The Midwife's Apprentice

Alyce saves Will Russet, the village bully boy, from drowning. This is somewhat ironic given that Will's forever picking on her. But Alyce has a good heart, and she's not about to see harm come to...

In the beginning of chapter 11, Alyce feels conflicted about her inclinations. She is torn between her usual habit of deferring to her employer and her burning desire to distinguish herself as a...

The midwife sent Beetle into the woods to collect items for her. Beetle "gathered honey, trapped birds, and collected herbs, leeches, and spider's webs" (The Midwife's Apprentice, pages 12-13)....

The villagers yell at Beetle because they are angry at the Midwife. Since they need the Midwife's services, they take out their ire on her little apprentice, Beetle. The Midwife is a greedy woman...

The Midwife's Apprentice is set in medieval England, most likely during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries. The time period is not explicitly stated, but the author gives the reader...

An example of a conflict in the story is the conflict between Jane and Alyce about Alyce training to be a midwife. Jane adopts Alice from the dung heap, but does not necessarily want to train her....

Alyce goes through some dramatic changes throughout the story. She is definitely a dynamic character, and her names are as dynamic as she is. What's interesting about her names is that Alyce never...

The Midwife's Apprentice, written by Karen Cushman, is set in England during the Medieval Period-- sometime during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. The book offers a vivid...

Jane, the midwife, saves "Brat", the young girl at the beginning of the story, from boys who are taunting the young girl for sleeping in a dung heap. Jane is a greedy, proud woman who shows little...

Beetle is resilient and resourceful. As long as she could remember, she "had lived on her own by what means she could - stealing an onion here or helping with the harvest there in exchange for a...

No, Alyce is not the protagonist and antagonist at the same time. Alyce is the protagonist of The Midwife's Apprentice. An antagonist is a character that stands opposed to or in conflict with the...

Although she's often called a "lackwit fool" by others, Alyce is actually rather an intelligent young lady. Alyce may be illiterate as with most people at that time, and she may be an abandoned...

Beetle, later to be Alyce, does not stay outside the cottages for the birth of each new baby by her own choosing. Given the chance, Alyce would definitely be inside observing the birth and helping...

The answer to your question can be found in chapter one. The girl, known as Brat at this point in the book, is alone and homeless. She is hungry, and she is cold. Her clothes offer her little to...

Toward the end of the book, a woman who is about to give birth asks for Alyce instead of the normal midwife, Jane. Unfortunately for Alyce, the birth is a difficult one, and she is not able to do...

Before Beetle became the midwife's apprentice, she was homeless. She was an orphan with no known family. The girl did not even know her real name. She had been called Brat, so she went by that...

It takes many years for Alyce to have any self-esteem, but slowly, she is able to gain some self-esteem and confidence in her abilities as a midwife. She does encounter some "failures,"...

Alyce shows personal growth throughout the entire book. For me though, there is one specific location where I see significant growth for Alyce. The time is when Alyce actually takes on the...

Like the vast majority of people in medieval England, Alyce cannot read or write. Even most wealthy nobles and monarchs were illiterate, as reading and writing were activities largely confined to...

The protagonist is twelve or thirteen at the beginning, wandering the streets, and we only know her as Brat. A midwife, Jane, offers to feed her in exchange for work, and she changes her name to...

On one cold November morning, Alyce heads out to the cowshed to feed Tansy's twin calves, Baldred and Billfrith. While there, she notices a little boy fast asleep in the straw close to Tansy. It's...

The following excerpt was taken directly from enotes: This emotional engagement is deeper than just the response to a colorful tale well-told; it is enriched because the novel illuminates...

Alyce is fed up with being treated like dirt by the villagers, so she sets out to teach them a valuable lesson in respect by playing an elaborate prank upon them. She does this by carving hoof...

We've almost reached the end of chapter 6. The village bully, a boy by the name of Will Russet, has been mercilessly teasing Alyce again, calling her a dung beetle. Will has been giving Alyce a lot...

The first name applied to the girl in Karen Cushman’s novel is Brat. This is not the girl’s actual name; the girl’s true name is a mystery, so she goes by Brat. The name reflects the girl’s lowly...

The protagonist in a story is the main character who is in conflict with the antagonist, another character or force in the story. Alyce, the apprentice, is the protagonist, and she faces several...

The cat plays a number of roles in Beetle's first weeks in the village. Its existence is first of all a kind of mirror of Beetle's. Both are homeless and on their own, and both are tormented,...

The Midwife's Apprentice is a story of perseverance and hard work. It begins by introducing readers to a girl that is homeless and sleeping on dung piles. Jane will take her in, but that gesture is...

Of all of those characters, I think Jane Sharp has the biggest impact on transforming Alyce and helping her find her place in the world. Prior to meeting Jane Sharp, Alyce was a homeless beggar...

Jane is a bit of a jerk. She is the only midwife in the village, so this allows her to raise her service fees, because she has no competition. She is gouging her customers and there is nothing...

The answer to this question can be found early in the book. Look in chapter two, which is titled "The Cat." The chapter begins explaining to readers that Beetle (later to be Alyce) liked to watch...

Alyce and Runt have quite a lot in common. For one thing, they both have no family. Alyce was abandoned by her family, whereas poor little Runt is an orphan. Nowadays, we have social services...

The Midwife's Apprentice is set in medieval England, and the realities of life in a small English village during that period of time contribute to the mood and tone of the story in many ways. Even...

I would probably argue that Alyce is exactly what Jane needed in an apprentice; however, Alyce is exactly what Jane did not want in an apprentice. Alyce is a motivated young lady. She wants to...

Jane, the wicked midwife, is shouting at poor Beetle again. Having lost another one of her few remaining teeth and having also broken her ankle, the old crone is in a foul mood, and she throws...

A flashback is a literary device where an author describes past events in the present. There is a flashback on the second page of Chapter 1, when Brat, who in the present is "twelve or...

Beetle (later Alyce) seemed to have no one to talk to and no one to care for. As she talks to the cat, the reader understands her fear of others and her feeling of being a nothing. When she saved...

Two important settings from the novel were the dung heap and Jane's cottage. When the story began, Alyce was a homeless girl who found warmth in a dung heap. This setting was a place where...

I believe you may be referring to Magister Reese who teaches Alyce to read and write. At first, he pretends to teach her cat, Purr, because he sees how shy and isolated Alyce is. The second visitor...

Brat, a.k.a Beetle, is the protagonist of the story. She doesn't know how old she is, but it seems that she is twelve or thirteen; in fact, Brat doesn't know anything about herself, not even her...

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Alyce shows herself to be smart by quickly picking up the rudiments of midwifery. Not everyone can be a midwife, but Alyce shows herself more than capable of mastering this age-old profession....

At first, the midwife treats Beetle (naming the young girl for a dung beetle because she was found sleeping in a pile of manure for warmth, just as the insect does) as if she were stupid low-life....

The focus of similarities between Cushman's work and the modern setting revolves around identity formation in young people. Alyce's challenges, definition, and redefinition of self is a part of...

The Midwife sees Beetle as free labor, someone of whom she can take advantage to take care of the more odious and mundane aspects of her livelihood. She has no idea of how intelligent and...

I am going to assume that this question is asking about Alyce's return to Jane Sharp in the final chapter of the book. Alyce has returned to the village and Jane thinking that Jane is going to...