Parallel worlds of two women
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Phillips Professor of Early American History, and director of the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, will speak at Loyola on Friday, October 22, at 7 p.m. in Nunemaker Auditorium. In her lecture, "Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History," Ulrich will assess the implications of the widespread idea that only non-conforming women make history.
Ulrich is best known for A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary: 1785-1812. Ballard's diary details the everyday rituals of her life and gives insight into how colonial women lived in the 18th and 19th centuries; how they were treated; and what they thought and felt. It was this book which won Ulrich the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. She says she discovered the diary by accident while browsing through the state library in Maine.
"I decided to stop in at the adjoining state library to look at two diaries I had seen in a bibliography of women's history. One turned out to be a 10-page typescript. The other was Ballard'stwo fat volumes bound in homemade linen coversI was awed by the sheer bulk of it."
She spent the summer reading the manuscript and the next eight years writing her book. "I think I captured the diary personally, but I am not sure about the human personality behind the diary. There are so many things I'd love to know, and I'd love to hear her speak." Though Ulrich was concerned about the accuracy of Ballard's voice in her book, she believes she got pretty close to the structure of her work.
What would Ballard make of all the attention her diary has received? Ulrich says, "I think she would diminish the importance of her own life, that she might find the publicity threatening. It's threatening to me to be celebrated. There's a little bit of that, you know, 'women are to be seen and not heard' in me."
But on the other hand, she kept the diary. "So there's a part of me that says although she might not admit it, I think she would have to be glad."
Because Ulrich spent so much time embedded in the life of Ballard, she began to feel that Ballard was always around her and her family. "During the years that we all lived with Martha, our family celebrated high school and college graduations, two weddings, the completion of four Ph.D.s, and the birth of a grandchild. When my 80-year-old mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Martha sat with me at the hospital alternatively marveling and despairing at the miracles of modern medicine."
Ulrich says her family was very supportive of her eight-year endeavor. They got used to Ballard being there and accepted her presence. She became a kind of personage in the house.
"My husband thought he lived with Martha, too. And you know, it can be a burden to live with a character like that. She's so powerful, strong, and self-sacrificial. And I'd wonder, 'What would Martha think of me?'"
Ulrich's latest novel, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, explores the use of objects saved by Americans through the centuries and stories they have passed along. She delves into the world of a chimneypiece, a cupboard, a niddy-noddy, silk embroidery, and an unfinished stocking. For Ulrich, these basic household objects provide the key to a transformed understanding of the Revolutionary War, international commerce, and the early age of industrialization in America. It reveals the people of this age; their relationships and interactions. Using each piece as thread to construct a larger picture, Ulrich shows how ordinary objects bring to light the larger economic and social structure. v
—Lindsay Hilton, A'03, Media Relations Specialist
