Moms Book Club…Project Motherhood discusses “Call the Midwife”, by Jennifer Worth

Editor’s Post by Deborah Hetrick Catanese

Sometimes you just have to fess up when things don’t exactly go as planned, just like Allison did a few weeks ago when Branden acted up and messed up a scheduled family outing,  in the post “It Doesn’t Always Work As Planned: Dealing With Things Not Always Going Your Way”

My disappointment comes in regards to my goals for our 3^rd Selection of our Moms Book Club, “Call The Midwife: by Jennifer Worth.  I wanted my book selection to both help us turn our backs from winter and to give us an uplifting story in which to immerse ourselves. I don’t know about you, but it was not until the very last page of this book that I felt engaged or uplifted.  And what exactly was I thinking, when I chose a book for our Moms Book Club about the smog and bleak poverty of post war London to somehow distract me from the grey days of winter? Perhaps I thought that if heard about a young nurse’s deep commitment to help poor cockney mothers giving birth in often squalid conditions, I would feel uplifted.  I did not.

I admit to struggling to finish this book, and probably would NOT have finished it, if it weren’t for my commitment to our Moms Book Club.  But let me say this, and then I will move on to the discussion… our blog’s stated goals are Motherhood and Fashion and how they intersect, and I doubt this book would ever be filed under either of those headings.  My bad.

Yet, the book has its merits and is worthy of examination by our Moms Book Club, in spite of my disappointment, so here goes…

Moms Book Club Discussion Questions

Jennifer Worth, the author in this nonfiction account, tells her own story of when she was a young nurse in the 1950’s living in a convent of nuns in order to gain midwifery experience, which was the specialty of this group of nuns and their invaluable contribution to the community they served.  Did the reflective format of the book, written many years later, help you as a Mom to engage in her tale?

For me, the author’s format of telling me over and over again about the differences between then and now felt unnecessary.  Giving the history and telling the graphic details of life at that time would have sufficed, since anyone reading from the 21st Century perspective could readily see the stark contrast between childbirth then and childbirth now or all the other differences between life in those days and life now. These are contrasts that don’t require being hit on the head with a two by four to see.   For me, it brought to light why my writing teacher for my Creative Non-fiction class continually emphasized “Show, don’t tell.”  This author was definitely doing the showing, but the telling was unnecessarily redundant.

Focusing a chapter on different women, sometimes several chapters per woman, made sense to me, but I often felt like each chapter was a written as a stand-alone essay, since so much of the exposition about the squalid conditions of life in the slums or the strict mores of society at the time was repeated almost word for word in each chapter.  But the array of different types of mothers and their varying situations, just like we are today, make this very relatable for our Moms Book Club!

Did the author’s ambiguous relationship to the ways of the nuns and to the people she served affect your own view?

I confess that it did interfere for me, even though I admired her honesty when she expressed her inner feelings.  To be able to articulate her complex reactions so many years later is admirable, even though I sometimes was surprised at the judgmental nature of it. This was especially true in the chapter of about Mary, the young Irish runaway, who was beaten and assaulted by her own father, and then innocently fell for a charming but evil pimp who led her into the miseries of forced prostitution.  Mary was found on a street corner after she escaped from the brothel, desperate for help.  Just a few years older, our young midwife engaged with Mary in what seemed like a caring way, especially once she realized that a pregnancy had resulted from one of Mary’s liaisons.  Yet, even though she spent five chapters of sympathetic writing about Mary and her difficult plight, I was stunned at how coldly she leaves this topic with her readers:

“In any event, was there any true friendship between myself and Mary? Probably not.  It was mainly a friendship of dependence on her part, with pity and (I’m almost ashamed to confess it) curiosity, on my part [about the world of prostitution].  That is no basis for a meeting of minds, and true affection, so I let the contact drop.”

Ouch.  A nurse should surely know the difference from the very start between friendship and a client/patient relationship and should understand that both types of relationships can possess empathy. She lost me on this one, and I suspect the rest of our Moms Book Club might agree.

What about her attitudes about the specific personalities of the nuns? 

Ms. Worth does a fantastic job of describing her initial thoughts about each nun, and also how her opinion of them changes as time and situations expand her understanding of their inner workings and their individual strengths and foibles. The elderly yet irrepressible Sister Monica Joan is worthy of a book in her own right, and the author talks about her with brutal honesty mixed with deep admiration.  Yet the nuns did not get kid glove treatment from Ms. Worth, which I liked, because in many ways, they were her roommates.  I’m sure many of us Mamas can relate to how challenging even the holiest of roommates can be!

What part of the book impressed you most?

Since I fought my way through the book, I didn’t really sense the positive effect this reading for our Moms Book Club would have on me until the last paragraph. But in fact, I think it gave me exactly what I needed to hear at the time.  It came from one of our young midwife’s conversations with Sister Monica Joan, who lashed at her in frustration, “Questions, questions – you wear me out with your questions, child.  Find out for yourself – we all have to in the end.”

But  then, the nun softened as she often did after her initially blunt talk, with these beautiful words to Ms Worth:  “Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will follow.”

Yeah, I felt like the nun was talking to me! I’ll bet many of us could use a dose of acceptance right about now, as we struggle our way through the cold heart of winter. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad selection for our Moms Book Club, after all.

Your thoughts?

Fashionably yours,

Deborah