A Midwife's Tale: the life of Martha Ballard

This study will examine Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale, The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Specifically, the study will analyze the ways in which Ballard's experiences were typical or atypical for a woman of her era; how she shaped her own life and how she was shaped by external circumstances; evidence of a "woman's culture" in Ballard's life; and in what ways Ballard's actions shaped American life.

The book essentially presents two distinct impressions of the society and Ballard's place in it. The society of New England (Hallowell, Maine) in that era was a society which was apparently defined, organized and run by men. On the other hand, Ballard herself is revealed as a strong woman who, along with many other women, contributed regularly, significantly and effectively to that society. She can hardly be called a hard-core feminist in the modern sense of the term, for her struggle for meaning was not an aggressive of outright equality with men. Nevertheless, Ulrich's exploration of the diary makes it clear that Ballard was well aware of inequities in the society which favored men, and that she was working steadily and quietly to advance herself and other women in that society. The "woman's culture" which existed was similarly quietly but steadily operating, even if primarily in the context of a "man's world." Ballard and Ulrich make clear that women were not given proper credit, but if their contributions and efforts had suddenly been remov

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dicine in the town. What Ulrich is trying to correct are two slights of women. Women have twice been given short shrift in terms of their contributions to medicine---first, at the time of the contributions, and second, in the historical accounts of that time. Ballard and her fellow midwives, as well as other women contributing to the economic structure of the society, for example, helped shape American life then, and their contributions should be a part of the historical record today. We read, for example, of the role of female healers in Ballard's town of Hallowell, Maine: Hallowell's female doctors move in and out of sickrooms unannounced, as though their presence there were the most ordinary thing in the world---as it was. Historians have been dimly aware of this broad-based work, yet they have had difficulty defining it. [Male] physicians who joined medical societies and adopted an occupational title can be recognized as professionals But what shall we call the women? (61). For Ballard's work, Ulrich considers such titles as domestic medicine, folk medicine, popular medicine, and lay medicine, settling finally on social medicine because it denotes the close though informal ties between the women healers and their community.

Category: History - A