Male Authors, Female Readers

Feminine Identity Formation In The Middle Ages

In her book Male Authors, Female Readers, Anne Clark Bartlett demonstrates what type of identification and personal identity women formed in the Middle Ages based on the roles outlined for them within the available texts of the time. Bartlett admits that earlier in her scholastic endeavors she was quite convinced that the texts of the time were primarily masculinistic presuppositions of women, from their "superimposition of a male physiology of desire on female readers to [their] insistent repetition of conventional medieval antifeminist representations, such as the Gossip, the Whore, and the Fickle Woman," (Bartlett ix). However, these defining and negative categories of women were not as univocal and readily internalized by female readers as Bartlett first suspected. Rather, further inquiry by the author revealed that there were actually three alternative characterizations of women's identities that comprise three separate categories of discourse in Middle English devotional literature: courtesy; familiarity; contemplation. The masculine ideals and perspectives associated with a great deal of medieval religious literature greatly contrast to these three alternative discourses.

Even though many of the works of the medieval period were filled with the misogyny of their male authors, a great many of the devotional works enjoyed wide popularity among female audiences. Bartlett's investigat

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ial" (i.e., religious, political) dictates of the time. This is true in part because the people may be ruled by leaders from different social institutions, but the people behave the way they feel like behaving. As such, many women and men did more than likely engage in acts of intimacy that were expressly forbidden, but these types of texts validated those actions, certainly much more than did official church doctrine which sought to oppress women from fulfilling their whole selves. Epistemologically, the author is viewing nature as God-head here because she believes these texts were more aligned with actual human nature than official ones which tried to oppress it, especially where women and sexuality or political power were concerned. This epistemological framework is further analyzed by the author in the third type of counterdiscourse she finds existed in the period-those devotional texts that include narratives of nuptial and passion contemplation. In this particular genre of works it was customary to find graphic representations of the suffering of Christ and imagery of the Virgin Mary's maternal body. The passion of the bridegroom was also included in the narrative and Bartlett (4) contends that these types of texts a

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