. 184 n.66

(long text) 2 n.9 Kempe, Margery
bodily presence and absence in accused of heresy 7, 58–62, 112–13,
211–12 171, 172, 181 n.51, 182, 183–5,
Cecilia’s exclusion from 147 192–4
commonality concept in 164–9 attempt at adulterous liaison 34 n.22,
date of composition 23, 69–70, 211 121–2
devotion to manhood of Christ in 132 birth of first child 33, 117
discourses of female body in 68, 95, illness following 10, 35–40
132, 139, 144–5, 155, 157–62 birth of last child 107, 202
divine love central in 205–7, 220, 221, clothing worn by 59, 110, 201 n.112
231 commitment to family 47–50, 56
Julian’s illness described in 215 confessors used by 35, 36–7, 47 n.60,
motherhood matrix in 74–5, 79, 49, 50, 114
80–85, 88–95, 220–21, 232 conversations with Christ 38, 39–40,
Paris manuscript 139, 225–6, 228 n.65 46–8, 57 n.83, 62, 107–8, 110, 123,
preservation and dissemination of 128–30, 176, 187–8, 200–201, 203
225–6, 228–34 conversations with Virgin Mary 50
sapiential theology in 220–22 early life in Bishop’s Lynn 96–7,
scribal additions to 221–2, 233 120–21
sin examined in 86–7, 93 gendered performances by 19–20, 29,
Sloane manuscripts 139, 221, 226, 228 39, 50–58, 112, 123–5, 130
n.65, 233 identification with Mary Magdalene
Upholland redaction 226 40, 116–30, 186–8
Westminster redaction 139, 226, 228–33 identification with Virgin Mary 19,
Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 49, 52–5
Love (short text) 2 n.9 as lover of Christ 106–8, 124, 126–30,
Amherst manuscript 224–5, 226–8 166, 201
bodily presence in 211–12 marriage to Godhead 42, 126, 128
date of composition 23, 69–70 marriage to John Kempe 34
devotion to manhood of Christ in 24 meeting with Julian of Norwich
discourses of female body in 147–53, 171–2, 198–9, 213
155–7, 163, 168, 169 motherhood and 28–63
humilitas in 8, 67–8, 151–2, 211 pilgrimages of see pilgrimages, female
Julian’s illness described in 214–15 preoccupation with money 96–8,
locations of enclosure in 64–5 100–101, 104
Lord and Servant parable omitted as prophet 185–204, 210–11
from 85 rift and reconciliation with adult son
motherhood matrix in 65, 75–9, 80, 81 33, 40–43
new material introduced at end of risk-taking by 16
205–6 spaces occupied by 4, 5, 7–8, 39, 42,
preservation and dissemination of 43, 58, 62, 100, 113, 188, 193–4
224–5, 226–8, 230–31 threatened with rape 62, 113
scribal addition to 224–5 unexpiated sin of 34–40, 117
sin examined in 87, 206 vow of chastity with husband 32, 37,
52, 106–9, 128 n.134
Karras, Ruth 101 nn.24, 27, 102 nn.30, weeping of 20, 21–2, 52–5, 57, 114,
32, 35, 103 n.42, 105 n.55, 106 115, 123–5, 171, 187, 200
n.57, 110 n.66, 115 nn.77, 79, 118, Kempe, Margery: The Book of Margery
119 n.92, 148 nn.67, 68, 172–3 Kempe 2 n.9
Kay, Sarah 7 n.24, 10 n.31, 66 n.7, 110 childbirth and maternity in 32–43
n.65 chronology of 202
269
Kempe, Margery (continued) Larrington, Carolyne 152 n.76

discourses of prostitution in 106–30, laughter, role of 111
146–7 Lavezzo, Kathy 22, 55 n.78, 57
discourses of uncontained orality in Lawes, Richard 35–6 n.28
171–2, 175–204 Lawton, David 3 n.10, 6 n.22
Julian mentioned in 68 n.18 Leicester, Margery’s trial in 7, 60–62,
Margery’s act of writing 199–204 112–13, 171, 181 n.51, 183, 192
motherhood as performative strategy leprosy 43, 159
in 50–58 Lerner, Gerda 26 n.81, 72 n.33
Pepwell version (1521) 20–21 Lerner, Robert E. 221 n.35
Salthouse manuscript discovered Levine, Philip 135 n.22
(1934) 20–21, 28, 201 Levron, Jacques 156 n.92
scribes’ contribution to 21, 29, 33 Lewis, Katherine J. 101 n.27
nn.19, 20, 117–18, 172, 176–8, 181 libraries, public 230
n.58, 194, 196–7, 199, 201–3 Lichtman, Maria R. 90 n.85, 133–4, 164
as social commentary 30, 178 n.117
unexpiated sin mentioned in 34–40, liminality 71, 106
117 literacy 180
Wynkyn de Worde version (1501) 20 Lochrie, Karma 3 n.10, 21, 24, 32 n.17,
Kempe, John (Margery’s husband) 52 n.69, 60 n.95, 111, 127 n.130,
Margery cares for in old age 52 135–6, 152 n.77, 154 n.83, 167
Margery’s marriage to 34 n.123, 175 n.23, 181, 199, 201
Margery’s vow of chastity with 32, Lollardy
37, 52, 106–9, 128 n.134 Margery accused of 7, 58–62, 112–13,
Kempster, Hugh 228–9, 229–30, 232 171, 172, 181 n.51, 182, 183–5,
Kennedy, Angus J. 222 n.38 192–4
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne 174 n.18, Margery’s familiarity with 35, 179–85
186 n.73 Lomperis, Linda 75 n.48, 191 n.92
King, Karen 174 n.18 Lord and Servant, parable of 85–93, 157
Kirk, Elizabeth 22 n.67 Love, Nicholas 228 n.67
Kirshner, Julius 11 n.35 loveliness 88
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane 56 nn.78, 80, Luango, Thomas 210 n.13
57 n.83, 58–9 n.87 Lumiansky, R.M. 1 n.3
Knowles, David 21, 22 n.69, 25 n.77, lust 157
33 n.20, 38 n.32 Luthi, Max 60 n.94
Kobialka, Michal 3 Lynch, Joseph H. 97 n.10
Kooper, E. 152 n.76
Kraman, Cynthia 151, 168 Maclean, Ian 135 n.16
Kristeva, Julia 13, 15, 16, 17 n.52, 18–19, Madison, David J. 111 n.68
30–31, 57, 79, 94, 95, 175 n.23 Mahoney, Dhira B. 40 n.37
Makowski, Elizabeth 177 n.29
labelling 103, 106, 108, 109, 112, 113, male sexual organs 17, 139–40, 143,
114–15 145
lactation 48 n.61, 49, 74, 80 Malvern, Marjorie M. 117 n.81
lacuna (blind spot) 103, 113, 141, 146, Manciple 104
157, 185 Mancor, Neil 125 n.122
Langland, William 80, 96, 153 Manning, Robert 53
Langlois, Ernest 140 n.40 Margaret, Saint 47
Languedoc, brothels in 101 margins, women occupying 1, 4, 6–7,
Laqueur, Thomas 10 n.31, 37 n.29, 31, 71, 79, 106, 115, 146, 185, 224
73 n.35, 74 n.47 Marienwerder, John 177
larder, keys to 39 Marks, Elaine 17 n.52
270
INDEX
marriage, women’s role in 34, 100, 104, McInerney, Maud Burnett 81 n.65, 82
107–8 McNamer, Sarah 75, 91 n.87
Martin, Alison 18 n.55 McSheffery, Shannon 112 n.74, 179 n.38,
Mary, Virgin 185 nn.70, 71
accused of adultery 105 meal table, licentiousness of 111
blue mantle of 91 Meale, Carole 122–3, 124 n.118,
cult of 74, 78 179 n.41
Julian’s mother linked with 77–8 meat-eating 47
Margery as handmaid to 51 Mechthild of Hackeborn 65
Margery’s conversations with 50 Mechthild of Magdeburg 65–7, 72
Margery’s identification with 19, 39, medical texts 8–10, 23, 73–4, 82–3, 133,
40, 42, 43, 44, 49, 52–5 134–5, 144, 150, 159
powerful/powerless paradox of Meech, Sandford Brown 2 n.9, 20 n.62,
78–9, 84 33 n.20, 110 n.66, 180 n.49, 181
as Queen of Heaven 87 n.52, 183
voice of 175 Melton, William 201 n.114
in Western culture 57 menstruation 15, 17, 80, 82, 143
wisdom of 220, 232 Menunge, Noel James 101 n.27
Mary Magdalene metamorphosis 145, 150, 189, 207–9
as apostless 118, 126, 130, 186–8, metaphors
193 n.97 in Julian’s texts 82–5, 215 n.17
Julian’s identification with 146, 149 Rolle’s use of 127
Margery’s identification with 40, Metcalf, Stephen 35 n.24, 111 n.70
116–30, 186–8 Migne, J.-P. 137 n.29
as whore 104–5, 116–30, 146 Miller, Frank Justus 204 n.121
Mary of Bethany 118 Millet, Bella 70 n.25, 141 nn.44, 47,
Mary of Egypt 119 158 n.99, 175 n.21
masculinity, undesirable 161 Mills, David 1 n.3
Maslakovic, Anna 229 n.73 Mills, Robert 147 n.65
masochism, female 79, 80 Milton, John
Mass 48, 49 Paradise Lost 235
remuneration paid for 97–8 Minnis, A.J. 3 n.10
Massumi, Brian 14 n.42 misogyny 219–20
maternal body 18–19, 31 ‘mixed life’ 228
maternal dichotomy 47–50 Moi, Toril 17 n.52, 18 n.56, 19 n.57,
maternal grief 52–5, 57, 77 31 n.16, 89 n.84
maternal martyr, Margery as 44–7 de Mondeville, Henri 140, 143
maternity see motherhood monstrous female 1, 9, 170, 171
Matter, Ann E. 125 n.122, 168 n.124 Montanist movement 174 n.18
Maximilla 174 Mooney, Catherine M. 176 n.26, 177,
McAvoy, Liz Herbert 20 n.63, 67 n.15, 196 n.103
70 n.24, 111 n.72, 124 n.118, 202 Morris, Bridget 45 n.53, 46 n.56
n.116, 207 n.4 Morris, Colin 10–11
McCraken, Peggy 152 n.77 Morrison, Susan Signe 4–5, 20 n.61,
McEntire, Sandra 3 n.10, 22 n.67, 52 n.69
23 n.72, 35 nn.23, 27, 40 n.37, motherhood
45 n.49, 133 n.9, 147 n.64, Christ as mother 49, 74–5, 79, 81, 83,
154 n.79, 228, 231 n.79 85, 86, 89–95, 131, 138, 161, 166,
McGinn, Bernard 11 n.35, 152 n.76, 188 220–21, 232
n.81, 189 nn.82, 83, 86, 190 n.87 in Julian’s texts 18–19, 23, 64–95, 131,
McHardy, A.K. 182 n.61 138, 161, 166, 220–21, 232
McIlwain, James 76 n.53 and Margery Kempe 28–63
271
motherhood (continued) Parker, Roscoe E. 44 n.47

as performative strategy 50–58 parody 110, 161
as protective strategy 58–63 Parsons, John Carmi 81 n.65
theories of 18–19, 30–31 Partridge, Eric 109 n.63
Murphy, Cullen 174 n.17 Paston Letters 153 n.78
Murphy, John L. 122 n.111, 126 n.125 patriarchal sexual-political economy 99
Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie 37 n.31, Patterson, Lee 96–7, 170 n.2, 171 n.4
81 n.65 Paul, Saint 42, 61, 86, 107, 135, 173–4
Myers, Michael D. 34 n.21 ‘payede’, Julian’s use of 163
Myroure of Oure Ladye, The 181 Payne, Joseph Frank 140 n.42
Mystics Quarterly 228 Peacock, Reginald 183–4
Peck, A.L. 9 n.30
N-Town Plays 1, 78 n.56, 104–5 Peck, Francis 225
nakedness 116 penitence, Church’s emphasis on 118,
naming see labelling 119–20
narrative techniques, Margery’s 195–6 Pepwell, Henry 20
Neff, Amy 52 n.70 performance, gender as 19–20, 28–9, 39,
Nelson, Janet L. 199 n.107 50–58, 112, 123–5, 130
Neuburger, Verena E. 61 n.97 Petroff, E.A. 35 n.26
New Testament, English translations of phallus 17
181 Phillips, Kim M. 101 n.27
Newman, Barbara 6 n.23, 44 nn.44, 45, Phoebus Apollo 208
47, 67 n.16, 111 n.68, 217 n.23, pilgrimages, female 4–5, 52 n.69
218 nn.29, 30, 219, 220 n.34 Margery’s 4, 5, 20 n.61, 45, 52–8
Nicholas, H. 184 n.66 funding for 97, 98
Noffke, Suzanne 210 n.13 to Jerusalem 51, 52–8, 109–12, 126,
nuptual discourse 166 171, 194–5
to North of England 7, 58–62, 107,
Odo of Cluny 137, 186 112–13, 118 n.88, 123, 171, 181
Ogden, Margaret S. 159 n.105 n.51, 183–5, 192–4
Ohler, Norbert 52 n.69 to Norwich 171–2, 198–9, 213
d’Oignies, Marie 197 n.105, 202–3 Plato 82–3, 189
Oldcastle, John (Lord Cobham) 183 plenary remission 98
‘one sex’ model of human anatomy 9, Plutarch 189 n.82
16, 73, 143 Poliakov, Leon 160 n.109
orality, female see female voice Pollard, William F. 139 n.33, 156 n.91,
Orme, Nicholas 32 n.18, 51 n.66, 55 n.76, 227 n.60
60 n.93 Pope, Marvin H. 84 n.73, 125 n.122
orthodoxy, female adherence to 87–8, Pope Joan 111
94, 113, 156, 157, 179, 183, 185 Porete, Marguerite 175 n.21, 178
Otis, Leah Lydia 101 nn.26, 29 Porter, Catherine 16 n.52
Ovid post-partum sickness
Metamorphoses 204 n.121, 207–9 Margery heals woman with 51–2
Owen, Hywel 226 n.52 Margery’s, following birth of first
Owensby, Walter T. 97 child 10, 35–40
Potter, Roland 174 n.20
Pagels, Elaine 173 poverty, holy 97
Pan 159 Power, Eileen 7 n.25, 39 n.33, 172–3
papal indulgence 98 pre-Oedipal mother 31
parental bereavement 55 n.76 pregnancy 15, 17, 18, 31, 64, 83
Paris manuscript 139, 225–6, 228 n.65 female voice as monstrous 170, 171
Parke, H.W. 188 n.81 Margery’s first 34
272
INDEX
Margery’s spiritual 48–9, 62 Renevey, Denis 29 n.7, 33 n.19, 36 n.28,

priests 70 n.25, 141 n.47, 175 n.21, 200
female 193 n.98 n.110, 229 n.73
sexual aggression shown by 114–16 repetitive compulsion 35 n.23
Priscilla 174 Reynaert, J. 152 n.76
Prodigal Son 40 Richard (Margery’s companion on the
profit and loss, in Julian’s texts 162–4, journey to Rome) 55, 56
165, 167 Richards, Peter 159 nn.103, 105
‘profytte’, Julian’s use of 163 Riches, Sam 51 n.66, 122 n.133
prophets, female 173–4, 192 Richmond, Colin 180 n.45, 181,
Julian as prophet 212–15, 220–22 182 n.61, 184, 185 n.71
Margery as prophet 185–204, 210–11 Riddy, Felicity 179 n.41
sapiential theology and 191, 216–22 Rieff, Philip 56 n.79
scribes used by 177, 196 Riehle, Wolfgang 21, 25 n.77
Sibyl 71 n.30, 188–92, 204, 224 Robertson, Elizabeth 55 n.77, 75,
and anchoritism 207–10 80 n.63, 133
Proserpina 170 Robinson, James M. 217 nn.24, 25
prostitutes see prostitution; whore(s) Rolle, Richard 25, 126–8, 152
prostitution Incendium Amoris 127, 137–8, 180
in court records 105–6 Rome, Margery’s visit to 55–8, 110,
discourses of 123, 126
in Julian’s writing 146–7, 167, 169 Roper, Lyndal 10 n.31, 14–15, 26
in Margery’s writing 106–30, 146–7 Rose, Christine 55 n.77
institutionalisation of 101–2 Rose, Linda 89 n.83
in medieval secular literature 103–5 Rose, Mary Beth 45 n.51
see also whore(s) rose symbol 144
psalms 127, 230 Rossiaud, Jacques 101 nn.24,
Pseudo-Bonaventure 53, 123 n.116, 187 25, 28
psychoanalytical theory 13–14 Rothschild Canticles 125 n.120
punishment 87, 90, 150 Roudiez, L.S. 17 n.52
Purdans, Margaret 229, 230 Rowe, Karen E. 60 n.92
purgatory 97–8 Rubin, Gayle 99
purse imagery 139–40, 142–4, 145, Rubin, Miri 7 n.24, 10 n.31, 48, 66 n.7,
151, 232 102 n.33, 110 n.65, 146
Ruddick, Sara 57 n.81, 58 nn.85, 86, 94
Quilligan, Maureen 191 nn.90, 93, 192 Russell, Jeffrey Burton 157 nn.97, 98,
Quintilla 174 158 n.99
Ruud, Jay 154–5, 159 n.102, 160–61
rape
Julian threatened with, by fiend Sacred Heart, cult of 65, 82
153–62 Sahlin, Claire L. 210 n.13
Margery threatened with 62, 113 Saint Julian’s church, Norwich
Margery’s fear of 55, 56, 114–15 68, 69, 225
Raymond of Capua 177 Saint Margaret’s church, Lynn
Reau, Louis 158 39, 47, 173
red, Julian’s fiend described as 158–60 Salih, Sarah 22, 25–6, 44 n.44, 45 n.53,
redemption 121–2, 150, 152, 169 47, 51 n.66, 59 n.87, 122 n.113,
Reed, Teresa 47 n.59, 51 n.67, 54 n.75 126 nn.123, 126, 147 n.65, 186–7
Reformation 127 Salthouse manuscript, discovery of
regendering 165–6 20–21, 28, 201
Rego, Paula 60 n.94 Salthows (scribe) 21
Reiling, J. 217 n.25 salvific symmetry 187
273
sapiential theology 191, 216–20 sin

Julian’s adoption of 220–22 entering female body through senses
Sargent, Michael G. 227 135
Satan 2, 37, 120 Julian’s writings on 86–8, 93, 206
Julian’s encounter with 153–62 Margery’s unexpiated 34–40, 117
satisfaction theory 156 Sinanoglou, Leah 48 n.62
Sawtre, William 35, 182–3 Sissa, Giulia 188 n.81, 189 nn.82, 84
Scase, Wendy 6 n.22, 230 nn.75, Sloane manuscripts 139, 221, 226,
77, 78 228 n.65, 233
Scattergood, J. 58 n.87 Smith, Lesley 210 n.13
Scattergood, V.J. 181 n.54 sodomy 102
Schoedel, William R. 216 n.22 Song of Songs 11, 83–4, 125–9, 151, 158,
Schoenfeldt, Michael 9–10, 14 168, 216
Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts 45 n.51 Sophos 217
Schultz, James A. 152 n.77 soul, human 125–6, 128–9, 136, 142, 144,
Scott, Karen 177 n.33 145, 151 n.72, 160
scribes ‘soule’ (waste matter) 139, 141–2, 145
and hagiographic texts 177, 196 Southern, R.W. 10 n.34, 97 n.8,
Julian’s 221–2, 224–5, 233 98 nn.11, 12
Margery’s 21, 29, 33 nn.19, 20, 117–19, Southwark stews 101, 110 n.66
172, 176–8, 181 n.58, 194, 196–7, Spain, Daphne 5
199, 201–3 Spector, Stephen 1 n.1, 78 n.56
Seth 235, 236 Spryngolde, Robert 47 n.60, 50
Scrope, Stephen 191 n.90 Spurgeon, Caroline 22 n.68
‘sekkyn gelle’ 110 Stagel, Elsbeth 177
self-mutilation 45 Staley, Lynn 13 n.41, 22, 29 n.12, 30,
selfhood 33 n.19, 115 n.78, 177–8, 196
loss of, in redemptive process Stanbury, Sarah 75 n.48, 191 n.92
121–2 Stanton, Domna C. 201 n.115
sense of 10–12 Stargardt, Ute 21
semiotics of language 18, 31–2 ‘sterte’ 114
Serjeantson, Mary S. 121 n.107 Stewart, Carol 48 n.61
Seth 235, 236 stigmata 38
seven spiritual works of mercy 41–2 Stone, Merlin 26 n.81
Sewell, Joanna 227 Stone, Robert K. 21 n.66, 25 n.77
sexual intercourse 73, 83, 141, 142–3 story telling, Margery’s aptitude for
sexual organs 59–60
female 17, 84 n.73, 143–4, 145, 167, Strohm, Paul 87 n.80
168, 232 strumpet, Margery labelled
male 17, 139–40, 143, 145 109–10, 112
Shahar, Shualmith 4 nn.13, 14, 32 n.18, subversive reiteration 108, 110
34 n.21, 37 n.29, 41 n.40, 42 n.42, suffering female body 32 n.17, 36, 134,
54–5 n.76, 60 n.93, 172–3 150, 163, 236
Sheehan, Michael M. 107 n.60 Summa Theologiae (Aquinas) 102, 142–3,
Sheils, W.J. 199 n.107 174, 190
Sheingorn, Pamela 44 n.47 Suso, Henry 177
Sheldon, Frances 226–7 n.56 sweetness 88, 89, 93
Sherborne, J.W. 181 n.54 Syon Abbey 181, 227
Shulamite (soul) 125–6, 128–9, 151 n.72 Szarmach, Paul 22 n.69, 35 n.27, 179 n.42
Sibyl 71 n.30, 188–92, 204, 224 Szell, Timea K. 35 n.23
and anchoritism 207–10 Szövérffy, Joseph 119–20,
Siegel, Rudolph E. 8 n.27 130 n.137
274
INDEX
Talbot, C.H. 91 n.89 Vita 235–6

Tanner, Norman 37 n.30, 59 n.89, 61 n.96, Voaden, Rosalynn 22, 35 n.26, 45 n.53,
87 n.80, 179 n.39, 181 n.58, 229 65–6, 167 n.123, 168 n.125, 173
Tasioulas, J.A. 105 n.51 nn.13, 14, 177, 185 n.69, 186, 195,
le Tavernier, Jean 156 n.92 199 nn.107, 108, 200, 203, 210, 211,
Taylor, Andrew 181 n.50 213 n.16
Taylor, Jane 210 n.13 voice, female see female voice
Taylor, Steven M. 111 n.68 de Voragine, Jacobus 45, 119, 121, 122,
Temkin, Owsei 8 n.27 147 n.66, 148, 150, 187–8
Tentler, Thomas N. 98 nn.12, 13, 118 n.84
Tertullian 2 n.6 Walker, Pamela J. 174 n.18, 186 n.73
testicles 143, 145 Wallace, David 170 nn.2, 3, 171 n.4
Theoderic (scribe) 177 Walsh, James 21, 22 n.68, 139 nn.33, 36,
thirst 81 141 n.48, 142 n.52, 154 n.81,
Thomasset, Claude 10 n.31, 73, 74 n.47, 225–6, 228 n.65
85 n.75 Walters, Clifton 22 n.69, 138 n.31,
Thurston, Herbert 52 n.71 201 n.113
Tinsely, David F. 154 n.79, 155, 156 n.93, Walters, Teresa 67 n.15, 111 n.72
157 ‘wandering womb’ 82–3
Tobin, Frank 177 n.32 Ward, Benedicta 22–3, 68, 69 n.23, 76,
Tolkien, J.R.R. 70 n.25 77, 119 n.92, 144, 147 n.63
tomb, anchorhold as 71–2 Warmington, E.H. 189 n.86
Townely plays 235 Warner, Marina 54 n.75, 59 n.92, 60 n.94,
transubstantiation 61 74 nn.43, 45, 79 n.57, 188 n.81,
Turner, Edith 4 195 n.101, 216 n.18, 218 n.28
Turner, Victor 4 Warren, Ann K. 70, 71 n.28
two-seed theory of generation 9 water, blood associated with 81, 168, 232
Watson, Nicholas 3 n.10, 6 n.22, 22 n.69,
Ufforde, Isabel 69 n.22 23–4, 33 n.20, 69, 72 n.32, 74 n.41,
Uhlman, Diane 199 n.108, 202 77, 88, 127, 131–3, 141 n.48, 147
unconditional love 91–3, 94 n.63, 164, 180–81 nn.45, 50, 205,
Upholland redaction 226 211 n.15, 228 n.65, 231 n.79
upright, body standing 139, 140–41 Watt, Diane 22, 59 n.88, 66 n.12, 83 n.71,
use value, women’s 99–100, 102 105 n.51, 151 n.73, 167 n.123, 168
n.125, 174 n.17, 185 n.69, 199 n.107
vagina 143–4, 145, 167, 168, 232 Webb, Diana 52 n.69
Varty, Kenneth 222 n.38 weeping 80
vengeance 86, 90 Margery’s 20, 21–2, 52–5, 57, 114, 115,
vernacular religious texts 180–82, 183–4, 123–5, 171, 187, 200
185, 228 n.67 Mary Magdalene’s 123–5
Virgil 189 Virgin Mary’s 53
virgin martyrs 91 n.89, 147–9, 172 Weissman, Hope Phyllis 22, 34 n.22,
Virgin Mary see Mary, Virgin 39–40, 52–3
virginity 17, 141 Wemple, Suzanne 11 n.35
Margery’s loss of 36–8, 40, 46–7, 117 Westminster redaction 139, 226,
see also Mary, Virgin 228–33
visions Westmorland, Lady (Joan de Beaufort)
Julian’s 76–8, 80–82, 86, 87, 88, 90, 93, 184
132, 150–53, 160, 163, 165, 167–9, Wheatley Manuscript 236
191, 205–7 Wheeler, Bonnie 81 n.65
Margery’s 51, 123–4, 187–8, white clothing, worn by Margery 59,
190, 191 110, 201 n.112
275
Whitehead, Christiania 29 n.7, 33 n.19, womb

36 n.28, 70 n.25, 71 n.27, 141 n.47, Christ’s wound compared to
175 n.21, 200 n.110, 229 n.73 65, 168
whore(s) enclosure within 65, 66–7, 71–2, 80,
Margery categorised as 100, 107, 82–5, 91
109–16 purse image used for 143–4, 145
Mary Magdalene as 104–5, 116–30, 146 slippery nature of 73
medieval definition of 102–3 ‘wandering’ 82–3
role performed by 100–101 Wood, Diana 32 n.18, 199 n.107
women prosecuted as 105–6 Wood, James 216 n.19
see also prostitution de Worde, Wynkyn 20
Wife of Bath 4, 96, 103–4, 105 n.54, 109, wrath 86, 90
140, 170–71 Wrenn, C.L. 216 n.18
Wilken, Robert L. 216 n.22, 217 nn.24, 26 writing, female act of 6–7, 23–4, 199–204,
wills, evidence drawn from 68 n.18, 69, 235–7
181, 229–30 Wycliffe, John 180, 184
Wilson, Janet 35 n.27, 59 n.88 Wynkyn de Worde 20
Wilson, Katharina M. 160 n.106, 178 n.37
wisdom 208–9 York, Margery’s visit to 107, 123
feminised in Julian’s texts 232–3 trial for heresy 7, 58–60, 183, 192
Julian’s growth towards 209, 213–15,
220–22 Zeigler, Philip 160 n.108
sapiential theology and 191, 216–22 Ziegler, Vickie 3 n.12, 83 n.70,
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn 66 n.7, 122 n.113, 110 n.67
141 n.44, 158 n.99, 180 n.50 Zimmerman, Odo John 157 n.94
276

Liz Herbert McAvoy - Authority and The Female Body in The Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 5) - D.S.Brewer (2004) PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Liz Herbert McAvoy - Authority and The Female Body in The Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Studies in Medieval Mysticism, Volume 5) - D.S.Brewer (2004) PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Authority and the Female Body in

the Writings of Julian of Norwich

Studies in Medieval Mysticism

Studies in Medieval Mysticism

AUTHORITY AND THE FEMALE BODY

The writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe show an