THE BIRTH HOUSE (2006)

Author: Ami Mckay

Genre: Historical Fiction

 The novel tells the story of Dora Rare, who is rare indeed: she is the first daughter to be
born in her family in more than five generations. McKay uses fictional news articles, folk
tales, diary entries, and letters to further the traditional narrative, adding context to the
story.

 Dora lives in an isolated village in Nova Scotia around the turn of the century and does her
best to hold her own against her passel of brothers. Some call her a witch or a
changeling—she was born with a caul over her head, in folklore, a sign of a child born with
magical abilities.

 Young Dora finds her calling when the local midwife Miss Babineau, called Miss B, recruits
Dora to help her with a difficult birth. Dora shows a talent for the work, and Miss B takes
her in as a pupil, teaching her traditional medicine and the skills needed to become a
midwife. Dora has misgivings at first but learns to enjoy the work. Miss B, a Cajun
immigrant from Louisiana, writes down her wisdom in a journal called “The Willow Book.”
She is the village wise-woman; people flock to her for her folk remedies and tinctures.

 Shortly after Dora begins to learn midwifery, a new doctor, Gilbert Thomas, moves to
town. Dr. Thomas, offering modern solutions rather than traditional folk remedies,
assures the local women he can deliver their children painlessly, with the help of drugs.
Miss B and Dora clash with Dr. Thomas over his methods, which are faddish and often
rooted in misogyny.

 Dr. Thomas sets up a hospital for women, displacing the “birth house” and midwifery of
Miss B and Dora. He is greedy, more focused on the bill than the treatment itself. And his
treatments are questionable: for example, he administers vibrators to women,
supposedly to prepare them for pregnancy. His method of painless birth is to chloroform
the mother and extract the infant with forceps while the mother is unconscious. This way
of giving birth disturbs Dora, who feels that it is less real for the mother, less meaningful if
she does not experience the pain and the joy of it.

 When Miss B dies, Dora takes her place as the town midwife. Losing some of her business
to Dr. Thomas, she struggles to hold on to everything Miss B has passed down to her, the
accumulated wisdom and knowledge of home births.

 At the same time, Dora is pushed into an arranged marriage that quickly turns abusive.
Her husband hits her and openly romances other women in front of her. Dora takes his
abuse, hoping that everything will somehow change if she can give him a child. She is
trying to find her place in the world, reading Miss B’s Willow Book and trying to decipher
the old woman’s methods. She receives support from members of the town’s Occasional
Knitters Society, a circle of women who support Dora’s old-fashioned holistic methods.
 Tragedy strikes and is quickly compounded when one of Dora’s patients dies. Her
patient’s husband accuses Dora of murder, and Dr. Thomas is quick to back him up, Dora
is forced to flee her hometown, her practice, and her marriage to Boston. There, she
reunites with one of her brothers and works with the city’s prostitutes, administering her
knowledge of women’s medicine. Dora’s midwifery is a way for McKay to explore
women’s issues of the times and their lack of freedom over their bodies and choices.

 Dora’s husband, Archer, dies. She returns to Nova Scotia, where the villagers, finally fed
up with Dr. Thomas’s questionable practices, have run him out of town. Dora establishes a
“birth house” of her own to replace Thomas’s shuttered hospital, one that dictates no
woman will be turned away. In time, she finds love with Hart, who treats her well, and
they adopt and raise a child named Wrennie. Dora doesn’t marry Hart, refusing when he
asks.

 In an epilogue, an older Dora reflects back on the years she spent running the Birth
House, the women she helped, and what her work has meant to her.

 The Birth House was a number one bestseller in Canada, won three CBA Libris awards,
and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Some readers
observed that Dora’s ideas and perspectives felt closer to those of a modern woman than
of an early twentieth-century one and that the central conflict of folk versus modern
medicine felt unsubtle. McKay followed The Birth House with another historical novel,
The Virgin Cure, about a nineteenth-century female physician.

CHARACTERS

Dora Rare - was a young woman born into a family of six brothers. Her birth was a
miracle in her family – there hadn’t been a female in five generations born to Rares. As a
young woman of fifteen, she begins training with the neighbourhood midwife.

Miss Babineau - an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes
Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility,
difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives.

Gilbert Thomas - Doctor of Obstetrics, from the next county, who has opened up a
modern Birth Centre with the most modern medical treatments. Dr. Thomas struggles
to gain business from traditional, rural women. He resorts to discrediting Dora’s ability
and knowledge. She remains firm and convicted.

Wrennie - A pivotal moment in the book occurs when, one evening, an abused girl of
thirteen shows up on Dora’s doorstep. She’s in labour, and abandoned by her family.
The young woman dies while giving birth, but the daughter is left in Dora’s care. She
calls her Wrennie and raises her as a daughter.

Archer Bigelow - Dora marries a local man, named Archer Bigelow. Archer Bigelow’s
family has money, but he has no job. He is unloving and abusive, and forbids her from
practicing midwifery. Archer often disappears for bouts of debauchery, depression and
drunkenness. Dora however, believes that everything will be made right, if only she
could conceive a child. This never happens. As Archer becomes more despondent and
distant, Dora becomes inspired by her friends to practice her trade of midwifery. Archer
dies in an unfortunate sea accident.

Hart – Archer’s older and unattached brother. He steps up to the role of helping Dora
with the house and the animals. Dora never remarries, but she does start a
monogamous sexual relationship with Hart (her brother-in-law) and grows old and
happy.