The medieval life of a servant girl

In the fifteenth century, an English Christian mystic named Margery Kempe wrote (well, dictated) the first autobiography in the English language. It detailed her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Rome. Kempe was convinced that God spoke to her and often engaged in loud weeping as she prayed and saw comparisons to Biblical events in every day life. She would preach to others and expound upon her own holiness, much to the annoyance of her fellow pilgrims. The Catholic Church forbid women from preaching, so one worry was that her tendencies would lead to trouble for the travelling party.

One other thing she details in her autobiography is her complaints about her young maidservant. She constant refers to the girl as lazy, incompetent and disloyal. They are separated on occasions as the other pilgrims eject Kempe from the party, keeping the maidservant to tend to their needs. After a final separation, they are reacquainted in Rome, but the maidservant has found other employ, which Kempe did not appreciate, to say the least.

The maidservant was never named and she is only examined from the perspective of that narcistic "holy" woman. This book is a fictionalised account of the maidservant's perspective, from her employment with Kempe in England, to being dragged along for the pilgrimage, to arriving in Rome and finally finding a place for herself. The author names her Joanna and she suffers a great deal of abuse, generally verbal, from Kempe and some of the other pilgrims. One pilgrim isn't shy about striking her to force her to do what he says. Aside from another servant and two students, the party is generally unsympathetic, if not outright abusive to her.

The book is a fairly traditional tale of self-discovery, starting with Joanna's anxieties and hardships and ending with her really understanding her problems and finding a fulfilling life. Joanna is a young teen who was given to be employed as a maidservant after finding it difficult to adjust to life with her newly married older sister, Rose. Her mother died in childbirth to a brother who did not survive long after, and her father had to leave his land after poor harvests resulted in significant debt. He left to work on the local bishop's land. Rose married an older widower who already had three young sons. Joanna resented the man and could not handle the children, so was sent away.

Life in Kempe's house wasn't great, but was also not terrible. Kempe was unappreciative of her servants and her displays of piety grew old quickly. Joanna did her job and got along well with another younger maidservant and the older cook. Overall, however, she did not enjoy her time and pined for the times before her father had to leave and before her sister married. Naturally, the pilgrimage made everything much worse.

The book gives a great look into medieval life. In particular, it shows just how intertwined religion was with people's lives. The physically abusive pilgrim, Petras Tapester, is from the same town as Kempe. When Joanna hears from another girl that Tapester's behaviour change following the early death of his wife was due to a devil finding its way inside him, she has no notion of doubt that such a thing is possible. The modern scepticism that one might feel at hearing such a thing is completely absent and she accepts it without question. Joanna instead understands that this is the reason why Tapester is being sent by the local priest on his pilgrimage: to excise the devil from his heart. She even accepts as true the idea that God speaks to her mistress.

There are other physical descriptions of life, from gathering water from a common ditch, to disposing of waste into another ditch that ran down the middle of the main road. Collecting rushes from a nearby wetland to cover the floors and spending most of the time barefoot (shoes and boots were expensive). In fact, Joanna spends most of the beginning of the pilgrimage walking through continental Europe barefoot. She only puts on her boots as it gets colder and when they reach Alps.

Extremely few medieval fantasy works that I've read cover anything like this. Too often, they're far too rooted in modern conceptions of behaviour, beliefs and environments. They don't deal much with how common people actually lived. When they do, it's brief and certainly not the life that the protagonist leads. This protagonist is from one of the lowest strata of social hierarchy, though. She's not exactly a slave, but is certainly stuck with her lot in life and sees no way out.

This focus on the life of such a person is what drew me to the book. Tales of heroes and kings are great, but much humbler protagonists have just as worthy stories to tell. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in life in the medieval period.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!