Midwife's Tale

To me, the Midwife's Tale was a complete 180 from much of the history that I've been taught in school - mostly long sets of dates and various white men killing each other. Women's history is pretty much nonexistent in the mainstream canon, at least as far as I've experienced it. What I know about women in history is what I've learned myself, and even then it's been through the prism of another man's story or voice. So I found it extremely refreshing not only to learn about a woman, but to learn about a woman who was not in the upper echelons of society, and (mostly) in her own words to boot. I was particularly interested in the actual medicinal descriptions, mostly because the only thing that I know about medicine from this era is leeching, so getting a look into the ways that women conducted birth is fascinating. I was particularly interested in the part that described how Martha noted each of the births that she attended. The way that she not only described the mother's health and the fee paid, but how she got there was a revealing look into her lifestyle and what she could afford. (180) Also, discussing how rarely doctors were called in births was really fascinating, because today they're considered vital.