Poor banished Cordelia, the making of a saint.

Like the banished Cordelia, women fulfilling the virgo ideal—"filii Evae" overtly committed to a life of spirituality—are in Bernard's words "in exsilio," in a state of exile. 

Though not purely hagiographic in the strict generic sense, the heroine/s embodies pseudo hagiographic topoi as the subject of such well-known folktales and legends as the Griselda and Constance stories of Petrarch, Boccaccio, John Gower, and Chaucer

Literally, of course, men and women heeding the monastic call have chosen to separate themselves from the world at large and to occupy a cloistered environment in order to facilitate their devotion.

 More important, however, the "exiled" status may be interpreted figuratively as the condition of any individual desiring to serve Christ: the devoted, spiritual individual is "exiled" in the sense of no longer being fully integrated into the secular world once the choice is made to serve a higher spiritual purpose.

 Such an individual may be socially, politically, and economically exiled as well by those with whom she or he must otherwise coexist, like family members. Ostracism may be imposed as a punishment or corrective measure if such an individual refuses to relinquish his or her chosen position—as in the case of the self-described "creature" of the eponymous Book of Margery Kempe, for instance