Robert B. James
17 September 1998
Précis
The narrative reliability of Margery Kempe in her Book seems to be confirmed by certain passages relating dialogues "either challenging Kempe to self discernment, or expressing irony or ambivalence" to which Kempe seems unresponsive or unaware. These dialogues seem to ring true because they have the natural cadences and tones of actual conversation; but, Kempe's relation of these dialogues creates ambiguities in the word choices and uncertainty of the intentions of the original speakers. Rather than invalidate Kempe's reliability, these equivocal passages appear to confirm her veracity.
Instances of this problematic dialogue are almost always limited to times when Kempe seeks out authority for validation of her unusual behavior or faces challenges to her faith. When urged toward self-examination by these authority figures, Kempe only takes away unequivocal endorsement of her faith from these conversations, though the true intent of these authorities is not at all clear. This is perfectly understandable if one considers Kempe finds what she most desperately needs: validation of her bizarre behavior and vindication in the face of her detractors. Though Kempe certainly must have faced much persecution by her peers and the bewilderment of church officials, it is not always clear that she is being attacked or berated when she reacts defensively to a query or remark. Often, Kempe's account leaves things open to interpretations, but Kempe again gains self-validation by envisioning herself reacting with righteous indignation and emerging triumphant in the face of opposition.
At other times, Kempe is faced with what appears to be rather obvious sarcasm, but she either doesn't notice or doesn't react to it. The cause of this may be Kempe's tendency to categorize people into groups as friends or enemies. She would be unlikely to notice the mild criticism implied by a sarcastic remark if the individual in conversation with Kempe was already considered a friend. Another contributing factor is Kempe's tendency toward selective understanding of dialogue. A conversation must be categorized as support or attack for it to register with Kempe and enable her to delineate the speaker as friend or foe.
Without the corroboration of independent accounts, it seems impossible to verify the reliability of Kempe as narrator. However, Kempe manages to preserve an objective presentation of events while arriving at subjective conclusions. Internal tests of the text itself seem to verify Kempe's narrative reliability. Also, a strong case can be made for her reliability when one considers the inclusion of details either irrelevant or contradictory to the Book's stated purpose. Even if one considers the Book's true intention as "autohagiographic," Kempe's veracity is supported by the existence of humanizing details of her life because one can envision no other purpose for their inclusion in the text. This is not to say that there is no separation between Kempe the author and Kempe the subject; there is ample evidence to support the conclusion that passages of her Book are borrowed from other sources or elaborated upon by Kempe. The picture we have of Kempe the woman is the product of Kempe's controlling mind assembling "fragments of transcribed actuality."