Establishing Spiritual Authority in Female Visionary Writing: The Book of Margery Kempe

The Book of Margery Kempe is an extraordinary work of female visionary writing, in which Margery Kempe narrates her intimate and direct communications with Jesus Christ. The aim of this paper is to investigate how Kempe fashions herself into an authoritative religious figure and the impact of her self-fashioning. The study reveals that Kempe builds up her image as a chosen woman through a designed narrative discourse, which features disorder, imbalance, and homogeneity. To be specific, Kempe intentionally foregrounds her spiritual life endorsed by Christ and downplays her secular life in order to establish her authority. Moreover, Kempe’s work replicates the essential ingredients of hagiography, namely trials, divine intervention, and redemption, which naturally elevates Kempe to sainthood and therefore justifies her position of spiritual authority. Following on from this, Kempe, like other holy women, is well-qualified to instruct her fellow Christians to emulate her form of life, that is, to live a devout life. The establishment of Kempe’s spiritual authority is the epitome of women’s pursuit of spiritual leadership in the later Middle Ages, when they struggled with social conventions and ecclesiastical regulations.