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A Psychoanalytic Reading of the Book of Margery Kempe / by Julia Steele

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A Psychoanalytic Reading of the Book of Margery Kempe / by Julia Steele National Library BiSiio!ht;qc;e nationale of Canacla du Canada Acquisj;ions and Direction des acquisitions et Biblkxpphic Services Brznch des services bibiiwraphiqdes NOTICE AVIS The quality of this microform is La qualit6 de cet-te microforme heavily dependent upon the depend grandement de la qualit6 quality of the original thesis de la these sournise au submitted for microfilming. microfilmage. Mom avons tout Every effort has been made to fait pour assurer une qualit6 ensure the highest quallity of superieure de reproduction. reproduction possible. If pages are missing, contact the S'il manque des pages, veuiller university which granted the cornmuniquer avec I'wniversite degree. qui a confere le grade. Some pages may have indistinct La qualite d'impression de print especially if the original certaines pages peut laisser a pages were typed with a poor desirer, surtout si les pages typewriter ribbon or if the originales ont ete university sent us an inferior dactylographiees a I'aide d'un photocopy. ruban use ou si I'universite naus a fait parvenir une photocopie de qualite inferieure. Reproduction in full or in part of La reproduction, rngrne partieile, this microform is governed by de cetfe microfarme est soumise the Canadian Copyright Acty !a bicanadienne stir fe droit RSC. 1970, c. C-30, and d'auteur, SRC 1970, c. C-30,et subsequent amendments. ses amendements subsequents. AN OUTSIDE FOR TEE mSIDE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC READING OF The Book of Margery Kernpe Julia Steele B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1988 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FVLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of ENGLISH @ Julia Steele 1993 SIMON E'RASER UNIVERSITY January 1993 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of th~author. National Library Biblioth&que nationale of Canada dl: Canada Acquisitions and Di~tiOiides acquisitions et Bibliographic Services Branch des services bibiiqraphiques The author has granted an t'auteur a accorde une licence irrewocabie non-exclusive licence irabvoeable ef non exclusive afiowing the Nationat Library of pearnettant a la Bibiiotheque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationale du Canada de distribute or sell copies of reproduire, prgter, distribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa these in any form or format, making de quetque rnar;i&re et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. mettre des exemplaires de cette these a la disposition des personnes interessees. The author retains ownership of L'auteur conserve Pa propribtb du the copyright in his/her thesis. droit d'auteur qui prothge sa Neither the thesis nor substantial these. Ni la these ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed! or substantieis de celle-ci rue otherwise reproduced without doivent 6tre imprimes ou his/ her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. ISBN 0-315-91251-0 APPROVAL NAME: Julia Steele DEGREE: Master of Arts (English) TlfLE OF THESIS: An Outside for the Inside: A Psychoanalytic Reading of The Book of Marsen, Kempe Examining Committee: Chair: Kathy Mezei Sheila Delan'y- ' Senior Supervisor Professor of English Mary-Ann Stouck Associate Professor of English - =raine Weir External Examiner Professor of English University of British Columbia (date) Abstract The Book of Margery Kmpe dictated to several scribes by its fifteenth century eponymous author narrates the life of a late medieval female mystic whose mysticism is informed by affective spirituality. Conceived of for women and the laity, affective piety invited the devout to imagine themselves present at biblical events. This kind of spirituality valued love for Christ above scriptural accuracy. Because of affective spirituality's emphasis on the familial pathos of holy events like the Passion and Resurrection, this type of devotional practice provided for the mystic an outside for the inside; in other words through speculation of and participation in Christ's and the Virgin's joy and suffering, the mystic could use devotional practice as a container for her own unconscious desires and symptoms that most probably had their origins in early childhood. The objective of this kind of inquiry is not to psycho-analyze Margery Kempe the individual, but rather this thesis will contextualize tne psycho- analytical meaning of Margerjr's devotional practice with other accounts of female piety and the affective devotional literature that informs it. It is evidmt in Margery Kempe's visions of holy family life that the Virgin and Christ dyad is an oedipal fantasy of the child who is the father of himself. Through her own participation in the Virgin and Christ's life together, Margery inserts herself into this dyad, effectively triangulating it. As I will show using Freud and Kristeva, this Holy Family Romance of Virgin, Christ and mystic is fecund ground for the articulation of repressed oedipal desires. Additionally, Margery's description of Christ's suffering body on the cross and her own subsequent nid-stidecstasy is evocative of Kristeva's notion of the semiotic processes of the archaic mother-infant dyad. Her mystical ecstasy, achieved through her abjection of self whereby she loses inside/outside and pieasure/pain distinctions, mirrors a phase in infancy known as primary narcissism. This phase is prior to language acquisition, boundary distinctions and the break-up of the mother-infant dyad. As an idealization of primary narcissism, the mystic's fusion with Christ implies that he represents t%e Phallic Mother or the fictitious possibility of a return to a lost maternal paradise. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Sheila Delany for the numerous hours she spent reading version after version of this thesis; her attention to detail and careful editorship contributed greatly to the success of this project. I would also like to thank Jacqueline Larson and Jodey Castricano for their friendship and encouragement throughout the span of my graduate career, Nelia Tierney for helping me to "break on through to the other side," and Pippin Osborne for witnessing my process of self transformation that was coextensive with the start and finish of this thesis. Table of Contents .. 1. Approval Page ................... .... ............ -age 11 -.. 2. Abstract .......................................................................................................... page 111 3. Acknowledgements.. ................................................................................. Page 4. Introduction................................................................................................ Page I 5. Chapter I: Margery Kempe and the Holy Family Romance ............. page 15 6. Chapter 2: Christ as Phallic Mother ...................................................... e 48 7. Chapter 3: "Now gan sche fo louyn fhat sche had most hafyd be-for-f yrne.. .": the Abject and Abjection in The Book of klargery Kernpe.. ........................................... pa75 8. Conclusion................................................................................................... age102 9. Bibliography............................................................................................... pa108 Introduction The Book of Margery Kempe, discovered in 1934 and written between 1440 and 1450, narrates the life of a fifteenth century English mystic, Margery Kempe. Critical reception of the Book, as Sarah Beckwith has recently arguei, is largely polarized between two differing "strands" of inquiry: one which seeks to establish Margery as a fraud and the other which seeks to establish Margery's authenticity either as a mystic or as a vibrant personality. Both agendas, Beckwith argues, have in common the ideal of a fully constructed self; in other words they do not view subjectivity, or creation of the self, as an on-going process but rather seek to establish a "bourgeoisi'or humanistic notion of the self as a urified given. Beckwith argues that this notion of selfhood as "not made" but giver, at birth is in direct contrast to the major thrust of The Book of Margery Kmpe and in fact all mystical texts which take as their focus the on-going production of self in order to know and reveal God: "By so obviously negotiating a self in her book, Kempe offends as much against the pieties of bourgeois individualism as she does against those of orthodox Catholicism" ("Problems" 178). Beckwith observes that The Book of Margery Kempe is less "idiosyncratic" in its presentation of a "self" than it is representative of the fluidity of subjectivity. Margery's "self-differing" (or the on-going production sf self which is inevitably self-contradicting) "is less a function of Kempe's personality, less her own idiosyncratic attribute, than the condition of subjectivitv itself" ("Problems" 179). What this thesis seeks to demo~stratein accordance with Beckwith's observation, is how7 Margery's production of self articulates a variety of psychoanalytic tropes also found in other late medieval affective narratives. Rather than clinically psychoanalyzing Margery Kempe, the individual--an ultimately impossible and reductive task-- I seek to analyze Margery's deployment of the Holy Family Romance;' specifically its connection to Christ's maternal attributes and Margery's feelings and active pursuit of abjection of self within the historical context of late-medieval affective spirituality. Both Beckwith's recent article in Exernpl~riaand Sheila
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