Midwife Alternate Ending

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich provides a glimpse of America post Revolutionary war through her critically acclaimed book, A Midwife’s Tale, which is the interpretation of Martha Ballard’s seemingly humble diary—a record of her life as a midwife, mother, wife, and caregiver from 1785 through 1812. The book features Ballard’s account of her average day’s activities, which, in turn, serves to represent the tasks of women in her society; however, Ulrich cross-references the diary with documents such as court transcripts, land records, maps, and other diaries in order to piece together a more detailed account than one gathered solely from Ballard’s words. While popular belief envisions women in this timeframe as being constrained to the home and a litter of children, it is Ballard’s diary that reveals that women played a major role in other aspects of society, including the market economy, medicine and childbirth, versus just being mothers and homemakers.

Many people need confidence for a better life. In the historical fiction novel, The Midwife’s Apprentice, the author Karen Cushman, shows that the hardships people experience in life change them and gives them confidence in what they do. In the middle ages, where life was devastating and uneasy, people made hard decisions to support their life and were often treated poorly. Alyce, the main character, who lives during the middle ages first lives in a dung heap and then transitions to stable job positions. But as the story progresses she discovers she must change herself and develop confidence to live a better life.

A woman is shouting and giving commands. She’s ordering people to fetch her birthroot, she’s rubbing a woman’s head and belly, and she is calling a baby forth into the world. This was the life of a midwife in the medieval times. The story The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman is about an orphaned girl named Alyce who became a midwife’s apprentice and wanted a place in the world, but she wasn’t confident in herself and she thought she was a failure. Alyce realized that she couldn’t give up and that she had to be more confident in herself. At the end of the book she decided to become the midwife’s apprentice again. Alyce is a lonely and miserable girl who sleeps outside on a dung heap until a midwife recruits her to be her apprentice.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, it became one of his greatest legacies. In the first line he wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" (U.S. Constitution, paragraph 2). Jefferson wrote these words to give inspiration to future generations in the hopes that they would be able to change what he either would or could not. The word “men” in the Declaration in the early 1700 and 1800’s meant exactly that, but even then it only was true for some men, not all. Women, children, and other segments of the population such as slaves and Native Americans were clearly not included. Jefferson himself was a slave owner and held the belief that women were

Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale is the personal history of a typical New England woman, living and accommodating to the impending changes brought on by the creation of the American Republic. Martha Ballard’s story is then used by Ulrich to portray a larger history of the time period. By a comprehensive look into the diary of Martha Ballard, which contains over 9,000 entries written in daily by Martha over a twenty-seven year period, Laurel Ulrich is able to shed light on the day-to-day responsibilities of women, daughters, midwife’s, and families that all lived together in the years following America’s war for independence. The three decades covered in her diary entries were years of transformation for American society on many levels, such as medicine, religion, and family life.

In his essay History: A Very Short Introduction, historian John Arnold argues that it is naïve to think of history as merely a recounting of objectively-defined past events. Rather, history is really a complex mixture of combining sources, asking questions, considering biases, and relating events to a larger picture. This historical research process is largely illustrated in the documentary A Midwife’s Tale, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. A Midwife’s Tale explores the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife in 18th and 19th century Maine, through the woman’s diary and other sources. Ulrich uses these sources to construct an almost complete narrative of Martha Ballard’s life and to connect it with the broader historical context of Ballard’s time and geography, in a manner that exemplifies Arnold’s historical inquiry process.

Midwife’s Tale is Martha Ballard’s diary from the years 1787-1809 analyzed by the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Martha Ballard is not someone who would appear on a dollar bill, but her diary provides an interesting look into America’s early colonization from the point of view of a woman. Her religiously kept diary is one of the only historical sources we have from a woman in the 18th century providing an interesting look at women’s rights and economics. Martha wrote her diary when she was between the ages 52 and 74 thus the diary follows Martha throughout middle age: a very delicate and dynamic time in a woman’s life. Ulrich analyzed Martha’s diary entries to tell a story of progressiveness and feminism.

A Midwife’s Tale opens a window into the life of a woman living in the late eighteenth century. The book uses Martha Ballard’s journal entries as she goes about her everyday life to exam the effects of the revolutionary age of America on an obscure citizen. “Her story allows us to see what was lost, as well as what was gained, in political, economic, and social transformations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” Martha’s daily habits that are written throughout her journal are an effective way of looking into the past and seeing how it has affected us today. “The late eighteenth century was not only an era of political revolution, but of medical, economic, and sexual transformation.

Throughout our modern and ancient history the lives of women have been overlooked by male historians. In some cases, not just the lives of ordinary women, but some of the most powerful and influential women at the time. Examples of this included Nancy Wake, Mary Bowser, Sybil Ludington, and Claudette Colvin. And in many instances, important facts about our history have been erased by historians simply choosing not to record the lives of women- especially women in their everyday lives. In many communities, women were the ones who kept the household, the stores, and even life up and running. Women worked in their own homes, gardens, the fields, stores, healthcare, and in religious ceremonies. Without them, society would have fallen- women kept the world turning. Yet we know so little about the lives of everyday women. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, famed early American and women’s historian, decoded the diary of Martha Ballard in her book The Midwife’s Tale, to bring us understanding and insight into the lives of many women in the 18th century. Ulrich is a devout believer in studying the lives of ordinary women to understand history.

“He felt the baby slipping from his hands, and pulled back very hard.” Carter is intentional with very sentence, so to sequence the idea of the baby’s death, he could have added “To the point the father heard a pop.” or “The baby stopped screaming.” However, “… Pulled back very hard” can be analyzed as he pulled himself away. The mother knows the condition of the baby, and sees this before her own eyes. So, with her frenzy, she can stop the action of the baby being pulled, by letting go. Throughout the story, she repeats often “You’re hurting the baby.” “She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.” Is a simple sentence that can prove she only lightly touched the baby, which did not harm the

his hand to beg but after several times he stopped he placed his hand on the baby face reassuring himself that it was still alive it has been hours since the baby cried when he got to a stream he made his hands in form of a cup to get the baby drink he only makes it cough, it was impossible that a baby should die in their fathers arm, he waved his hand across the baby’s face keeping the mosquitoes away while at the same time crying and trying to waft a little air into the baby’s tortured

She widened her eyes and screamed “A snake is heading straight towards me! It is venomous!”

Anka turned over, preparing to analyze her surroundings. While her fall had been from a great height, the ceilings of the underground tunnel were low, about a meter and a half. While Anka herself could walk through these tunnels with ease, her taller friends would have to crouch. The tunnel was dark and cold, with the only light coming from the entrance Anka had fallen through.

“Hide me, hide me!” said a voice Anna didn’t recognize. The footsteps were so tiny, she could barely hear any movements, excepting that the words were also moving about the room.

"Get her out," the voice insisted. A plea was etching its way into the voice. Her last words were quiet, almost unheard in the loud ruckus of the room. "Save my baby."