For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

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Here it is not the picaresque and the picturesque but the almost magnetic necessity between the two souls which is key. However I feel like I may have been too dumb for this book, or maybe it simply just missed the mark for me.

If you’re new to these figures, you might be captivated by their bizarre life stories and religious obsession, but I thought the bare telling was somewhat lacking in literary interest. Margery is entirely different, beset by visions of Christ which are both visceral and sensuous, unable to remain silent despite the regular burning of heretics. So one is cloistered and the other the subject of gossip and innuendo; one is set apart from the world and the other rubs the world’s face in the Word. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more powerful than the world is ready to hear.Two female medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, are the twin protagonists of Mackenzie’s debut. Again and again, she was told to know her place and not dare to speak on behalf of God or question the clergy.

Some of the most extraordinary passages in the novel describe Julian’s surrender to the limits of her cell, the infinite-external giving way to the infinite-internal. In For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, Margery and Julian tell their stories from girlhood to motherhood, with MacKenzie colouring in the blanks in their fascinating histories.Her visions of Christ have alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband’s abuse – and placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic. It is an extraordinary feat of historical ventriloquism; the women’s inner lives, their religiosity, their sense of place in the world is miraculously conjured … This novel is brilliantly done.

would read to somebody who knows more about them; but I thought the clarity and simplicity with which Mackenzie conveyed the ideas these women struggled with was impressive.When I set out for Norwich I felt such hope that my visit to the anchoress would ease my spiritual pains. Seeking the anchorite’s counsel, she disclosed these experiences to ascertain if there was any deceit in them, given the anchorite’s expertise in such matters.

Both women felt the burning need to record their experiences, which were in both cases visions of Christ – Revelations of Divine Love in the case of Julian, and an ongoing personal relationship with Jesus: being present at the crucifixion, receiving direct advice and counsel, physical affection, and, indeed, sexual intimacy in the case of Marjory Kempe.This slim novel is a pocket epic; you will read it in no time but be thinking about it for ages after. She encouraged her to place all her trust in God and not fear the world’s language, as the more disdain, shame, and reproach she faced in the world, the greater her merit in God’s sight. I wrote about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in my dissertation so the premise of this sounded super interesting. None of these devotions seem particularly useful to the world at large – they don’t feed the poor or clothe the naked for example, but perhaps they do, in a way, comfort the sick and dying.