ABSTRACT
Reading the figure of the marginal woman in relation to the prior scribal text may then enable her to be defined as a dynamic model that helped create space for women outside patriarchy. The phenomenon that both women represent in speaking out forthrightly and critically is magnified by their interactions with the audiences they address who either mirror or subvert their theatricality. Striking is the paradox that despite their interruption of patriarchal discourses and their intrusion on the margins of moral and religious orthodoxies both women seek some form of masculine approval and by implication a restoration of social structures. Margery’s Kempe hysterical behavior is a form of erotic expression, attributable to the very subjective nature of her identification as a woman with Christ’s Passion, birth, and childhood, and with the Blessed Virgin’s responses, all of which create a pathology of vulnerability: victimization, passivity, and suffering.
