40 pages • 1 hour read
Karen CushmanThe Midwife's Apprentice
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Merchant”
Coming home from errands one day, Jane falls and breaks her ankle, which means Beetle will go to a festival in her place. With Jane’s warnings not to lose her money and to buy only what they need, Beetle sets out with her heart full of joy and finds the festival to be as amazing and wondrous as she’d hoped. As the day ends, she makes Jane’s purchases and notices a hair comb with a carving of a sleeping cat. The merchant notices her interest and tosses it in for free, telling her to “comb those long curls till they shine, girl, and sure you’ll have a lover before nightfall” (29). Beetle is amazed to own something so nice, and though she doesn’t know it yet, the merchant’s words were also a gift.
Someone mistakes Beetle for a girl named Alyce and asks her to read numbers about the horse race. The man realizes his mistake and leaves, but Beetle understands that she is worthwhile and that she deserves a name. She decides to call herself Alyce and heads home not noticing the cold because she feels warm inside.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Naming”
Back in the village, Alyce corrects Jane when she calls her Dung Beetle, insisting that her name is now Alyce. As she seeks out the cat to tell him her new name, she corrects other villagers as well. Deciding that the cat needs a name, too, so that she can call him for breakfast, she offers several options, finally settling on Purr because he continues to make the sound.
That night, some of the village boys chase Alyce, who climbs a tree to get away from them. As the boys taunt her, one of them (Will) falls into the water and starts to sink. The other boys run away, not wanting to be blamed when he drowns, and Alyce—who cannot swim—lowers a tree branch into the water for Will to grab, saving him. Will tells her, “You have pluck, Alyce” (37), and the two go their separate ways.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Devil”
Despite Alyce changing her name, life in the village goes on as it always has, “until the day the Devil walked about” (39). Upset that the villagers largely still treat her poorly, Alyce tricks them all into believing the devil has come to the village, leaving footprints the villagers follow to find people engaged in greed, lust, and the other deadly sins. When she’s gotten them all back for their cruelty, Alyce throws the wood carvings of strange hooves she made into the river, which later wash up on the shore of a nearby village.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Twins”
One day while Alyce is out gathering apples, she hears Will yelling for help. His cow has fallen in a pit and is about to give birth. Together, Alyce and Will calm and soothe the cow until she delivers twins, and then they all climb out of the pit. Will tells everyone how she helped and the good luck she brought, and Alyce, proud, “[feels] her skin prickling with delight” (49).
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Bailiff’s Wife’s Baby”
When the bailiff’s wife goes into difficult labor, Jane sends Alyce running back to the cottage for more supplies. When Alyce returns, the baby has still not been born, but Jane has been sent for by a richer family whom she decides to go help. When Alyce starts to cry because she doesn’t know what to do for the bailiff’s wife, Jane orders her to do nothing. Jane says that the baby is doomed to die, which means she will go help the rich family, come back to collect the stillborn child, “and collect both fees” (54).
Unable to watch while the woman suffers, Alyce cares for her and calms her as she did to the cow, helping her to give birth to a healthy girl. When Jane returns for her fee, the bailiff doesn’t pay her and instead praises Alyce.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
The kindness Alyce experiences at the festival in Chapter 5 is notable, as it jumpstarts her character transformation and offers a significant lesson in how Confidence Brings Self-Worth, as well as in The Power of Kindness. Prior to seeing the hair comb decorated with a cat, Alyce is content to wander the fair and stay unnoticed. The comb’s beauty calls to her like nothing else ever has, and she is struck by the desire to have it because it is fancy and because it reminds her of the cat. The merchant giving her the comb and telling her she’s pretty demonstrates the way a single act of kindness can make a lasting impact. His actions and words are kind by themselves—although situated on her appearance and suggestive of sexuality, as denoted by his use of “lover”—but even more, they begin a transformation within Alyce that takes root, which is evident when she insists that Jane and the other villagers start calling her by her new, proper name—Alyce. His words help Alyce to see that she is worthwhile and, later, to realize that she is beautiful.
In the short term, the merchant’s words also show Alyce that she deserves better than she’s been given. The villagers have always treated her poorly, and still do, because they see her as a beggar who previously slept in a heap of dung. While she begins to stand up to them by insisting that they use her name, her tricks in Chapter 7 show that she is gaining even more confidence, which makes her less afraid to go after what she wants—the dignity of being acknowledged as a part of the community and not a nuisance to be rid of. Notably, Alyce extends her budding senses of dignity and worth to the cat. In Chapter 6, she strengthens their relationship by naming him. Alyce settles on Purr because the cat keeps making the sound, but the name is also fitting because it describes the cat’s actions and mindset regarding Alyce: contentment, as the cat, mirroring Alyce, has found a place. She is also protective of him, telling the boys who attempt to torment him again in Chapter 9, “Touch that cat again […] and I will unstop this bottle of rat’s blood and viper’s flesh and summon the Devil” (53), contrasting with her passivity during the boys’ attempt to drown Purr.
Kindness again comes to the fore through Alyce’s rescue of Will, assistance during the calves’ birth, and Will’s encouragement of Alyce; this section furthers the theme of The Comfort of Finding One’s Place. In this instance, Alyce is the one who extends kindness, expecting nothing in return. She again helps Will when he asks Alyce to help deliver the calves. In this scene, Will plays a key role in both renewing her confidence in her midwifery skills and accessing her own voice and building her own techniques, giving her the confidence to proceed in a way she was unable to with the miller’s wife. Will encourages her to sing, gently rub the cow’s belly, and keep the animal calm, contrasting with Jane’s techniques, which include insulting laboring mothers. Alyce draws upon this lesson to help the bailiff’s wife. While rescuing Will was not enough to gain Alyce esteem among the villagers, her successful deliveries of the calves and the bailiff’s wife’s baby both renew Alyce’s shaken confidence and establish her reputation as a competent apprentice, placing Alyce back on the path toward finding her place. Though she is scared in both situations, she demonstrates trust in herself and those around her, which allows all the babies to be born safely.
