Oh, the miseries women in history have gone through, just because of biology. Check out these wonderful historical novels.
“The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawhon is set in the late 18th century in Hallowell, Maine. It’s fiction, but it’s based on the actual journals of a real midwife named Martha Ballard.
The book’s Martha is a trained “midwife and healer” who keeps a journal in which she records details of births, deaths, etc. She tells us why she keeps a journal: “Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal. … I have a rather good idea what secrets might be recorded, then later revealed, if more women took up the pen.” She’s a likable, relatable character, and her husband, Ephraim, is one of the nicest guys in bookdom!
When a man’s dead body is found in the frozen river, Martha is called on to determine how he died. To Martha, it looks like murder, but a condescending young male doctor fresh out of Harvard challenges her findings.
Martha knows that two men recently assaulted Rebecca, the young pastor’s wife, and that the dead man was one of them. She must testify at the ensuing trials, but will she be believed? (Rebecca’s rape testimony is cringe-inducing.) Will the surviving rapist be found guilty? Was the other man murdered? If so, why and by whom?
This is a page-turner, offering an engrossing look at American village life in the 1700s, with its frustrating laws, busybodies, and bigotry. It’s part adventure, part mystery, part thriller.
Want more? Look for “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
“Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan is only 70 pages long, but its homey winter scenes conjure an imaginary holiday card: “How like a Christmas card it almost was with the yews and evergreens dusted in frost and how the birds, for some reason, had not touched a single berry on the holly bushes.” No wonder Oprah Winfrey picked it for her December book club read.
Bill Furlong is the coal and timber merchant in his Irish town. It’s December 1985, and families are getting ready for the holiday. The author’s details of the Christmas preparations are lovely and really seem to put the reader inside an Irish home: decorating, making the holiday cake, writing letters to Santa.
When Bill delivers coal to the nearby convent, he sees barefoot girls scrubbing the cold floor. He notices padlocks on the doors and that outside “the high wall … was topped with broken glass.” On another trip to the convent, he finds in the coal shed a girl who has obviously been locked in there all night. She seems to be in a trance and asks him about her baby. The grim condition of the girls haunts him. He asks around: The nuns are supposedly running a school and a laundry business, but there are rumors that the girls are “of low character who spent their days being reformed, doing penance.” Other rumors say it’s a home for unwed mothers, whose babies are taken away from them.
Bill asks himself, “Was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there … and face yourself in the mirror?” Because Bill does a good deed, this becomes a heartwarming story.
The last of these horrifying workhouses, run by the Catholic Church in Ireland, was shut down in 1996. For a deeper fictional dive into what happened in the laundries, “The Magdalen Girls” by V.S. Alexander is a riveting read.
In Dublin in 1962, the Sisters of Holy Redemption run an orphanage and laundry. They actually imprison girls who do all the work. The story focuses on three girls about age 16 who end up in the convent, at least two of whom are perfectly innocent.
Teagan is dragged from her bed in the middle of the night by her drunken father. “You’re the biggest disappointment of my life,” he tells her. She has no idea what he’s angry about as he drives her to the convent, where he signs papers that commit her to the nuns. She’s given a shabby uniform, her personal items are taken, and her name is changed. The nuns tell her, “You are here because … you have committed a mortal sin, a deliberate and deceitful act, which requires your expiation.” She isn’t allowed to speak, to defend herself.
Inside the convent there is no privacy, no talking, no laughter, no contact with the outside world without permission. On Teagan’s first night, “No one had spoken at tea or prayers. … After prayers, they had filed silently out of the chapel, up the two flights of stairs to their beds. … Not one girl talked, not even in the showers. The two nuns finally turned off the lights and closed the doors. The room was plunged into gloom.”
Teagan becomes friends with two other girls, and they help each other get through the despair of workhouse drudgery, punishment, and forced prayer. They keep their hopes up by planning to escape, but Teagan thinks the rest of the girls “don’t have the energy to fight. Everyone is too broken.” Eventually, Teagan, too, feels despondent: “For a moment, she felt as if nothing mattered, as if her life had been taken away.”
The story shows how lies and rumors can ruin a life. During some harrowing moments in the totally immersive narrative, I found myself shouting aloud at the nuns, “Stop it!” and at the girls, “No! No! Don’t be stupid!”
I have to warn you that there are triggers: suicidal thoughts, self harm, alcohol abuse, and infant deaths.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the Record-Courier, where she was an editor.