Analysis Of Margery's Fragmentation And Redemption

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Recommended: Gender roles from 1200 to 1450

Even though, these powerful male authorities tried to get Margery to resign or admit to something that was not true about herself, Margery stood her grounds firmly. She did not see herself as inferior to these male authorities, but as their equals as she defended herself bravely, even suggesting that “as far as going to prison, I am not afraid for my Lord’s love, who suffered much more for my love than I may for his” (Kempe 83). These are not the only men who prohibit and ridicule Margery because of her beliefs. Margery is also told by an old monk that he would rather have her enclosed in a “house of stone” where she has no contact and can’t speak with men, or advised by men she comes across in her travels and that she should “go spin and card as other women do,” (Kempe 22) which clearly shows the parallelism between her gender and how they expect of her gender to act and Margery’s actual behavior. As Caroline Walker Bynum indicates in her piece Fragmentation and Redemption, reviewing the binaries of societal gender roles as, “Male and female were contrasted and asymmetrically valued as intellect/body, active/passive, rational/irrational, reason/emotion, self-control/lust, judgment/mercy, and order/disorder” (Walker Bynum 151). So essentially, the
There was a particular male authority, a famous preacher, who gives others the bravery to backlash at Margery as he believes that she is lying, “Then many people turned against her and were full glad that the good friar held against her. Then said some men that she had devil within her. And so had they said many times before, but now they were bold, for they thought that their opinion as well strengthen or else fortified by this good friar” (Kempe 110). While floundering with the exclusion of this male authorities, Margery turns to Jesus Christ for

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