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 consider the ways in which medicine, social convention and economics are inextricable parts of the diary, and the effect that such areas of concern have on the reader's understanding of Ballard's society and women's position in it. The study will argue that, indeed, medicine, social convention, and economics as described in the book reveal much about the control over society which men held in Ballard's era and about the interior position of women in that society.

This does not mean, however, as in the example of medicine, that women were entirely excluded, or had no power whatsoever. The book shows that while "Male physicians are easily identified in town records and, even in Martha's diary, by the title 'Doctor,'" and while "No local women can be discovered in that way" (61), women were nevertheless quite active and played an important if background role in the practice of medicine in the town. The important point for the purposes of this study is that 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.

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

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dwifery without mastering general medicine, but learning general medicine would disqualify them as women and therefore as midwives" (251). The same behind-the-scenes impact of women is found in the areas of social convention and economics. Women contributed mightily in both areas, but, again, are given short shrift in most historical accounts of the period. As Ulrich writes in one passage focusing on Ballard's "Economic and social differences might divide a community; the unseen acts of women wove it together" (96). Ballard herself is exemplary in adhering to the social conventions which held women as the glue holding society together behind-the-scenes, informally, unofficially. The foundation of social convention was the belief that women were, indeed, creatures meant to soothe and heal---quietly and unobtrusively. As we read: From the Book of Proverbs ("She stretcheth out her hand to the poor") to countless sermons in New England churches from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, women were praised for their ability to reach out to others in need, regardless of wealth or social position. . . . Martha . . . was also above dissension: "If others were so Unhappy as to divide into Parties, and to burn with Contention,

Category: Medical - T