A Midwife's Tale Summary

In her book, ‘A Midwife’s Tale’, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich explores the social position of women in society and the subsequent change in their roles in early American society by studying the life of Martha Ballard. This book questions the impact that the Revolutionary War and the independence of the United States of America had on the lives of American women like Martha Ballard. Due to the restriction on Martha’s participation in the public economy, her exclusion and apathy toward the Revolution and politics, and her silence about gender inequality and the patriarchal society of her time, like most women, Martha’s identity and status remained unchanged economically, politically, and socially by the Revolution and the decades that followed. From …show more content…
Martha had attended the funeral service of George Washington (32), but it remained as a small part of the diary. She describes the death of Mrs Clatons’ child with more depth (38) than the death of the first president of the United States. This lack of interest is evidence that to her, the people of Martha’s community were more important than any politician. Despite being a citizen of the USA, she was not able to vote, serve on a jury or acquire property for herself but while the Revolution did not bring any new rights for women, they were used as symbol of peace and liberty (32). Martha’s involvement never increased and she does not mentions politics during the period which she wrote her diary and as Ulrich argues, “though she lived through a Revolution, she was more a colonial goodwife than a Republican Mother” (32). Martha did not protest and presumably was in a compliance with the traditional idea that politics were reserved for men and the value of a woman should be “measured by her service to God and her neighbors rather than to a nebulous and distant

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A Midwife's Tale Summary