Envy and Exemplarity in The Book of Margery Kempe

Abstract

This essay reexamines Margery Kempe’s competitiveness as a facet of the emotion of envy. Long seen as a petty, nasty emotion, envy has recently been recuperated by Sianne Ngai as possessing critical agency in its capacity to address social inequality and negotiate one’s relationship to exemplary models. Kempe’s Book is suffused with portraits of Margery’s envy of her neighbors (and vice versa), her envy of holy women such as Mary Magdalene, and depictions of envy as a form of suffering that brings her closer to Christ. Kempe strategically structures her book via the logic of envy, depicting a holy woman navigating her relationships with her neighbors, clerical authorities, and female saints. She uses envy — with its simultaneous identifications and aggressions — to explore the construction of social categories and ideal femininity, as well as to portray herself as an exemplary, singular individual. Kempe shows envy to be an essential component of the practice of critical imitatio, positing new possibilities for exemplarity and community formation.