Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Women and gender in American society in the 19th century
Gender roles in 19th century america
Women In Colonial America
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
This novel, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, is based on Ballard’s diary starting in 1785 and ending with her death in 1812. Ulrich takes us step by step through Martha Ballard’s life as a Colonial Midwife. She reveals to us all the marvelous acts that midwives performed for their families and communities. “Midwives and nurses mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness and death. They touched the untouchable, handled excrement and vomit as well as milk, swaddled the dead as well as the newborn” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.47). The novel also reveals that based on the views of societal power, gender roles in the medical environment and personal values, revealed in the diary, women were subordinate to men during this historical time period. Martha Ballard lived and thrived in this inferior atmosphere.
The Colonial society rendered a patriarchal power over women, both privately and publicly. Martha’s experiences and knowledge, “had been formed in [this] older world, in which a women’s worth was measured by her service to god and her neighbors” (Ulrich, 1990, pg. 32). Women were often merely the primary spiritual structures in the home and
…show more content…
Even in the medical field, male doctors were dominate to the hundreds of well educated midwives. “Male physicians are easily identified in town records and even in Martha’s diary, by the title “Doctor.” No local woman can be discovered that way” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.61). Martha was a part of this demoralized group of laborers. Unfortunately for her, “in twentieth-century terms, the ability to prescribe and dispense medicine made Martha a physician, while practical knowledge of gargles, bandages, poultices and clisters, as well as willingness to give extended care, defined her as a nurse” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.58). In her diary she even portrays doctors, not midwives, as inconsequential in a few medical
Anne Hutchinson's efforts, according to some viewpoints, may have been a failure, but they revealed in unmistakable manner the emotional starvation of Puritan womanhood. Women, saddened by their hardships, depressed by their religion, denied an open love for beauty...flocked with eagerness to hear this feminine radical...a very little listening seems to have convinced them that this woman understood the female heart far better than did John Cotton of any other male pastor of the settlements. (C. Holliday, pps. 45-46.)
Volume III: P-Z. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Print. The. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer. Notable American Women, 1607-1950.
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
Thatcher, Laurel. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. 1st. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 1-142 . Print.
The colonial woman has often been imagined as a demure person, dressed in long skirt,apron and bonnet, toiling away at the spinning wheel, while tending to the stew at the hearth. In reality, the women of the early settlements of the United States were much more influential, strong and vital to the existence of the colonies. Her role,however, has shifted as the needs of the times dictated.
Women primarily undertook the role of being a mother from a considerably young age. Prejudice views prevented many women from holding office let alone playing influential public roles. Most men in the colonial era were farmers or merchants, very few having careers in the medical or law fields. Women seldom held jobs of higher nobility, yet a fraction practiced the trades of their husband or served as midwives. Religion in the colonial era emphasized women balancing the roles of mothering and serving their husband as an idealistic wife. ...
Favor, Lesli J. Women Doctors and Nurses of the Civil War. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2004. Print.
The slave midwife became a highly important member of the slave community within the Southern Plantation, the French and English Caribbean and South America. She was
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female doctor of modern times. She was encouraged to pursue a career in medicine by a sick friend who thought women would be more sympathetic toward patients and treat them better. She applied to thirty different colleges and was only accepted into Geneva College due to the sexism that existed within the medical community. Dr. Blackwell faced many obstacles during her time in medical school, including teachers attempting to dismiss her from the class when discussing reproductive anatomy. She eventually won the respect of professors and peers alike. Dr. Blackwell’s graduation was essentially a women's rights event with many women coming together in support. She went on to establish a hospital in New York City that focused on care for women and children. She also helped make advancements in providing care for wounded soldiers and wrote numerous books tackling the barriers between women and careers in medicine. One of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s more well-known books is entitled Medicine as a Profession for Women, and it was co-written by her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell. In this book, the sisters shed light on how women’s advancements in the medical field would lead to gains in the overall equality of rights. The sisters powerfully claimed that "The thorough education of a class of women in
middle of paper ... ...‘ Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers’, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1973. Macfarlane, Alan. The 'Standard'.
William Hunter was a distinguished London anatomist and obstetrician of the eighteenth century. He, among their ‘British physicians’, would occasionally ‘invite midwives to observe’ dissections. This indicates that there is practical need that doctors need some sort of help and witness for dissections, explain in part what Martha was invited and was at the scene for several anatomies. Besides, Ulrich went onto comment on ‘Kennebec doctors’ that they also ‘wanted to see rather than read about the interior of the human body’. Juxtaposing Martha’s careful record of ‘the details of each dissection’, Ulrich concluded that she herself also shared the doctors’ curiosity. This would suggest that Martha was at the scene because she was eager and willing to witness how human dissections unfolded, just out of curiosity.
In the Salem, Massachusetts, the year of 1692 women were “puritans”. They dressed very modestly, kept their hair hidden, and were loyal to their husbands. The majority were stay at home wives. The young women would work for the older women and would get paid. Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams, and Mary Warren each did one of those things. These women represent the archetypes of this story.
During the 1900’s women were seen as the ideal ‘wives’, they were seen as the people who don’t need an education, who don’t need to know anything, all they needed to do was cook, clean and have babies, but during that civilisation, an extraordinary woman who had taken her place in the world, a woman who discovered the structure of cholesterol, Penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin, a woman who had made impartiality across the nations of the world, and had made woman just as able and just as knowledgeable as men, a woman identified as Dorothy Hodgkin’s.
The "Autobiography". Abrams 1601 - 1604. Mulock, Dinah. Maria. A Woman's Thoughts About Women.
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. “The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits.” The Longman