Margery Kempe and Mental Illness

Margery Kempe: mother, mystic, mentally ill? Throughout The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery is burdened with the gift of tears. To onlookers, her behaviour seems erratic and threatening; strangers and acquaintances often wonder if devils possessing her cause her passionate wailing. Margery is often questioned about her tears, and isolated from people who fail to understand that she is one of Christ’s “chosen souls” (24). Margery sees these social difficulties as trials of her faith, and says, “For ever the more slander and reproof that she suffered, the more she increased in grace and in devotion of holy meditation” (Kempe 4). Even when her community berates her, she maintains that her tears are a gift and a form of penance, that her communications with Christ are genuine, and that she is not inspired by devils but inspired by the Holy Ghost. Her beliefs fit with her contemporary cultural context, as demonstrated by those who believe her, but Margery’s dissenters also have a point. Margery’s excessive tears are peculiar and frightenging, and her communication with God is indemonstrable except by her own word. Margery considers herself a healthy and holy woman, but were she alive today, one might consider her mentally ill.

Before beginning my argument I would like to clarify the current criteria for diagnosing mental illness. First, the patient must show “clinically significant detriment” (Gray 578). This could be shown by way of “distress (painful feelings) or impairment of functioning (interference with the ability to work, play, or get along with people” (578). Second, the distress must have “an internal source… in the person’s biology, mental structures (ways of perceiving, thinking, or feeling) or learned habits) – and not i...

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...Perhaps this is like the stigma surrounding mental illness today: so many individuals suffer in silence and denial, thinking that their stoicism is virtuous. Margery captures this sentiment best, as she says to Christ: “Let me be at your will and make me mighty and strong to suffer all that ever you will that I suffer, and grant me meekness and patience therewith” (88).

Works Cited

Gray, Peter, ed. Psychology. 5th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2007. Print.

“Mental Illness Exacts Heavy Toll, Beginning in Youth.” National Institute of Mental

Health. NIMH, 6 June 2005. Web. 23 Novemeber 2010.

Repper, J., and R. Perkins. Social Inclusion and Recovery: A Model for Mental Health

Practice. China: Elsevier Health, 2004. Google books. Web. 24 November 2010.

Staley, Lynn, ed. & trans. The Book of Margery Kempe. New York: W.W. Norton &

Co., 2001. Print.