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The Midwife's Apprentice
For much of the book, the girl who becomes Alyce has names put onto her. At the beginning, she does not even know her name. She is destitute, homeless, and apparently an orphan. The other...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
Yes, when readers first meet Jane, she lives alone; however, that does not last long. When Jane meets the homeless Alyce, Jane decides to take her in as a source of cheap labor. Jane gets a...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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....
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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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The Midwife's Apprentice
At the time when the story is set—the Middle Ages—belief in the literal existence of the devil was widespread. It's no exaggeration to say that medieval folk believed that Satan was everywhere,...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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....
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
My list might differ from another list of major events in the novel, but I will definitely try to help. The first event is the introduction to the protagonist. She is known as Brat at this point...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
The first activity that was revealed by the presence of the strange footprints was the miller, "caught in the act of putting some of Dick's granny's grain into his own sacks". Since the theft was...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
Let me start with the genre. It's probably best described as children's historical fiction. It's accurate to a time period, but the characters are not actual historical figures. The children's part...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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)....
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
At the beginning of the story, the girl has no name until the midwife calls her "Beetle" because she was hiding under a dung heap to keep warm. By the end of the story, she has achieved her...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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,"...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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,...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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....
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
The protagonist in this book is Brat who is later called Beetle and finally takes the name Alyce. The protagonist is always the central figure or main character in the book.
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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...
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The Midwife's Apprentice
One of the conflicts in the book is overcoming obstacles. The dire poverty that Beetle endures, and her quest to reach her potential create a "two steps forward,one step back" situation....
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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