"Margery Kempe Had 14 Children and She Still Invented the Memoir" - Electric Literature
https://electricliterature.com/margery-kempe-had-14-children-and-she-still-invented-the-memoir/
"The Book describes how she goes to see a woman who is 'out of her mind' after childbirth. The woman’s husband tells Margery that his wife 'roars and cries so that she makes folk terribly afraid.' They have put manacles on her wrists, he says, because she 'will both smite and bite.' But when Margery enters the house, the woman speaks to her calmly. She tells Margery she is comforted by her presence and asks her not to leave. Margery continues to visit the woman every day, even when her behavior with other people becomes so violent that she is bound in iron chains. She prays for the woman to be restored to her wits, which she eventually is. Writing about this episode, scholar Lynn Staley notes that in helping the postpartum woman, Margery 'seems to offer consolation to her former self.' It is not hard to imagine why Margery might have been popular among married and childbearing women. When she arrives in Leicester the Mayor there accuses her of coming to town in order to lead all of their wives away from them. I will always wonder what she was saying to those women in Leicester, and other women in other towns, just as I will wonder whether, when she finally succeeded in getting her book written, those women or their daughters read it and, seeing something of themselves, found comfort in it."
Sara Fredman
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