to his home and begins to tend to the boy's laboring mother. Despite all her efforts, however, the baby refuses to be born. Ultimately, Alyce realizes that she must send for the midwife.

The chapter ends on a sad note; ashamed of her failure, Alyce decides to leave the village.

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.  She can assist in births, but if she learns how to be a midwife she will cut into Jane’s business.  This is a conflict between Jane and Alyce. 

From the beginning, there is a conflict between Jane and Alyce (called Beetle).

The first time they were called to a cottage, Beetle vied to go in, but Jane slapped her, calling her clodpole and shallow- brained whiffer, and made her stay outside where she wouldn't get in the way. (Ch. 3)

Alyce does not want to just stay outside.  She wants to be a real apprentice, and learn how to deliver babies.  She gets her chance when Alyce leaves a delivery to assist another one.  Jane takes the delivery of the wealthier woman, and Alyce stays and delivers the baby.  The parents pay her, which does not please Alyce.

Alyce also doubts herself, resulting in an internal conflict.  She is afraid she really can deliver a baby, and when a birth is difficult and Jane has to step in, her hopes are shattered.  She leaves the profession, but an emergency birth leads her to take it up again.

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 compassion for anyone, so she doesn't save "Brat" out of the kindness of her heart. Jane needs someone to work for her and figures the young girl is so desperate she'll do whatever she's told. She renames the girl "Beetle" and uses and abuses her. Beetle's only friend is a cat named Purr that she saved from the abuse of some boys. Beetle is young, eager to learn, and compassionate, whereas Jane is hardened to life's problems. Beetle later takes the name Alyce. Will Russet is a boy who used to torment Alyce, but she saves him from drowning, and he becomes her friend. Magister Reese is a man Alyce meets when she runs away and goes to work at the inn. He helps restore Alyce's confidence.

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 conflicts in the story. One conflict is an inner one of feeling she lacks value to anyone, even herself. She has been treated unkindly all of her life, and she has no home or anyone to care about her, so Brat does what she must to survive. Her new name, Beetle, is given to her because she tries to keep warm in a dung heap.

The midwife knows she can use Beetle any way she wishes since she's homeless and uneducated. The midwife becomes the character protagonist that Beetle must struggle against. The midwife abuses Beetle and treats her like a slave.  But Beetle has, for the first time in her life, some kind of stability in her life, and she won't give it up. Becoming "Alyce", she now begins to see that she can be worthy of delivering babies, and she also realizes that learning to read gives a person power. She runs away, however, the first time she can't deliver a baby because she's afraid to fail. She meets Magister Reese, who teaches her to read, and her confidence begins to return. When he asks her what she wants, she tells him she wants to have food to eat, a happy heart, and to find where she belongs in the world. When the midwife comes looking for her, Alyce realizes midwifery is her purpose.

The protagonist of  The Midwife's Apprentice begins with the least promising future you could imagine in any character, yet by the end of the novel “she has moved far beyond the desperate struggle just to survive and become a person who knows ."  She is known in the beginning only as Brat, but  after she digs herself into a village dung heap to keep warm the local boys torment her with cries of '"Dung beetle! Dung beetle! Smelly old dung beetle sleeping in the dung.'" A woman comes by, scatters the taunting boys, awards Brat the new name Beetle, and meagerly feeds the starving girl in exchange for work.  Beetle becomes the apprentice to the greedy, mean and often cruel midwife, Jane.  She eventually becomes known as Alyce.