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A wimple, A pit: Gender In Ancrene Wisse, Rhetorically Constructed

Abstract:The gender of the audience of Ancrene Wisse, a thirteenth-century English manual for anchoresses, is typically understood as the embodied experience of the readers. This essay argues that in the absence of the audience's self-determination, gender can only be understood as a rhetorical construct that the author assigns to his audience. It goes on to examine how the author thus constructs gender, and in doing so, brings a long tradition of feminist Ancrene Wisse scholarship in conversation with queer theory. Ultimately, the essay argues that the author rigidly constructs the audience's gender but not their sexuality, allowing for a better understanding of the queer possibilities indicated by the text.