The Poetics and Praxis of Enclosure: Julian of Norwich, Motherhood, and Rituals of Childbirth

Abstract

This essay locates Julian of Norwich’s textual construction of Christ’s maternity within a set of material practices, arguing that the “meaning” of Christ’s maternity within Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love cannot be fully understood outside of the context of the interrelated ritualized practices of medieval childbirth and anchoritism. Specifically, this essay contends that Julian’s experience as an anchoress, her images of Christ as mother, and medieval ceremonies of childbirth are threaded together by a discourse and a praxis of enclosure in which the cell of the medieval anchoress resembles and recalls the lying-in chamber of a medieval mother. Understanding ritual practice as constitutive of knowledge and subjectivity, the author argues that Julian’s textual fascination with Christ’s motherhood should be understood as deriving from the material parallels that existed between her experiences as an anchoress and those of laboring women and new mothers in the Middle Ages.