The Book of Margery Kempe (1501) : The Construction of Women’s Authority in a Proto-feminist Context

摘要

Margery Kempe was an English Christian mystic famous for dictating to two ecclesiastical scribes The Book of Margery Kempe, regarded by scholars as the first autobiography written in English. Throughout the Book, the reader recognizes in Kempe many features with our present-day Feminism. Through a close reading of her autobiography, my paper focuses on how Kempe negotiated her social role as a devoted wife while being an independent woman capable of deciding her course of life without any interference from her husband. To what an extent was Margery Kempe a Proto-feminist, and why?