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?
Leah--I think you bring up really interesting points about Margery Kempe being othered within her othered group, and thus possibly monstrous. This thought brought Grendel's mother to mind. In seeking revenge Grendel's mother does not act in the traditional peacemaking manner of the other women of her time. Similar to your observations of Margery, Grendel's mother is thus othered from the already othered female group. While Margery's monstrosity is a bit less physically obvious than Grendel's mother, it appears they find themselves in similar situations making Margery look more and more a monster.
ReplyDeleteIf she was a "normal" woman, she would be a canonic Catholic saint.She is not precisely for the reason that she is odd. The Church did not want to make her a model of sanctity for women, she is odd, almost heretical. The could not burn her, but they could put her in a discrete closet... where other people find her book.
ReplyDeleteI think Kempe is definitely othered, but I wouldn't call her monstrous. The monster and the other are similar in that they are outside society, outside the "normal". Both might share certain characteristics, but they are different categories. Monstrous, to me anyway, implies something not human, as Grendal's mother. Other is can be human, or some magical being, or something inhuman, but not necessarily a monster. It might be argued that other is an umbrella term, covering everything from the slightly odd human to full-grown dragons. But I wonder it that is too broad. In the context of this class, the other seems to denote religious outsiders, minority groups, and often women. The other, then, consists of humans who do not fall nicely into western Christian civilization. Magical beings who are not monsters (such as we encountered in Marie de France’s tales) might fall into this category, though I would give them their own. The boundaries between the categories are not fixed and it is difficult to distinguish them. But we also can’t say something is both monstrous and othered without defining what each means.
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