A MIDWIFE'S TALE: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 1990

In this narrowly focused yet fascinating narrative based on the diary of a Maine midwife, Univ. of New Hampshire historian Ulrich richly illuminates American society on the cusp between the colonial and early national periods, as well as the everyday life of women in this transitional age. A humble, pious woman nearly forgotten by history, Martha Ballard nevertheless performed extraordinary, even heroic deeds, including delivering over 800 babies amid all kinds of foul weather and physical perils in and near the Kennebec River towns of Hallowell and Augusta. In the course of her work, this energetic wife and mother of nine children combined the functions of a midwife, nurse, physician, mortician, and pharmacist. Largely concerned with domestic affairs rather than public events, her taciturn, sometimes repetitious journal nevertheless ""allows us to see what was lost, as well as what was gained, in the political, economic, and social transformations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."" Through selections from the midwife's ""earnest, steady, gentle, and courageous record,"" as well as through the author's commentary, we find Ballard overseeing her household's textile production, quietly differing with condescending male doctors, praying for patience as she copes with an insensitive husband and son, and, in more sensational entries, reluctantly testifying at a rape trial and hastening to the grisly site where a father has murdered his entire family (""the most shocking scein [sic] that was Even seen in this part of the world""). In the process, Ulrich throws into sharp relief such issues of the age as medicine, old age, land squabbles, debt, crime, horticulture, New England religious controversies, sexual and marital mores, funeral customs, and women's contributions to household economy. Ulrich, author of Good Wives (1982), a broader analysis of colonial women, has added another lively, cogent entry to the growing field of women's studies, as well as to the history of the early national period and of the New England region.

Pub Date: March 14, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION