Margery Kempe's Monstrous Otherness

At first I didn't find anything odd about reading a book by a woman in a class about the monstrous and the other. Femininity was a massive point of othering, so of course it makes sense to read something exploring that group. But the more I read of Margery's book, the more clear it becomes that Margery is not really a part of 'that group.' She is not othered just because she is a woman, she is othered even from women by being almost monstrously different.

A large part of what makes Margery 'not quite right' to those whom she writes as her contemporaries is the fact that she does not behave as a woman should. She screams in church, she refuses to sleep with her husband, she goes off traveling, she claims knowledge of God. Some of what she does may even be slightly less weird because she is a woman - we would all be raising our eyebrows a little higher if a man was writing about being wedded to the Godhead. But most of Margery's oddities would be a problem for a man as much as for a women. Pilgrims who want a jolly supper would probably have been just as unfriendly to a man trying to talk about solemn church things all the time, and they probably would have been even less gentle kicking him out of their company. If a man screamed in church, the parishioners would be just as annoyed. If a layman was claiming direct access to God, he would have been dubbed just as much a false Lollard as Margery was.

Margery's experience is not what anyone would call that of a normal or average woman in late medieval England. So if she is not part of an othered group, can she still be an other? Or is it when a definite other cannot be grouped in with others of its ilk that it becomes - as perhaps Margery does - a monster?

Margery the Loud

Something that we touched on in class yesterday was the volume of Margery's demonstrations of devotion through weeping, crying and roaring loudly during church services a dinners. Even though we addressed how this behavior would have seemed jarring in her church and her larger community, I feel like her loudness is especially interesting within the context of the silent Christian women we have encountered in our previous texts.

Silence seems to be a key characteristic of the literary Christian women, beginning with our encounter with Julianna of The Song of Roland. As a Saracen queen, she had a voice and used it to express her anger against her failed gods, but once she is converted, her voice is not heard again. Similarly, when Silence is publicly returned to the realm of women by marrying the king, we as readers are cut off from her thoughts and words. Margery, who seems to want everyone to hear her feelings, seems to be cut from an entirely different cloth.

In writing her autobiography, Margery is obviously speaking to her book's audience, but she is also implicitly arguing for the value of her voice among the faithful. We can think of this as just a "PR campaign for sainthood," which I am sure it at least partially is, but I think that is too narrow an interpretation. She, and many of the other women mystics at the time, are redressing the tradition of silence around their place in Christian discourse.

Even though, if I were part of her fellowship, I would probably also be put off by her constant weeping through dinner, her daring in publicly and with great volume expressing the truth of her connection to God should not be underestimated.

No Good Wife

There is an almost comical moment in chapter 11 of The Book of Margery Kempe when her husband asks her “whether you [Margery] would allow my head to be cut off, or else allow me to make love with you again, as I did at one time?” When she replies, “Truly, I would rather see you being killed, than that we should turn back our uncleanness,” it seems he is justified in telling her “you are no good wife.”

This small scene evoked from me two responses to Margery’s devotion to God. The first, and more likely intended response was: wow, that’s an intense love of God. However, my second though was: Well, she might resent this guy who got her pregnant 14 times, and not that she’s seeking revenge, but seeing him go might not be a heartbreaker. Of course in the end, Margery cares for her husband preceding his death, thus to a certain extent proving a defense to both my second reaction, and her husband’s allegation that she is a no good wife.

The Book of Margery Kempe seems as much about self-expression as it is self-defense. The third person provides an interesting lens through which to view her spiritual autobiography. While it appears to be a revealing third person account and the reader is aware of emotional struggles etc. the view of a third person narrator gives a sense of remove from Margery that a first person account would not provide. Rather than seeing through Margery Kempe’s eyes, we are focused on Margery Kempe. While I would not argue that this third person account is objective, it does seem to assert authority by at least posing as more than her personal view of the world.

Devout or Delusional?

Margery Kempe can either be called devout or delusional. In her own time, it seems many took the later rather than the former view. In her biography, those who witness her constant prayer and weeping think she is trying to get attention or is neglecting her duties. The few friends she has are frustrated with her. Even Jesus seems exasperated with her at times.

This is all typical for visionary literature of the medieval period. The visionary, especially if it was a woman, was often ridiculed. But the visionary took the scorn and derision as proof that her visions were valid. The more Kempe is criticized, the more fervently she prays and fasts and weeps for her sins. Her love for Jesus becomes more eroticised - she wishes he would come down from the crucifix and embrace her. She prefers her mystical lover to her husband. Again, this was common with such literature. Some of these female mystics would not even look at men so they wouldn't be distracted from their Lord. Some were nuns, literally called "the brides of Christ". The "prayers" and "mystical encounters" with Jesus could be read as love poetry or amorous dialogues. Jesus is all they desire.

For some of these female mystics, it is easy to see what might have caused them to break from reality (or have closer communion with Jesus, however one wishes to see it). For Kempe, I think it is less obvious. She comes from a wealthy family and has married well. It seems after she nearly dies in child birth that the change happens. Is this the effects of postpartum depression? Has her near-death experience caused schizophrenia (or conversion?)Or as with other mystics, did her visions (hallucinations?) come after a long period of extreme fasting, sleep deprivation, and bodily penitence?

What about the elephant in the room?

Our last set of readings arrived to one conclusion: there were homosexuals or gay people in the Middle Ages. Any other metaphor, poetic image or even any convention about using male pronouns to talk about women cannot keep our attention away from this fact: the elephant in the room. The idea of sex in the Middle Ages was strongly identified to intercourse, a possibility given by nature only to men, therefore, the absence of lesbianism in the discourse about (against) homosexuality should not surprise us.

The Catholic clergy has been always a common place of sexual tension: sex of any class was forbidden. One can think that many of men enclosed together and talking about love could find a lot of temptation, even though if they were not originally gay, as happens in our prisons nowadays. Young boys without secondary sexual characteristics were appealing to the old priests and the boiling activity of their adolescence was also an open door for temptation and consummation.

Women dressed as males are also a common place in the Middle Ages, beginning with Jean D'Arc herself. However, the male clothes on a woman often were justified by some higher purpose, but the question about the sexuality of those virgins in male garments is at least intriguing... or may be not, and the answer is more obvious than what The Romance of Silence wants to admit.

In both cases, male and female, friendship was in fuzzy place, and the terms to refer to it were quite ambiguous. Except in some poems, as in the Jewish poets studied in our last sessions, the terms to describe men are quite feminine, as Perceval's red lips. 

Personally, I think that sexuality of any kind is impossible to repress and that it finds always the ways for its consummation. The Middle Ages seems to be not an exception. However, was it not a veiled subject? The Roman of Silence did not talk about sex, except for Eufeme who was under a wrong impression. There were rules of alleged grammar that allowed the poet to use male pronouns to talk about women. Were not those a strategy to actually talk about men and make the poems pass as an stylistic innovation, even though if they were used to actually talk about women many times?

Probably sexual indiscretions were not weird, and only characters as this Allan of Lille were actually concerned about the offenses against Nature and not only about only keeping the face. Anyway, sex of any kind was illicit outside of marriage, and, if we believe our texts, Middle Ages were plenty of it!

Al Sharif al-Taliq and Lacan

I found Richard Serrano's article "Al-Sharif al-Taliq, Jacques Lacan, and the Poetics of Abbreviation," a little problematic because I wasn't sure exactly how his conception of the writer trying to conceal or cover "the original trauma of the poem" in Lacanian terms differed from the way poetry normally works. I also wasn't sure, moreover, how his employment of Lacan's theories differed from conventional literary interpretation.

He states that the trauma is an event that exists beyond or before language, behind the "accessible Symbolic Order," and that attempts to describe or relate trauma via language also, necessarily, obscure it. He writes, "Attempts to account for this moment - and, simultaneously, to hide it - result in language that constantly obscures the original trauma yet relentlessly points back to it" (141). So - if I'm understanding this right - if I attempted to relate via writing a traumatic experience, I would simultaneously obscure the original traumatic episode with imperfect language and, at the same time, still refer to it because it is the point of my writing.

But how does this differ from the way poetry normally works? Metaphors, similes, figures of speech, etc. all operate to point to an experience but, since they cannot perfectly render the experience for us, they could also be said to obscure said experience at the same time. And, of course, we measure a poet by how well he employs metaphors, similes, figures of speech, etc. which ties into Serrano's idea that the "cover up" functions as a mechanism for self-glorification for the poet. My point is, though, that you can get to his conclusion without having to resort to Lacanian theory or employ such terms as "trauma" or "psychoanalysis."

I just had a lot of "duh" moments as I was reading the article and I got the feeling that Serrano was hiding behind the buzz word "Lacan" whilst performing good, old-fashioned literary interpretation.

The Irrelevance of Gender

Like Parzival and Silence, the poems in these excepts emphasize an ideal of beauty that is not gender specific. The young men of the Hebrew love poetry and the cup-bearer of Al-Sharif al Taliq's poem are both described in what we would now consider to be feminine terms - the lips, flushed cheeks, slender thighs and thin waist are all physical attributes that we would not consider fully masculine today. Rather, they are signs of youth, boyishness, or femininity - all qualities that make the young man of the poet's gaze an object of desire to the presumably older man.

(This makes me wonder if there is much poetry celebrating masculine beauty from this time. I would think that objectifying a full-grown man would be seen as transgressive, as would the expression of female desire, but I could be wrong.)

What I thought was most interesting was Serrano's comment that the sex of the beloved in Al-Sharif al Taliq's writing is actually not known, nor is it important: "The use of the masculine pronoun in referring to the beloved...does not necessarily mean that he is male. Love poems of this period sometimes addressed women with masculine pronouns and masculine forms of nouns. The gender of the addressee here is ambiguous and probably irrelevant" (153).

According to Serrano, all extra-marital desire was considered illicit, so the desire of a man for a young man instead of a young woman would not have been thought of as any more scandalous to express. Where we would now view the divide between homosexual and heterosexual desire as stark, the line between marriage and non-marriage was the primary consideration.

The Desire of the King

Our final class discussion on Silence, during which we noted that Silence seems to be a character devoid of desire, made me question our reading of King Evan's desire. We assume, that because he chooses at the end to marry his young and beautiful great-niece, that he desires her sexually and we see him as a creepy old man because of it.

If we look more closely at the end of the poem, however, we can see that the poet never mentions Evan's physical attraction to Silence. Instead, when she is revealed to be a woman, he praises her only for her loyalty to her father's wishes: "Indeed the price of your loyalty / is far above that of my royalty. / There is no more precious gem, / nor greater treasure, than a virtuous woman" (Lns 6630-6634). Though he is comparing her to a "gem," his language is hardly romantic - the virtue of loyalty is one shared by men and women. Silence's loyalty to the king was, in fact, probably best demonstrated when she was a knight and fighting the rebellious counts on his behalf. He could also be emphasizing her loyalty in comparison to the disloyalty of his wife; perhaps after being betrayed by Eupheme, he desires a new wife who will be as loyal as a knight.

Still, his final decision to marry Silence is seen as a result of much consultation, rather than personal feelings: "Then the king took her to wife - / that's what it said in the book where I found this story - / on the advice of his / most loyal and trusted advisers" (Lns 6676-6680). The advisers seem to have an interest in Silence being married off, in being silenced and brought back into proper gender roles. Perhaps marrying her to the king would mediate the scandal produced by her successful knighthood? She could no longer be perceived as such a threat once she is allied so closely with the king.

Whether the final marriage was a political solution devised by the king's counselors, or the king's decision to marry a more knight-like bride, or the poet's attempt to re-inscribe Silence into a feminine role, it appears far removed from the courtly love of Silence's parents.

Cross Dressing

The motives of Silence seem to be almost as pure as Joan of Arc’s. The debate between nature and nurture is at least weird: it is about Merlin and his veganism and not plainly about Silence. In the case of Silence, nurture has some altruist reason, as preserving her inheritance –it does not seem that altruist now, but it is some family duty at the time. The story is far from sexual motivations and, as always in feminine transvestites, the clothes are for some other purpose different of a sex or gender matter. The Eufeme affair is just collateral damage and a tool to put a little of drama in the story.

The male transvestite in the “Silence” impersonates a nun and his disguise is a trick to get to Eufeme, the queen, who is not precisely a trustable woman. For a male dressing as woman could be only a trick or joke; women transvestism obeys to higher purposes, extreme circumstances and it ends to be a proof of virtue, just as in the case of Jeanne d’Arc.The end of the book is interesting: Silence, back in her feminine form, marries the king who was her former boss and friend and becomes the queen. Is this a sign that virtues are always proper of males? 

The word ‘virtue’ comes from the Latin word ‘virtus’ that also derivates from ‘vir’, the Latin word for man.

Are virtues conceived as a primary masculine quality and only accidental and scarce among women? Silence male actions are praised and she is considered a virtuous woman…

Nurture and the Devil

I was interested that the final debate between Nurture and Nature ends so firmly on the side of Nature, and even goes so far as to say that Nurture was the ultimate reason for the fall of mankind: "Nothing was ever in Adam / except what God created / and placed there. / It is not like God / to leave an evil nature in him to claim him...Whatever evil Adam did / was due to you, Nurture, without a doubt, / for the Devil fed him / evil, rotten advice." (Line 6057 - 6070)

This stark division of Nurture and Nature along the lines of good and evil seemed surprising, but slightly less so when I considered the relation between God and Nature in the poem. In many of the previous sections, Nature is shown to be the creator of man - a creator who occasionally makes mistakes and allows a little rough flour in with the fine - but in the relation of the fall of mankind, only God is given creative powers, and he never makes mistakes. If Nature is simply the agent of God (helping with the work of creating a larger population?), and Nurture has "opposed [Nature] ever since the first man / sinned be eating that apple" (Lines 6046-6047), then Nurture is in some way consistently interfering with God's work.

Still, considering that Nurture is the reason that Silence was able to grow into the person she becomes- valiant, brave, and strong as well as beautiful - I was taken aback that it would be so explicitly associated with the Devil. The text even seems to argue that the nurturing of Silence allows greater wrongs, such as King Evan's not allowing women to inherit, be redressed. Silence's story may end with her reversion to her Nature, but the story would not have existed had Nurture not taken precedence for a large part of Silence's life.

Silence of Men

In the end Silence appears to be rewarded for her loyalty. The king is actually fairly explicit in saying “Silence, know that you have saved yourself / by your loyal actions (6636-6637).” Loyalty thus is held in high virtue by the poem.

It is interesting that by remaining quiet Silence’s loyalty is displayed in contrast to the queen’s disloyalty. (Perhaps this suggests that silence itself can be revealing, as if silence is a nonverbal statement of sorts). When the poet discusses Queen Eufeme and her lover’s executions, her lover is referred to as the nun—even though in reality he is neither a nun nor even female. While this execution implies that both men and women are subject to loyalty and the consequences of disloyalty, the use of language (the reference to the man as “nun”) only seems to implicate and pass judgment women.

On the one hand, the praise of Silence and her loyalty seems to be positive for women. However, the poet outright says that doing the right thing comes unnaturally to women, making Silence a sort of anomaly. It is as if to say she is as brave valiant and loyal as a man, how bizarre.

The conclusion makes no straightforward judgment of men, rather men seem to be used as a comparison to the women. It is curious that while loyalty affects both women and men (the nun in this case) the men are left in the silence of the poet. The silence seems to suggest that men are inherently more loyal than women. This seems to be achieved through the indirect description of men (“a woman has less motivation” (6588)), by cues of being opposite of the women that the poet directly addresses. Therefore, silence again seems to make a statement.

The Ending of "Silence"

We'll soon be coming to the ending of Silence which, I'm going to assume, will frustrate a lot of people. I'm not sure what I was expecting regarding Silence's end as I read through the text but I know that I was not expecting the ending we got. Prof. Wenthe noted that I argued in my presentation that the ending of Silence need not be a statement that the restoration of gender categories wins at the end of the day and I hold by that statement which puts me at odds with Sharon Kinoshita. But I don't know if I would say that I am optimistic - as Prof. Wenthe puts it - about the ending. The ending to me just represents one of the many ways that gender can manifest itself in the text and need not represent THE way - hence, possibility as opposed to limitation. Otherwise, Silence's end would be a major letdown.

I think the text practices a form of contained subversion which would address why the text seemingly seems to reinforce traditional conceptions of gender while, at the same time, reinforcing a less conventional, more unstable one. In order for the text to "pass" it must conform to normative values and ideologies but underneath this layering is one that threatens to plunge these same normative values and ideologies into disarray. And, so, Silence's end is just a ruse (I hope) in order to deflect attention away from those aspects of the text that might be deemed too controversial or revolutionary.

It's unfortunate that we have no record of its reception in the thirteenth century because I think such information would really help us determine what may or may not be happening in the text.

Silence in the Romance Thereof

It feels fairly obvious that Silence is not so named for nothing. I feel the need to use male pronouns when talking about Silence's outward life, because Heldris has thus far only used feminine pronouns when Silence is having a crisis of identity and is about to decide to live as a woman.

So he is obviously named Silentius for the secrecy he lives under. Although he is regularly unsure of whether he should remain a he, his silence and that of his parents and friends is what keeps it going. But the very name calls our attention not only to other uses of the word silence, but also points where sound in incongruous with it.

At Silence's naming, Cador says, 'Silence relieves anxiety' (2069). That is fairly straightforward, 'silence' serves as both the child and calmness, peace. But then, after hearing of Silence's disappearance, when Heldris is describing the grief of Cador and Eufemie, he mentions it being 'appropriate to keep silent' over one's grief (3032). Is the reference to the cause of their grief her intended? The jongleurs, shortly thereafter, are silenced that Silence might play (3158). How odd it is, that Silence is in fact the only one permitted to not be silent!

A final set of weighty uses of Silence's name top off the first half of the poem. While Silence is overhearing the plots against him, 'Silence was listening and heard them' (3403). And, 'Silence didn't want to utter a word' (3410). And yet, it is through sound that Silence, who, with a capital S, reads more like the embodiments of Nature and Nurture than any other character, easily sends the treacherous jongleurs on their way.

Silence is not a Transgendered Person

Since it's inevitable that the topic of gender with come up in "Silence", I want to say that I don't think the poem can relate to contemporary theories of transgenderism or queerness. "Silence" might seem conducive to such topics, but the text does not lend itself to such a reading. It is clear that Silence is being raised as a boy due to King Evan's law which states only sons may inherit. A lengthy passage assures us that Nature spared nothing to make Silence the most beautiful girl possible. Her biological gender is never in dispute - no ambiguous genitalia or hermaphroditic characteristics. She is without a doubt female. The fact that her parents take so many precautions to hide her from society attests to this. Silence is also well aware that she is a girl and understands why she must act and appear as a boy. It is not as though she fells like a boy trapped in a girl's body and wants her physical gender to match her emotional/psychological gender. Neither is her situation permanent. She only need perform as a boy until she comes into her inheritance or until her parents have a son. This all stands in contrast to the modern conceptions of transgenderism, where a person seeks to identify with or become another gender. Silence is a tale more similar to several Shakespeare plays where a character must perform as the opposite sex to achieve an end, but steps out of that role once the end is achieved. This is also similar to the plot of "Mrs. Doubtfire", where Robin Williams' character must act like an woman to be with his children. He does not surgically want to be transformed into a woman anymore than Silence wants to be. Both are disguising themselves for a purpose, and once that purpose is accomplished, the disguise is removed. They are not transgendered people, they are actors trying to survive.

Unnatural

Alan of Lilly is very depressed about homosexuality. At least, that is what we as modern readers would say. The text, however, never uses this word, since it was coined long after Alan was writing. Instead he chooses to compare this perversion of nature as a perversion of grammar. Why does he do this? It would seem, in his mind, that the issue is to do with fruitfulness. Just as “proper” (by which I mean heterosexual) sex can produce children, so too does proper grammar beget language. “Gay” sex is not reproductive, so in Alan’s way of thinking, it is unnatural, because, according to him, it is natural that sex results in offspring. This is how it is with the long catalogue of creatures and plants that appear on Nature’s garments. Nature is fruitful, so anything that is not fruitful, or barren, is unnatural. Grammar, too, must produce language, so if grammar is perverted in the same way sex is, it will be sterile. This is why Alan (and other people) are afraid of homosexuality. For them, it works against the fecundity of nature. If plants, animals, and people do not reproduce, what will happen to the world? It is a depressing thought. This is why Nature makes her plea or plaint. Her whole existence is based on reproduction. Nature is all the living things that inhabit the world (as represented on her robe). They are both producers and products of her. If they die out, she will die out, and vice versa. That is why it is so important for her and Alan to stamp out anything unnatural. It will destroy everything.

What Alan Leaves Out

Alan of Lille gives what seems to be an extensive list of animalia when describing the cloak and vestments of Nature in The Plaint of Nature. His structure to this leaves vast room for analysis of how each creature merited importance and what apparently did not.

Alan goes through the birds first, listing at least 34 by my count. It includes birds of prey, exotic birds, commonplace birds, domestic birds, woodland birds, mountain birds, you name it. Aside from considering a bat to be a bird, for which we must forgive Alan given the knowledge of his time, the list is fairly comprehensive. Only 16 fish are named, but they span salt and fresh water, edible and not - also fairly comprehensive.

The land animals less so. We have 27... mammals. Alan gets a good range in, from elephants to squirrels and including even the fanciful unicorn, and yet he only considers the furry critters among us to be worth mention. Why does Alan leave out reptiles, amphibians and - possibly the least forgivable - bugs? It seems that insects and arachnids, etc should be plenty noticeable to Alan, so he does not have the excuse that perhaps lizards and frogs were not present in his mind. Is Alan suggesting by omission that such creatures are not so much within the domain of nature? Or was it merely something he overlooked?

On a tangentially related note - why is it that Alan never mentions Helen of Troy by name? She becomes the Curly's wife of The Plaint of Nature. But while he seems to have no problem with direct name-dropping, why does Alan shy from using hers? Virgil, too, is brought up by periphrasis, though not repeatedly like Helen. Paris and Aeneas, matching to each, are mentioned easily - so why not these?

Dear Uncle, what ails you?

In contrast to The Nibelungenlied, Parzival seems to end on a hopeful note. Anfortas is relieved of his suffering, Condwiramurs and Parzival are reunited, and Feirefiz falls in love. When the question is finally revealed, I was thrilled to see that it returned to the concept of compassion, a concept Parzival perhaps mastered in the end.

What seemed particularly compelling and refreshing through the reading of Parzival was the compassion displayed in the “othered” or “monstrous” characters. Of course Cundrie is described in quite animalistic terms (“Her nose was like a dog’s…Cundrie’s ears resembled a bear’s…p. 163) which makes her physically monstrous, but her temperament is nothing like Grendel’s mother or Morgan Le Fey, who have intentions of being destructive. As we’ve discussed in class, Cundrie understands the disposition Parzival must demonstrate in order to find the graal.

Likewise, another character who is physically othered is Feirefiz, with his magpie complexion. In the fight scene between Parzival and Feirefiz we see a form of compassion from Feirefiz when Parzival’s sword breaks; instead of killing Parzival he calls a truce. Perhaps the loophole in the argument of Feirefiz’s compassion would be the reference to “the hand of Him on high. May He avert their dying! (p. 371)” Either way, I am compelled the “infidel was magnanimous” whether it was inspired by God or not (p. 371).

And while it would be difficult to conflate these two characters into a single race (based on physical appearance and background) their physical “otherness” would bring them into a category separate from Parzival himself. However, if otherness translates to a category and perhaps a simple understanding of race, this particular picture painted by Wolfram and translated to our modern views could be hopeful; both Parzival and the “others” share an understanding of compassion. If there is compassion between categories, perhaps we end in hope.