Society's Role in Margery Kempe's Autobiography

758 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Margery kempe role of women

Society's Role in Margery Kempe's Autobiography

In her essay "Professions for Women," Virginia Woolf recounts her experience with Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House." The "Angel," society's ideal woman, is concerned primarily with others, identifies herself only as a wife/mother, and remains conventional in her actions, conscious of the standards for women. Woolf indicates that women writers are guided by this "Angel" unless they liberate themselves. Society's ideals ("the Angel in the House") have influenced Margery Kempe's autobiography as revealed by her content, form, and identity.

Kempe chronicles her struggle to obey God while attending to her marital duties: she says to her husband, "I may not deny you my body, but the love of my heart and my affections are withdrawn from all earthly creatures, and set only in God" (Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 20). Kempe's only explanation for wanting to abstain from sexual relations with her husband is that to do so is sinful. Her expressed reason appears sincere, as it is consistent with her religious behavior: Kempe elaborates on her fasting, praying, and going to confession. She is almost masochistic in her opinion and treatment of herself; wearing a hair-cloth and "beholding her wickedness," she devoutly goes to church every day. After describing her efforts to become spiritually pure, Kempe asserts that God tempts her with lechery (adultery). Even though this slightly contradicts her established piousness, Kempe likely includes her decision to consent with another man to reinforce her relationship with God: "That grace, God gave his creature, blessed may He be, but He withdrew not her temptation, but rather increased it" (22). Furthermore, she declares "Our L...

... middle of paper ...

...e lived. To engage in a battle of sexual politics with one's husband would have been unheard-of, but to endure a spiritual trial with the intent to please God would have been commendable. Even if she was a product of a time characterized by religious zeal, Kempe's intense desire to obey God earned her the independence of thought and body.

Society's ideals may have dictated the content and form of her work, but Kempe serves as an early model for "killing" the "Angel" at least in one regard: she contrasts Woolf's description of the ideal woman who "was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others" (Woolf in NALW, 1346). Were this true of Kempe, she would not have conducted herself nor developed the passionate beliefs she did; she especially would not have transcribed her story.

Show More
Related

  • A Feminist in the Medieval Era: Margery Kempe

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    Margery Kempe did something that many people (especially women) would not dare to do- she broke away from the identity that her society had molded for her. The Book of Margery Kempe is one of the most astonishing documents found of the late medieval era and is the first autobiography to have been discovered. Margery Kempe does not shy away from telling the story of the personal and intricate details about her adventurous life. It is hard to say what influenced Kempe to go through such lengths to have her book written. Many think she wanted others to understand and witness how difficult it was to live through the social norms and expectations as a typical wife and mother of the 14th century. Little did she know, her life story would travel through history and show how molding of society influences social norms and self-identification, which are prominent, combating issues today.

    Read More

  • Edmund Emil Kemper Iii: The Life Of A Serial Killer

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 13, 1948 in Burbank, CA. He was born to the union of Edmund E. Kemper Jr. and Clarnell Strandberg. After his parents divorced, Clarnell took Kemper along with his two sisters to live by her very high standards and abusive ways. She berated Kemper mentally by having him sleep in a windowless basement because she feared of the harm he may cause to his sisters. In turn, this caused the hatred that he had for her to fester and turn into hatred against all women. On many occasions Kemper would break off the heads and hands of his sister’s dolls and also have them play the game he called “The gas chamber” in which he was the victim to be executed (Fisher, 2003a).

    Read More

  • Wife Of Bath Euphemism

    1768 Words  | 4 Pages

    Regularly characterized as monsters, women were ridiculed for being sexually unappeasable, lustful, and shrewish, and they were regarded with condescension by the church authorities. Similarly, people in the medieval era regarded multiple marriages as highly questionable, and it is for this reason that the Wife of Bath carefully examines the words of God as revealed in scripture (revealing her to be more than a simple-minded woman: a knowledge of religious texts proves she is definitely educated and well-read). She confesses that nowhere can she find a stricture against her having more than one marriage, and her five husbands are therefore her choice and hers only. “He seith to be wedded is no synne:/ Bet is to be wedded than to brynne”, she remarks humorously, drawing on the fact that by God’s permission, finding a partner through marriage is a pastime with little consequences, for it is better than engaging in sin and burning for it (50-53. 301). This begins her analysis of the bible and the often “sinful” breakdown of a sexual relationship between man and woman, and introduces her repetitive idea of the

    Read More

  • A Pardoner Who Needs A Bath

    1584 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shead, Jackie. "'The wife of bath's tale' as self-revelation: Jackie Shead discusses how far the Wife's Tale perpetuates the picture we have gained of her from her Prologue." The English Review Feb. 2010: 35+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.

    Read More

  • Comparing The Wife of Bath and The Canterbury Tales

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is first important to understand the background of both The Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe’s stories. The Wife of Bath was a character created by Geoffrey Chaucer who is radically different from the nonfictional character of Margery Kempe. The Wife of Bat...

    Read More

  • The History Of Sexuality, By Michel Foucault

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    ”The History of Sexuality” is a three-volumes book, published around 1976 and 1984 by the french historical philosopher Michel Foucault. The three volumes are “An Introduction” (which later is known also as “The Will of Knowledge”), “The Use of the Self” and “The Care of the Self”.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s House

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.

    Read More

  • What Is The Tone Of The Professions For Women By Virginia Woolf Speech

    1465 Words  | 3 Pages

    Woolf shifts from describing the process of writing to describing an obstacle. Woolf encapsulates the essence of female expectations by citing the Angel in the House. The Angel in the House references a narrative poem written in the nineteenth century to describe the ideal Victorian woman. Woolf illustrates the Angel in the House “as shortly as [she] can” in order to acknowledge her audience and to make her speech brief and comprehensible for the listening women. Through employing anaphora, Woolf explains, “she was intensely sympathetic...intensely charming...utterly unselfish…” These descriptions are standards for women which the Angel in the House embodied. Woolf expands the audience’s understanding of the Angel in the House by providing concrete examples of her self-sacrificing nature. This is juxtaposed with Woolf’s behavior; Woolf purchased a Persian cat instead of using her earnings to purchase something more practical. Her impractical tendencies are contrasted with the selflessness of the Angel in the House, outwardly depicting that Woolf challenged her expectations as a woman. Woolf employs profound imagery to describe her haunting by the Angel in the House, “The shadows of her wings fell on my page; I heard the wrestling of her skirts in the room.” Through appealing to both visual and auditory senses, Woolf develops the Angel in the House from a creation of her subconscious into a concrete being, which is how she viewed it. Woolf finds the Angel in the House so intolerable she kills it in an act of “self-defence,” claiming that the Angel in the House would have killed her if she had not killed her first. Woolf definitively states, “She died hard,” which is emphatic

    Read More

  • Legalizing Prostitution

    2503 Words  | 6 Pages

    Milstein, Susan A. Taking Sides Clashing Views in Human Sexuality. Ed. William J. Taverner and Ryan W. McKee. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.

    Read More

  • Holy Life Essay: The Book Of Margery Kempe

    1452 Words  | 3 Pages

    One life change that Kempe made was between her and her husband. In order to live a holy life where she didn 't disobey God, she decided to remain celibate with her husband. She wanted to live how the Christians did, which was love without sex. Kempe does this with her husband to prove that she can also have a union with God. She writes about God saying to her, "Therefore I must be intimate with you, and lie in your bed with you. Daughter, you greatly desire to see me, and you may boldly when you are in bed take me to you as your wedded husband..." (Kempe, Book 1.35). This meaning that she loves and is devoted to God purely by earthly appeal and in no way by sexual attraction. Another way that Kempe changes her life drastically due to her devotion to God is her personality and how she acted overall. Her transition to a religious life was very emotional and dramatic, she caused scenes everywhere she went. She would have a crying fit during Mass which is extremely disruptive, she would have these crying fits on the street and people would complain about her and she then would preach about how God chose her and wants her to make the change to a religious life. Her disruptiveness and preaching was obnoxious and caused people to question her orthodoxy. However, she was very accepting of the

    Read More

  • Wife Of Bath Comparison Essay

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer illustrates the different perspective between men and women on the concept of marriage and love. In The Wife of Bath’s tale, it is shown the woman appreciating marriage and wanting to be able to love a man unconditionally as where in The Miller’s Tale, love isn’t anything, but sex with the man in the story. In accordance with Chaucer, the complication with marriage is that men are consumed by sexual desire and are easily abused by women like The Wife of Bath. As noticed, The Miller’s Tale is all about adultery. “Just like men, the wives have secrets, as does God”, says the Miller. Both have information that the other do not know about that are sacred and better left unsaid.

    Read More

  • The Evolution of the Role of Women in British and American Literature

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.

    Read More

  • Leukemia

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    Leukemia is cancerous disease that starts in blood-forming tissue such as the bone marrow and causes large numbers of blood cells to be produced and enter the blood-stream (National Cancer Institute, 2008, para. 1). It is one of many complicated cancer diseases that affect all ages and have very negative outcomes if not treated properly, and on time. Within the disease are several different types that affect according to how quickly the disease develops and attacks the body. It could be classified as chronic leukemia, which has a slow progress of getting worse or acute leukemia which usually gets worse quickly. The types of leukemia also can be grouped based on the white blood cell that is affected (National Cancer Institute , 2008, p. 1). The disease could either start forming in lymphoid cells or myeloid cells. When the disease forms in lymphoid cells it is called lymphoid, lymphocytic or lymphoblastic leukemia. The disease affected by the myeloid cells is called myeloid, myelogenous or myeloblastic leukemia.

    Read More

  • Feminist Criticism

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    ​Feminist critics point out that female writers achieved success due to their ability to conform to a world of patriarchal literature. George Eliot did so by conforming to society through the use of her pen name, Marian Evans. Booker argues that “women…lack the typical masculine castration anxiety and can therefore be comfortable with generosity and anonymity” (92). Both George Eliot and Dorothea Brooke seek to live a life of passion, yet “neither…can see a way to realize this desire directly” (Edwards 627). The issue of female identity comes into question as Dorothea searches for a solut...

    Read More

  • Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: Women and Fiction

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.

    Read More

More about Society's Role in Margery Kempe's Autobiography

Open Document