Hidden Revelations. (History Week Two Authors Intent)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, like all Authors, had an agenda when sitting down to write A Midwifes Tale. After scoring through entry after entry in Martha's diary which was entered in daily for 27 years, Ulrich extracted many revelations which challenge contemporary points of view on daily life, and society in general during early years of America as it's own nation. Upon coming to these realizations, and learning of the enormous level of misinformation that has been handed to people today about the time period of early America, Ulrich wrote A Midwifes tale, infusing it with all of her discoveries into the nature of life in the late 18th, early 19th century America.

The roll of Midwives in society today is all but extinguished. The most shallow, and obvious purpose in Ulrich's writing was to shed light into a way of life that survived for centuries, but is easily forgotten today. A Midwife's Tale is, as it title blatantly states, a look into the life of a Midwife; it is meant to show the trials and joys that many women found in their lives after being called to fulfill their roll as a healer and a life giver. Ulrich, through Martha, is establishing a piece of historical society; a piece that until now had gone unrecognized for their struggles and achievements. Martha's many long nights spent without hardly any sleep tending to women, ensuring that a new life would enter the world, are an extraordinary tale of human ability, and giving that needed to be given it's due credit. Ulrich understood this.

Martha's Diary is one of the only written records to show the true roll of women in a society that has been assumed to be completely dominated by men. The uniqueness of these documents in itself warrants investigation into. Ulrich realized the possibilities such a record held in distinguishing whether or not the notion that women in early America truly were subservient to their male counterparts was correct or not. What she found, and shared through A Midwife's Tale is that the balance of power between the genders in early America was much less one sided then previously thought. Martha controlled an entire half of her families economic transactions and contributed to it's stability throughout her time recording her life, and Ulrich knew that this was a revelation that the world needed to come to.

When thinking of Revolutionary times in America, the time directly following gaining our independence from Britain is not included. Through investigation of Martha's diary Ulrich realized that at it's core, this was an inaccurate analysis of the time period. Ulrich goes into detail about the struggles America was going through in establishing itself as stable nation. The core concept that America was founded on (namely the right of every man to not be ruled by tyranny) caused uprisings and violence by manual laborers against pen pushing landowners; meanwhile the religious diversity of America was just starting to develop, and as all such processes happen, the beginning was very rough; and even the medical practices of the nation were undergoing a transformation into a scientifically organized system. Ulrich used A Midwife's Tale as a conduit to giving a better understanding of a time period containing a society that was most certainly undergoing revolutionary change.

With all of his insights into the society of early American society, from the lives and rolls of Midwives, to combating the notion of the female roll in society, to the vast sweeping changes the society as a whole was undergoing, there is one core concept that he pushes across. The introduction quotes various statements by others who had gone through Martha's diary James North saying it was "brief and with some exceptions not of general interest.", Charles Nash saw it as "trivial and unimportant... being but a repetition of what was widely recited many times.", and even a feminist history of Midwifery describing it as "Like many diaries of farm women, it is filled with trivia about domestic chores and pastimes.". Including these quotes, and then continuing on to delve into and explore the true depth of information and insights that can be found in Martha's entries is almost a direct challenge to the idea that even an average regular monotonous life is meaningless in the grand scale of the world. Ulrich strives to prove that the everyday human existence no matter how uneventful and unimportant truly is a meaningful piece of history that can unlock an entire universe of information if given the attention it requires. In essence, Ulrich was stating with A Midwifes Tale the old adage that you can't judge a book by it's cover... or for that matter, a diary by it's repetitiveness.