Gwen Tuinman

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women

Wandering Wombs, Births and Pessaries: Women’s Health Mansplained Throughout History

Whether we’re anxious about a potential illness or expecting a baby, being cared for by a professional who’s empathetic and inspires our confidence is a comfort. My experience with women healthcare practitioners has been positive. There’s a built-in understanding when I explain how I’m feeling. They’ve never invalidated my concerns.

Women practitioners have treated me as a whole person, not a jumble of body parts.

As a historical fiction author who’s interested in women’s lives, I’m always thinking of the past. This leads me to wonder about the care and understanding that women did—or didn’t receive—from male physicians before the prevalence of licensed female doctors.

I recently read Lisa See’s historical fiction, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, a story inspired by Tan Yunxian (1461–1554). Tan was one of a few women physicians during China’s Ming Dynasty and the first to publish a medical book. Women doctors and authors faced credibility issues. In the prologue, Tan wrote, “I beg readers’ indulgence and ask that they do not laugh at me.”

In the novel, I was struck by an account of a male doctor caring for a pregnant patient. Male doctors weren’t allowed to touch female patients, nor could married women be treated in the absence of their husbands. With the doctor seated on one side of a screen and the woman on the other, her husband acted as a go-between, posing the doctor’s questions to his wife and then repeating her answers to the doctor.

What quality of treatment did women receive under that kind of restriction?

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The Lost Daughter

On the advice of another author, I read Elena Ferrante’s novel The Days Of Abandonment. Her storytelling is direct, often addressing uncomfortable and socially taboo feelings about marriage divorce and motherhood. Parts left me cringing. The novel reaffirms that a character’s unabashed honesty pulls readers deep inside their point of view.

Netflix is showing The Lost Daughter, a small budget indie film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She wrote the script based on Ferrante’s novel of the same title about Leda, a middle-aged divorcee whose long-awaited vacation leads to painful introspection. I once binged on episodes of Actors Roundtable that featured Gyllenhaal. She asked why women actors arrived on set in full makeup and dress like bridesmaids while male panelists dress casually in T-shirts and jeans. She also pointed out that the male-dominated film industry generates movies to satisfy the male gaze.

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Canadian Women During WW1: New Freedoms and Old Pressures

My keen interest in the lives of Canadian women during WW1 stems from the novel I’m currently writing set in that same era. Prior to the war, women of middle- and upper-class families were monitored by chaperones. Working-class women, in whom I’m most interested, were unchaperoned but constrained by what society deemed “good” behaviour. The status quo took a drastic turn when, starting in 1914, the number of young women moving far from home began to climb. More women earned their own money, spent at their individual discretion. The sight of women smoking and drinking in pubs caused an uproar among traditionalists who were further shocked with changes to fashion. With so many women in the workplace finding long hair unsafe and dresses impractical, hairstyles grew shorter (and masculine in the view of some), hemlines continued to rise, and trousers became common.

Many shared concerns that the women flooding the workforce would result in the erosion of morality, a quality equated with patriotism. Anxieties rose around concerns of sexual impropriety and the sanctity of marriage.

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How to Make Butter in a Churn

In the novel I’m currently writing, one character— a farm wife living in the early 1900s—operates a home dairy and sells butter to local families. I recently discovered an inspiring historical document about a farming couple in the butter business—Samuel and Jane Spares from Northfield, Hants County, Nova Scotia.

Between 1885 and 1890, the Spares sold $770.00 of produce generated by their farm. Three quarters of those funds were generated by livestock products, but the remainder was owing to butter, oats, hay and wool. “The 350 lbs. of butter sold (an average of 58 lbs per year) was the most important of these products. Churned in the kitchen by Jane Spares and her daughters, home-produced butter remained an important element of this farm’s commercial output until the establishment of a dairy factory in the district after the turn of the century.”

With an interest in butter-making, I set out to learn the process used by our early families.

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Women Speaking

I once played a dinner-party game with friends. We took turns drawing cards from a deck of conversation starters. What famous person, dead or living, would you like to have dinner with? That sort of thing. The question I drew asked what famous person’s voice would I like to take on for a day.

Thought of certain theatrical artists and actors arose as I combed my mind for candidates. They train their voices for the stage. They learn to annunciate and project. Actors know how to breathe. You’d think breathing would come naturally. I often forget to do it when I’m anxious or overly focused on a task.  A well-meaning new acquaintance once commented unbidden, on the pitch of my voice and the way I spoke from ‘high in my throat’. She claimed that these aspects pointed to mother issues I’d yet to unpack. I gaped at her. Although I’ve written openly about the mother wound, the betrayal of my vocal cords felt like an ambush.  

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Choose to Challenge

When I was nearing the end of high school in 1981, a forward-thinking teacher challenged one of my classes with this riddle.

A father and son were in a car accident in which the father was killed. The ambulance brought the son to the hospital. He needed immediate surgery. In the operating room, a doctor came in, looked at the boy and said, “I can’t operate. He is my son.”

Who was the doctor?

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Dressing to Please Ourselves

I recently saw an Instagram post that asked, “When will the pandemic end? I just want to know if I should by pumps or more pajama pants.” We’re taught to dress for the occasion, but in past months we’ve been dressing for functionality and perhaps as an involuntary reflection of our mood.

Clothing, women, mood. Don’t we all have stories about this?

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Kit Coleman: Trailblazer for Women Journalists

Here in Canada, October is Women’s History Month. I’d like to celebrate by sharing the story of a woman journalist who, in the late 1800s, embarked on a career in journalism and gave a voice to women’s issues. She proved to Canadians that women’s interests reached beyond the kitchen and childrearing.

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Underrepresentation of Women in History Archives

I’ve been thinking about how as a writer, I am responsible for laying down a representation of women that reflects our reality. Many scholars recognize that, in historical archives, there is a limited representation of women on the American Frontier and in early Canada. It’s a commonly held view now that the Continue reading “Underrepresentation of Women in History Archives” →

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