Wissam Matar
Midwife’s Apprentice Essay Final
The Midwife’s Apprentice
“You, inn girl, what do you want?” Alyce said “ I know what I want. A full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.” The book “The Midwife’s apprentice” by Karen Cushman introduces Alyce as a lonely orphaned girl who lives in a dung heap. Shortly after, she tries becoming the midwife’s apprentice, but quits and runs away to an inn after failing to deliver a baby. After a while she discovers that midwifery was her destiny so she returns back to the village and the midwife. At the beginning of the book , Alyce is a lonely, orphaned girl but as the book continues becomes more confident in herself. Finally, by the end of the book, Ayce has become a skillful midwife’s apprentice.
…show more content…
The text states ,“She was small and pale, with the frightened air of an ill-used child, but her scrawny, underfed body did give off a hint of woman, so perhaps she was 12 or 13. No one knew for sure, least of all the girl herself, who knew no home and no mother and no name but Brat.” This shows that she was so lonely that she had no mother, no one to remind her of her age. Also, she has never had a home and has been named Brat. The text claims “Tonight, she settled for the dung heap, where she dreamed of nothing, hoped for nothing, and expected nothing.” This proves that she just doesn’t care about her life anymore. She knows she will stay lonely till the end of her
Distinction between Real or Fake: Symptoms of Postpartum Psychosis in The Book of Margery Kempe
Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice is about a young homeless girl who doesn’t know anything about herself. This girl is found sleeping in a dung heap by a village and the village’s Midwife decides she’ll give her shelter if she’ll work as her apprentice. From that moment, her new life starts and she finds an identity that fits her and a new name, occupation and a place she belongs to. Alyce’s smartness, empathy and curiousness are a great combination that leads her to become a midwife’s apprentice, and as she works she starts to learn how the world works.
Contrary to having doctors deliver babies today, midwives were called upon to deliver babies during the eighteenth century. There were many more midwives than there were doctors during that time. In addition, Martha served as a midwife, nurse, physician, mortician, pharmacist, and attentive wife simultaneously (40). Aside from being able to deliver babies, midwives were also highly experienced in medical care—they tended to wounds, diagnosed illnesses, and made medicine. Midwives were more accessible and abundant when compared to doctors—they did not require any formal training or education. When the medical field was underdeveloped, the midwives were the leading resource when it was related to medical conflicts.
Martha Ballard was a midwife in Hallowell, Maine in the early eighteenth century. She is the author of the diary that inspired A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Martha Ballard was an extremely busy woman with her medical duties and was very serious about being a midwife. Nothing was trivial to Martha she was serious about her work and community. She was an independent woman of her time and valued her autonomy. Her job highlighted how compassionate and caring she was towards her community. She never turned anyone away, and she would help anyone in need regardless of race, social rank, or economic standing. She relied on her connections to the people in the community in many ways. Martha was a pillar of her community because of her
Hook. Background. In her memoir, Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth portrays the bodies of working-class women, such as Mary and Conchita, as a mere objects for sexual pleasure and the production children to emphasize their tragic loss of autonomy and social mobility.
Whenever Sira, Aminata’s mother went to help women deliver their babies, Aminata would go along too. She would watch and help her mother, eventually le...
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
From lines 4 to 10, we can assume that we are reading of a child who is terrorized of the grownups that live with him; perhaps he is an abused child:
The narrator, Twyla, begins by recalling the time she spent with her friend, Roberta, at the St. Bonaventure orphanage. From the beginning of the story, the only fact that is confirmed by the author is that Twyla and Roberta are of a different race, saying, “they looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison, 2254). They were eight-years old. In the beginning of the story, Twyla says, “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” This line sets the tone of the story from the start. This quote begins to separate the two girls i...
In the poem titled " The Midwife Addresses the Newly Delivered Woman" the author portrays the strengths and fortune of an Aztec woman after she has successfully given birth to a child. The author mentions how courageous and brave the woman was while she went through the hard exhausting physical labor. This poem also remarks on the roles of women living in Aztec culture. Also the poem compares the difficulties women faced when giving birth to the hazards men were subject to in the art of warfare. In addition the author of the poem also warns the mother not to be too prideful as this gift is given by the creator, not her. In the poem the midwife also warns the mother of the hazards still to come to her and her newborn infant.
Pairman,S., Tracy, S., Thorogood, C., & Pincombe, J. (2013). Theoretical frameworks for midwifery practice. Midwifery: Preparation for practice.(2nd ed, pp. 313-336). Chatswood, N.S.W. : Elsevier Australia
Goody Osburn were midwife to me three times. I begged my husband, I begged him not to call Osburn because I feared her. My babies always shriveled in her hands!”-Mrs. Putnam
For one woman, this vision of childbirth is not the norm. Ana Rhodes is a midwife, and she is one of the only birth attendants available to...
It is clear that she is neglecting her own needs, happiness and fulfilment, in
More than half the kids haven’t experienced or thought about the contents in The Midwife’s