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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes Margery Kempe's behaviour as performance. I begin by cataloguing the different modes of physical and verbal theatre which Margery's text presents as evidence of her authority. I then explore the aspects of performance implied by the audience responses recorded in the text. Tracing the shift from performance to performativity, I discuss how Margery's theatrical self-presentation challenged conceptions of fixed gender and identity, revealing the source and impact of Margery's power in the audience/actor relationship. I conclude by demonstrating the potential reach of her performances and by identifying the ways in which her detractors attempted to contain her influence.
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Willingly or not, Margery Kempe was a performer. The book of Margery Kempe translates Margery's spectacle into comprehensible modes of performance which established her divine authority and justified her right to adopt public roles that ranged from martyr to preacher. Her book also records her audiences' reactions, and these responses show that Margery's audiences were aware of her behaviour as performance, one which threatened her society's assumptions of natural gender and fixed identity. The negative responses in particular suggest that it was this power of performance to create and adapt identity and the possibility that identity itself was a performance that caused many of Margery's witnesses to fear and reject her. Margery's performances did give her the freedom to redefine and direct her own life, but they also threatened those around her to the extent that many people attacked her in attempts to undermine and contain her potential influence. Margery did have a power over her audience, but it was the p ower of fear rather than that of divine authority.
Performance is a public exchange of actions, an exchange that occurs in and with the body. Because of medieval gender constructions, any public action on Margery's part accentuated performance. Her "femaleness" would have emphasized her bodyliness, and her behaviour brought further attention to her actions in public. However, The book of Margery Kempe also represents Margery's actions in terms of theatrical performance. (2) Her physical performances invoked both the spectacle of punishment and the spectacle of drama, and her verbal theatre took the form of teaching and preaching, practices forbidden to women.
Margery enacted three types of physical theatre: the theatre of martyrdom, mimetic theatre, and didactic theatre. In "Margery Kempe: Spectacle and spiritual governance", Joel Fredell (1996) points out how Margery's behaviour is performance in terms of the theatre of visionary martyrdom.3 For Fredell, Margery's focus on her own physical performance -- specifically her tears and convulsions -- emphasizes "the public witness which determines socially-constructed ideas of spiritual governance" (1996: 139). (4) In other words, Margery's public and physical suffering gave her the authority to tell her own story.
This type of performance takes advantage of a fascination with public punishment. In his study of late medieval punishment and theatre, Seth Lerer (1996) indicates a blurring of the lines between the two. Lerer describes the sentence for a cutpurse -- having one's ear nailed to a post and then being given a knife with which to cut the ear off -- and suggests that this event would be a sort of public entertainment. Certainly the public aspect is important. Watching the criminal's public marking or execution allows a cathartic, communal acknowledgement and construction of the criminal as Other. Martyr and crucifixion plays work along the same lines, only they prevent catharsis by making the audience culpable. For example, the York Crucifixion play invokes civic justice through the soldiers' attitude towards their job. The audience may not wish to participate, but they are put in the same position as when watching public punishment. The stage prevents the audience from moving against the players, but Christ's fi nal speech is directed at the audience, making it clear that he is being sacrificed for their sake, that they are in some way responsible for his suffering. His wounds become a physical sign for that sacrifice, in the same way that a torn ear would signify a criminal.
Margery's weeping and roaring also served to mark her as Other, although whether Margery tended to the criminal or the martyr was open to question. Some people saw Margery's suffering as punishment, while the text privileges those who saw it as a sign of martyrdom. Thus the incident where Margery survives falling masonry (485-504) was interpreted as a "tokyn of wreth...
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