Elizabeth Lupfer Glenbrook South High School

To my surprise and delight, I loved Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale. I had decided to read the book because it was about midwives and I teach about them in my AP European History classes and although this book would be about an American woman's experience, I thought that at that time period there would still be many similarities with the European practice of midwifery. What I discovered as I read the book was a well-written, page-turning life story not just of a woman but a family and a community and a period of history. What I gained from this book was a deeper understanding of people's lives in the post revolutionary Maine frontier, especially in terms of their economy, medicine, and community scandals/tragedies.

The economy in Hallowell, Maine involved the entire family. While the fathers and sons were off working in the fields or the mill, the wife and daughters were busy with cottage industries at home. Even back in the past families operated with two-parent incomes! Also daughters' economic production was taken into account and they seemed to be prepared to provide income for both their families of birth and marriage for a good part of their fives. For instance, Dolly Ballard learned how to make dresses while Hannah was trained to be a weaver because of their midwife mother's decision. It seemed to me that these women used their income to buy extra dream items for their families and themselves. The economy of the postrevolutionary period was also quite complex since common, every day people had to keep their own books and collect payments that often came in the form of services or goods and not currency.

From the journal of the midwife, Martha Ballard, I learned a lot, perhaps more than I ever wanted, about the entire birth process in late 18th and early 19th centuries. It seemed that it was a more natural and womancentered process than the birthing experience is today. Women were able to have their babies at home with the support of a midwife for as long as she needed comfort for prebirth jitters and any emergency intervention. Then as the labor became its most unbearable and intense, the mother to be was surrounded by her female neighbors as she bore down on the hour of birth. She was even able to use gravity to her advantage in giving birth. Afterwards, the women, new mother included, celebrated, sometimes with an elegant meal or even a drinking party. There seem to be some advantages of giving birth in past, including the low rates of deaths for both mother and child.

Perhaps what was most engrossing about Ulrich's book was the town scandals and tragedies especially the love affairs, gang "rapes", and mass murder. This is where the book seemed to be about more than women's stories but instead became the tale of an entire community. The struggles of religion spilled over into the court case of Mrs. Foster's rape accusation of some of the leading town's male citizens. A case of "he said, she said" in which Martha Ballard had to testify revealed the less than Puritan truth of the sexual behaviors of postcolonial Maine. Many couples had children out of wedlock, including Martha's son Jonathan, before they decided to marry, or in some cases, never marry. The love affair between Hitty Pierce and John Vassall Davis seemed to push even the surprisingly tolerant town's limits as they were blatant about their affair, their illegitimate son, and their decision not to marry. Most likely the most shocking town episode, however, took place in a seemingly happy family and between a purposedly committed couple when Mr. Purington killed all of his large family except one son and then himself. This time, the town of Hallowell was not so tolerant as they demonstrated their condemnation of his actions in a ceremonial funeral procession.

Indeed, Martha Ballard lived an eventful and interesting life but it is the story of her town and her time that her own experience reveals that is the most memorable of all: economics, medicine, and "deviant" behavior.

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