The Midwife's Apprentice

 The Midwife's Apprentice

Bibliography

Cushman, Karen. 1995. THE MIDWIFE'S APPRENTICE. New York, NY: Sandpiper- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780395692295

Plot Summary

A young girl, who comes to name herself Alyce, lives in medieval Europe in a small village where she is taken in by the local midwife and made her apprentice. Alyce starts off as Brat, a girl with no name and no standing, dirty and homeless and with no skills or place of her own. As the months go by, Alyce grows and learns her way around the village and midwifery, and gets to know the people that she comes across. This young girl finds things and people to care about and who care about her in return, and she eventually finds her place in the world. Karen Cushman takes us into a world that is old and ancient through the eyes of a girl who just wants to belong somewhere. 

Critical Analysis

The Midwife's Apprentice follows Brat turned Alyce, a young girl that becomes a midwife's apprentice. The book follows her and her experiences with going from being homeless to find a place to call home and her interactions with the people in her small town. The story is easy enough for readers to follow, with certain events being highlighted by the chapter titles and with straightforward language. Cushman has done a great job and illustrating Old England and how people lived during those medieval times. People lived ruggedly and with little, except for the rich people in their huge manors, which we see throughout the book. The character of Alyce starts off with nothing of her own, and readers watch as she grows into herself and becomes confident and strong willed. Alyce is only one of many children during that time period that were abandoned because they were either one extra mouth to feed or because their parents couldn't afford to have children. Her and other child characters in the story are seen as servants and are treated with no love or compassion. This makes the readers sympathetic and guides readers to want her to succeed.

The idea of midwifery, while still done today, can be seen as ancient and old-fashioned, as we see in the actions and both Alyce and her boss, Jane. Cushman describes throughout the story, and in her author's note, how midwifery was a combination of herbs and superstition, as we see when Alyce is sent to pick plants and flowers from around the town and when she mixes different concoctions that Jane needs. Readers get to see how complicated birth was back then and how science and medicine have made great leaps and strides since those times.  

The setting of the English village takes us back to times that we see in old stories, of people living in squalor and having to do everything by hand and wearing ratty dresses and overalls and working until the sun went down, and even after. Children will be interested to see how people lived in those times, and will probably thank their lucky stars that they don't live like that today.

Cushman inserts a theme of being confident in oneself and found family throughout the story, which many children to relate to. Readers see how Alyce grows to find her purpose and discovers her passion and can see how that emulates their own lives. The style of this book is very straightforward is interspersed with old language and songs, as we see in the dialogue. This makes the book feel old timey and like a book our grandparents have passed down to us.

The Midwife's Apprentice is a good read for those interested in midwifery and that period of time, and for those that love a good coming of age tale.

Review Excerpts

1996 Newbery Medal Winner

Publishers Weekly: "'Cushman' has an almost unrivaled ability to build atmosphere, and her evocation of a medieval village, if not scholarly in its authenticity, is supremely colorful and pungent... The force of the ambience produces more than enough momentum to propel the reader from start to finish in a single happy sitting."

Kirkus Review: "From the rebirth in the dung heap to Brat's renaming herself Alyce after a heady visit to a medieval fair, this is not for fans of historical drama only. It's a rouser for all times."

Connections

More by Karen Cushman: Catherine, Called Birdy

                                          The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

                                         Matilda Bone

More Apprenticeship Fiction: The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle

                                                The Magician's Apprentice by Kate Banks

                                                Saturnalia by Paul Fleischman

Activity: Use a Venn diagram to compare the book's interpretation of Old England to a history's book interpretation on Old England