Women Writers of the Middle Ages and Virginia Woolf
This paper examines the limited literary tradition available to women during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, focusing on two significant female voices: Julian of Norwich, a reclusive mystic whose visions of Christ shaped her theological writings, and Margery Kempe, an illiterate laywoman whose dictated accounts blended spiritual experience with everyday life. The paper also draws on Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" to contextualize the barriers women faced as writers across centuries. Together, these figures illustrate how women navigated religious, social, and gender constraints to produce enduring literary and spiritual works, and how Woolf's feminist argument remained urgently relevant long after the medieval period she invoked.
- Women and Literary Production in the Middle Ages: Historical exclusion of women from literacy and writing
- Julian of Norwich: Visions, Theology, and Gender: Julian's mystical revelations and medieval gender theory
- Margery Kempe: Spiritual Autobiography and Rebellion: Kempe's dictated narrative blending faith and everyday life
- Virginia Woolf and the Legacy of Shakespeare's Sister: Woolf connects medieval barriers to modern feminist writing
- Woolf's Vision of Equality in Literature: Woolf's call for gender equality in literary culture
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper draws a clear through-line connecting medieval women writers to Woolf's twentieth-century feminist argument, showing that the barriers facing women persisted across centuries.
- It balances primary textual evidence (direct quotations from Woolf, Julian, and Kempe) with secondary scholarly sources (Bynum, Robertson) to support its claims about gender and literary history.
- The tone remains analytical while staying accessible, making complex theological and feminist ideas understandable without oversimplifying them.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of scholarly synthesis: it weaves together multiple secondary sources (Bynum's medieval gender theory, Robertson's reading of Julian's feminized Christ) to build a nuanced argument rather than relying on a single authority. This shows how academic writing can use disagreement or complementary perspectives among scholars to enrich an argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing the historical context of women's exclusion from literacy and literary culture, using Woolf as a framing device. It then moves through two case studies — Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe — before returning to Woolf's essay for its broader feminist argument about equality in writing. The conclusion emphasizes Woolf's motivational tone, rounding out the paper thematically rather than simply restating claims.
Women and Literary Production in the Middle Ages
The majority of literature familiar to readers from the Middle Ages and Renaissance was written by men, since women were not encouraged to read or write and were not considered equal to their male counterparts. Out of this sparse literary record, some examples survive because of women's affiliation with the Church or the court. These include Julian of Norwich, a solitary visionary, and Margery Kempe, who was motivated by voices within her mind.
Author Virginia Woolf, in "A Room of One's Own," argues that such so-called "Shakespeare's sisters" could not have lived as geniuses: "Any woman born with a great gift in the 16th century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked by all."
It is not surprising that one of the women who wrote during this time, Julian of Norwich, was a recluse. Those women who retreated to a nunnery had somewhat more freedom to be creative. At the age of 30, in 1372 A.D., Julian suffered a near-fatal illness and felt extreme pity for Christ's sufferings (Norton 14). Afterward, she wrote her book about her revelations — visions of Christ she called "showings." She was commemorated as a saint by the Church of England in 1980.
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