In her article Fleckenstein explains how Catherine, a woman in the middle ages, was able to surpass societal transgressions by playing into the scopic regime of that time era. During a time where women were subjugated and were forced into roles of submission and muteness, Catherine was able to write and speak about herself and her relationship to God and have her writing met with acceptance because of the way she used scopic regime to her advantage. Women in the middle ages were suffering the consequences of Eve’s sin, at least according to those in power in the church. “ Eve was deceived by words, and, in the grip of that transgression, she uses her voice, her body, to persuade Adam to a like sin. Thus, the command from Paul is to subdue a woman’s voice as a means of subduing her body.”
Fleckenstein explains that scopic regime is “the tacit cultural rules of differing times, places, and people that enable a community to see some things and not others”, meaning that within that scopic regime lies what is acceptable in a community and outside of it, what is taboo, unorthodox or frowned upon by the majority. Scopic regime, because of its relation to society, also carries cultural values and powers and it changes as culture changes.
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