Confession: I watched the show first.
In my defense I didn’t know it was a book when I stumbled upon the PBS Special on Netflix, burnt out on school, I was too happy to have found something, nostalgic, well characterized, and griping, to do anything but binge. Then of course learning that it was in fact a memoir I had to get my hands on the source.
I was not disappointed.
Midwifes are the creatures of medieval gore and legend or the post modern return to the natural order movement, however Call the Midwife: A memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times is a story of ordinary women, living a life of extraordinary work. The Midwife is at last shown in all her practical glory, out from the ding, out from the mystic haze. These women were trained professional nurses, who brought all of the advancements of modern medicine (what was modern in the 1950’s) and the practical knowledge gained by their superiors through years of dedicated work to the mothers and babies of the East End of London – where medical care was a new and seemingly miraculous occurrence.
Through Jennifer Worth’s recollections we are not only invited in to the Midwifes hidden world for a cup of tea, but to the equally hidden world of the Cloistered life of Nuns, and to the world of the docklands after post World War. A world permanently altered by the advent of so many technological and sociological changes, none so much as the mass availability of consistent birth control to women. I found this book to be a artless recounting of experiences, with out agenda; events were not crumpled and muddled to fit a narrative.
I’ve read a few reviews on GoodReads (as I am an avid fan) and a slim number seemed to be discomfited by three chapters in the book, in which Jennifer Worth Recounts her experiences working with a young teenaged girl who was pushed into prostitution. Labeling the chapters as pornographic, and unnecessary. I do not claim any experience with pornography, but it has always been my understanding that the purpose of it is to titillate and arouse. To me there can be nothing less pleasurable than reading about women, girls and children who have been victimized and used for the profit of cruel men.
It certainly was not what I would describe as a light hearted section of the book. Call the Midwife is a memoir, an un-redacted account of how life was at that particular point in time, in that place. The sad reality is that the life of those women and girls describe is not a thing of the past, it is not a mystic fable reaching out from the sad rags of time. Children live that life today: Women, boys, and girls. I think what was so discomfiting to those readers was that they view the past as a golden era, a time when life was simple, when people were safe. It disrupts that fantasy to read.
If that isn’t something that you want to put it in your mind, it is simple enough to turn past those pages to the rest of the book. I found the book in its entirety not only entertaining, but informative. I would recommend the book to anyone who finds the past, and most specifically the undocumented achievements of women, to be fascinating. I anticipate her next books, with unconcealed excitement.
