The Book of Margery Kempe Literary Elements

Biography

The action takes place in 1436 C.E in various locations all over Europe.

The events are presented from a third person point of view and the narrator is the scribe who wrote down Margery’s memoirs.

Religious, tragic, forgiving, sorrowful

The protagonist is Margery Kempe and the antagonists are the people who oppose her and who refuse to believe in her.

The major conflict is an internal one and is the result of Margery’s desire to serve God and her realization that she will always be inclined to sin

The novel reaches its climax when people ask for Kempe to be burnt.

When Kempe tells Christ that she will suffer because she is told to wear white clothes foreshadows how Kempe will have to suffer because of her appearance and because of the way she acts.

Before starting her journey to Jerusalem, Christ comes before Margery and tells her that she will have to suffer some inconveniences during her travels but that she will be accompanied by good people who will take care of her. This however proves to be an understatement as the people who accompany Kempe mock her and ridicule her for her behavior.

Since the Book of Margery Kempe is religious and follows Margery as she goes through a spiritual awakening, there are numerous allusions made to the Bible and the life of the saints in the Bible. In fact, the life of the saints in the Bible and the life of Margery Kempe get fused at times and it is hard to say which elements were taken from and Bible and which happened to Margery in real life. These allusions made to the life of the holly man has the purpose to accentuate even more the idea that Margery was chosen by God and that she is a pure person.

Margery is generally presented as being an unpleasant woman whom many go to great lengths to try and avoid. The reason why people try to avoid her is because she is constantly weeping and crying and many are annoyed by her behavior.

Margery is a paradoxical character in the sense that she hates and loves at the same time being persecuted for her faith. When she is asked to wear only white clothes, Margery tries to make a deal with God so that she will be allowed to wear her normal clothes. When she is told that wearing white clothes is something she must do, Margery gets upset. But she doesn’t seem to mind being persecuted for the way she behaved herself in social situations and for being hated for being too loud. Instead, she enjoys the attention she gets and fells blessed to be hated because of her faith.

At one point, Margery draws a parallel between herself and a parable from the Bible. In the parable, a man is ridiculed for his faith but instead of getting discouraged, the man feels blessed to be considered worthy to be ridiculed for the name of God. In a similar way, Margery feels blessed to be ridiculed for the way in which she expresses her faith because she feels that it is a sign that she does something right.

When the word creature is used, it is often used to refer to any human being even though Margery uses the term predominately when she talks about herself.

‘’Sometimes she wept very abundantly and violently out of desire for the bliss of heaven, and because she was being kept from it for so long.’’