ABSTRACT
Margery Kempe is troublesome. In her own time she was the source of much trouble to many of those around her: her fellow citizens of Lynn, her traveling companions, her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law, her amanuensis, and various of the ecclesiastic and civil officials with whom she had contact. And she is troublesome to us, modern readers of her book, as we try to comprehend the life and personality which that text offers us. The idea of the person she was develops for us a little in the manner of a Polaroid print, one for which we are never quite sure if the processing is complete—or maybe it is complete and the picture itself was taken a little out of focus; or maybe the subject in its real state was somehow a little out of focus. We read her book carefully, we respond as openly and honestly as we can, and still a lingering, troubling sense of incompleteness, of rough-edgedness remains. Who is this person about whom we know so much, on whom have such an abundance of factual detail and such an intimate perspective? Why can’t we be more confident about how well we understand her, and about how well we like her?
