Margery Kempe

INTRODUCTION
This essay will be dealing with Margery Kempe and the official Christianity. Margery Kempe is historically significant and remembered because of her spiritual autobiography written in the Middle English language in a Norfolk dialect of the period. In her autobiography, she focuses on her subjective religious experience but also deals with the external world as it directly affects her inner life (e.g. her dispute with her husband because she did not wanted to sleep with him any more in order to stay “clean”). First, I will write about Margery Kempe because it is important to know about her social status. Then I will mention some general facts about The Book of Margery Kempe. I will also retell some episodes from her life (e.g.
Between 1370 and 1391, her father was five-time town major. When she was twenty, she married John Kempe who was a merchant and town official. They had fourteen children. Although she was illiterate and never learned to write, she was acquainted with the Bible and theology because she attended the church and listened to sermons during the mass.
The Book of Margery Kempe describes the story of Margery’s life illuminated by mystical experience, her visions of Jesus Christ, and the conflicts with her husband as well as with priests, bishops and fellow citizens because of her personal religious beliefs. It was originally published in 1436 but it was lost. Therefore, for years, it was accessible only through a book of extracts published during the 16th century. In 1934, a copy of
She claimed that she was very often visited by hideous devils who” cried upon her with great threatings and bade her she should forsake her Christendom, her faith and deny her God, his Mother, and all the saints in Heaven, her good works and all good virtues, her father, her mother and all her friends.” She behaved very strange and she “would bite herself and tear her skin on her body” as if she was possessed by demons. After she had a first vision of Jesus Christ, she recovered and decided to devote her life to God and to be His servant. At the age of forty, after the birth of her last child, she started her own business as a brewer. However, three or four years later, she lost her wealth because she did not have experience in brewing and she did not want to leave her pride for her husband let alone anyone else. Nevertheless, in the end, she asked her husband to forgive her and said that God probably punished her because of her previous behavior and that the pride was the cause of her failure. After the failure of her brewing business, she realized that she should turn away from this world and completely devote to God. In order to accomplish that, she decided to make a vow of chastity with her husband. In the beginning, her husband did not want to accept that decision and said that she was a bad wife. They went in the direction of Bridlington and while they were praying, he said that he