Dress and Appearance in The Book of Margery Kemp

While I may have enjoyed this reading on its literary merit alone, reading it with a mind toward femininity and womanhood made it a little enraging to read. I was struck with how interconnected Margery Kempe's dress was with her identity. At first we learn of her extravagance and penchant for gaudiness. She lives to worshiped by others and seems to be living a life of self-deception and is constantly preoccupied with the way men want her because of the way she adorns herself. Then, even when she undergoes a conversion, it seems that one of the primary fascinations of the narrative (and of the author, thus) is her white dress which indicates an effort of showboatmanship, of a public piety meant to have an affect on the men she meets.

In other words, I found in this text a strong sense that for the man telling the story, women exist to be beheld by men.They act how they act in order to please men, no matter what they are doing or how they are doing it. They desire the affection of men so terribly that they are willing to do everything they do in order to have their attention and approval. I think it is ironic, or perhaps intended by the author, that a story about a women obsessed with how she appears speaks volumes about how the author (or speaker, better yet) imagines himself in a world with himself at the center of it. While he may be talking about Margery Kempe's efforts to attract men, he naturally associates himself with that bunch, and thus seems to be projecting his own suspicions onto the rest of them.