me period. Both are also considered to be precursors of the modern feminist movement in their attempt to find independence and self-fulfillment working as “agents” of God. Neither of them attempted to fight for civil rights as we know them today, nor did either attempt to overthrow the existing social order, however, in making their own path in life and recording it, each of them can be said to have thought their own existence important enough to pass on to others, “Margery Kempe was able to narrow the focus on to her goal, selecting only those events she was able to process and use to the advantage of a development that led to her independence…through her own lifestyle, [Kempe] demonstrated freedom achieved. Too much has been made of her defamatory use of ‘pys creatur’. The very existence of the Book proves that she assessed herself as a woman worth writing about,"” (Neuburger, 1994: 180).
Julian of Norwich was also considered a precursor of feminism by later scholars, but one who was really only different from other women of the period in the sense that she wrote down her feelings. She was more educated than Margery Kempe, more literate and much better at writing. She was a gifted writer, very convincing as a teacher and an intelligent woman for her day, but many scholars see her feminism as that of a limited form, “While she was able to select from traditional, literary, and doctrinal sources, accepting some and waiving others, her only deviation from the established role of a woman was that she wrote down her experiences. Her mystical conviction that ‘alle will be wele’ called for no changes,” (Neuburger, 1994: 46).
Before getting into the similarities and differences between the two visionary, mystic feelings and writings of the two women, it must be considered that they may have had some influence on one another and their individual works. Margery Kempe supposedly sought out ‘Dame Jelyan’...