UC Irvine

Margery Kempe was an English medieval woman from the fifteenth century whose auto-hagiography The Book of Margery Kempe detailed her struggle to pursue her religious goals of living the life of a saintly virgin as well as her personal goal to avoid sexual relations with her husband. By reading The Book of Margery Kempe in dialogue with contemporary accounts of The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria, we can see how Margery Kempe utilized existing hagiographical treatments of virginal sanctity to provide a basis of authority for her actions. Although Margery Kempe was not physically a virgin, she used the idealization of virginal sanctity and hagiography as a means to form her own identity. By juxtaposing present-day understandings of asexuality with Margery’s understanding of virginal sanctity, this work explores the connection between virginity, chastity, hagiography, and sexual identity in the Middle Ages.