Character Analysis: A Midwife's Tale

This novel, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, is based on Ballard’s diary starting in 1785 and ending with her death in 1812. Ulrich takes us step by step through Martha Ballard’s life as a Colonial Midwife. She reveals to us all the marvelous acts that midwives performed for their families and communities. “Midwives and nurses mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness and death. They touched the untouchable, handled excrement and vomit as well as milk, swaddled the dead as well as the newborn” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.47). The novel also reveals that based on the views of societal power, gender roles in the medical environment and personal values, revealed in the diary, women were subordinate to men during this historical time period. Martha Ballard lived and thrived in this inferior atmosphere.

The Colonial society rendered a patriarchal power over women, both privately and publicly. Martha’s experiences and knowledge, “had been formed in [this] older world, in which a women’s worth was measured by her service to god and her neighbors” (Ulrich, 1990, pg. 32). Women were often merely the primary spiritual structures in the home and

caregivers for the community. Fortunately, amidst this patronizing gender role is where Martha Ballard found her life’s calling; serving others. She became more than a typical routine midwife, “Martha’s patients were not anonymous bodies, but friends and neighbors” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.172). She was a worldly educated midwife and doctor. Unfortunately, the patriarchal power over women prevented her from being recognized as such.
Men were seen as representatives for their families and masters of their craft.

Even in the medical field, male doctors were dominate to the hundreds of well educated midwives. “Male physicians are easily identified in town records and even in Martha’s diary, by the title “Doctor.” No local woman can be discovered that way” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.61). Martha was a part of this demoralized group of laborers. Unfortunately for her, “in twentieth-century terms, the ability to prescribe and dispense medicine made Martha a physician, while practical knowledge of gargles, bandages, poultices and clisters, as well as willingness to give extended care, defined her as a nurse” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.58). In her diary she even portrays doctors, not midwives, as inconsequential in a few medical

incidents.
Martha’s dairy reveals to us, the tremendous amount of courage and determination that she had, in order to live a full and rewarding life. Through the pages of her diary, she was “Dramatizing the dangers of her journey, [to show that] she both glorified God and gave meaning and dimension to her own life” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.7). Martha’s self-worth and personal values pushed her to conquer the overshadowing subordination to men in the household and in the medical community.
A marvelous quote that explains how women in this century, although underappreciated, were the most spiritual and hard-working community members. “Women, to use a biblical metaphor, performed their works under a bushel’ men’s candles burned on the hill” (Ulrich, 1990, pg. 98). A true hero does their best, not to be rewarded, but because it is what’s right. “Martha did not leave a farm, but a life, recorded patiently and consistently for twenty-seven years. No gravestone that bears her name” (Ulrich, 1990, pg. 345). Even though women were subordinate to men in society, the medical field and in personal values, she was a true American Hero that no man could ever surpass.