(by Carol)
While, yesterday, I gave a general overview of the course and some terms for adaptation studies and feminism, today we discussed some sample writings from Julian of Norwich‘s Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe. Both women were mystics, but one was a wife and mother and the other was an anchorite nun. Neither woman was a feminist per se, but certainly each had a strong personality and they found empowerment from the Church, odd as that may seem. They are among the first British women of letters, though (technically) Margery was illiterate and dictated her book, which is considered by some to be the first autobiography written in the English language.
Woman brewing beer.
Margery (c. 1373 – after 1438) was the daughter of a merchant, who was also a mayor for awhile. When she was twenty years old, she married John Kempe, and together they had fourteen children. At one point, she tried brewing beer, was very good at it for awhile. After the birth of her first child, according to her Book, she had a meltdown that lasted for eight months: she saw demons and devils who attacked her, to “forsake her faith, her family, and her friends,” and they even tried to get her to commit suicide. She was “saved” by a vision of Jesus, who came to her and said, “Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?” After that, for the rest of her life, she had visions in which she talked with Jesus, with God, and with Mary. She was tried for heresy numerous times in her life, but never condemned. Alison Torn concludes, “Unlike many diagnosed with psychosis today, Margery Kempe had a cultural space in which to explore her experiences. Religion provided Margery with a structure that left her with her dignity and freedom, a space that valued beliefs and meaning.” Today, most of us would see Margery Kempe as battling mental illness, yet Torn also observes: “The boundaries between madness and religious experiences are still a contested area, and one where pathological explanations need to be challenged.”
I’m not sure what Torn means by stating that “psychological explanations need to be challenged” — except that certainly there is dignity associated with a mystical experience seen from a religious rather than medical perspective.
Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich (c. 8 November 1342 – c. 1416), unlike Margery Kempe, was literate. She was a poet. Her first mystical experience came to her at the age of thirty, when she was near-death from a severe illness. While praying, in preparation for her death, she received 16 visions, which (after surviving the illness, of course) she wrote down. These are known as Revelations of Divine Love (also known as A Revelation of Love — in Sixteen Shewings). In addition to describing her sixteen visions, she also discusses such concepts as universal love and hope, religious schism, the plague, and war. It is considered to be the first book published in the English language that is written by a woman.
Julian was older than Margery by about thirty years, but they were alive at the same time. Margery once visited Julian. According to A Clerk of Oxford:
Some time around the year 1413, a few years before the likely date of Julian’s death, Margery Kempe came to pay her a visit in her cell in Norwich (on which, see this post). To give you some sense of their relative ages, Margery Kempe was born around the same year (1373) that Julian had her first revelations, at the age of thirty. I think many of us would be glad to have the opportunity to talk to Julian of Norwich, although I like to think that if I was lucky enough to get that chance I wouldn’t do what Margery Kempe did – which was, not surprisingly, talk about Margery Kempe. (To be fair to her, I suppose she had gone there for advice…) Kempe’s account of Julian’s words to her is suspiciously focused on the things Kempe was obsessed with, as a laywoman struggling to find validation for her own form of intense religion devotion: the importance of trusting to personal inspiration, chastity, the holiness of devout tears (Kempe was notorious for bursting into noisy tears during Mass, much to the annoyance of her neighbours), and counsel which essentially says ‘if people don’t like you, you must be doing something right’.
What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on THAT wall!
Anyway, you might wonder what these two women have to do with feminism and film and literature. I see them as setting the stage, in England, for future feminism. One has to remember that the misogynist anti-feminist doctrine of St. Jerome was prevalent in England at this time. It was not easy to be a woman with a voice. For England, too, the 1300s were still the Middle Ages, while at the same time in Italy concepts Renaissance humanism was beginning to develop.