A Midwife's Tale (1990) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Martha Ballard: Add a description of this character.
• Ephraim Ballard
• Hallowell
• Jonathan Ballard
• Sally
• Henry Sewall
• Hannah
• John Davis
• Pamela
• Daniel Cony
• James Howard
• William Howard
• Cyrus
• Rebecca
• James Purrinton
• John Jones
• Dr. Page
• Dr. Colman
• Isaac Foster
• Mrs. Savage
• Mrs Mosier
• Daughter Ballard
• Tabitha Sewall
• Smith
• Dorothy Barton
• Shee
• Daughter Pollard
• Jonathan Moore
• Betsy Barton
• Peter Jones
• Dolly
• Stephen Barton

Quotes edit see section history

• “I returned home to find my house up in arms.”

  Martha Ballard

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The problem is not that the diary is trivial but that it introduces more stories than can easily be recovered and absorbed.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• In twentieth-century terms, she was simultaneously a midwife, nurse, physician, mortician, pharmacist, and attentive wife. Furthermore, in the very act of recording her work, she became a keeper of vital records, a chronicler of the medical history of her town.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• Women in eighteenth-century Hallowell had no political life, but they did have a community life. The base of that community life was a gender division of labor that gave them responsibility for particular tasks, products, and forms of trade.

  Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers

• In Martha’s diary, it is doctors, not midwives, who seem marginal.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• The technological simplicity of early medicine meant that male doctors offered little that wasn’t also available to female practitioners.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• The diary makes quite clear that men did monopolize public business, that households were formally patriarchal, and that women did uncritically assume that houses and even babies belonged to men and that the proper way to identify a married woman was by reference to her husband,

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• Yet it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard’s book lies.

  Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers

• Midwives were the best paid of all the female healers, not only because they officiated at births, but because they encompassed more skills, broader experience, longer memory.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• Women’s invisibility in town records reflected the patriarchal organization of society as well as the perishable and invisible nature of their work.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• Perhaps it was a sense of history or a craving for stability, perhaps only a practical need to keep birth records, that first motivated Martha to keep a diary.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Augusta
• Kennebec
• Maine
• New England
• Massachusetts
• Oxford
• Boston
• America
• Pownalboro
• Vassalboro
• Malta
• London
• Lincoln County
• Bowdoinham
• Rochester
• Parthenia
• Colonel North
• Winslow
• Connecticut
• United States
• Norcross
• Winthrop
• Hook
• Son Town

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

List the chapters of this book.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (1991: History)
• Bancroft Prize (1991)
• John H. Dunning Prize (1990)
• Joan Kelly Memorial Prize (1990)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 974.16

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › History › Americas › United States › State & Local › Maine
• Books › History › Americas › United States › State & Local › Northeast
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Arts & Literature › Authors
• Books › Nonfiction › Women's Studies › History
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Specific Groups › Women
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Historical

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• DoHistory -- A Midwife's Tale: Exceptionally well done extension of the book, this site interactively examines the book, the film, and Martha Ballard's Diary (includes online copy of the diary--text and handwritten). This website is a must for any fan of the book, or those interested in historic documents and biography.