SOURCE: “A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery Kempe,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance, University Press of Florida, 1996, pp. 195-212.

In the following essay, Beckwith studies the issue of Kempe's female mysticism in The Book of Margery Kempe, focusing particularly on how the work affects patriarchal order. Beckwith reviews the critical reception of the Book, assesses Kempe's Franciscan mysticism, and provides a re-reading of the Book with an eye toward clarifying the interests of the work for feminist critics.

To the precise degree that the absolute is made to approximate to the finite, the finite is absolutized.

(Adorno, 177)

As negative to the man, woman becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total fantasy), elevated into the place of the Other and made to stand for its truth. Since the place of the Other is also...