Kathleen Ashley’s article, “Historicizing Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe as Social Text,” focuses on the argument that The Book of Margery Kempe is an untouched window into the revolutionary societal changes of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. As Ashely infers, if one understands that knowledge is quite literally power, when one reads The Book of Margery Kempe they can begin to comprehend how important the expansion of literacy is to the rising Bourgeois (middle class), which was the very thing that lead to the social revolution, as well as what allowed Kempe the opportunity to create her narrative. As Ashely points out in her article, along with giving readers insight into the social changes happening in the late medieval period - the fifteenth century especially, the exploration of Kempe’s life through her own perspective also allows the reader insight into the religious changes that were also dominating society at the time. While the article does not focus on this aspect of the book as heavily as the general social changes of the time, the author does use the last fifth of her article to delve into the idea that mysticism (what Margery Kempe appears to be practicing through her visions of Christ - and her own interpretations of those visions) was a way for women to take control of their own religious experiences without relying on male religious leaders. This leads Ashely back to her original argument that The Book of Margery Kempe can be interpreted as a text that reveals the social changes - namely the idea of female independence of mind and spirit - of the late medieval period.
