Grief Debate
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Historyofdeathppts.pptxHIST 3560 History of Emotions Death, Mourning and Grief
Prof. Donna Schuele
Spring 2023
American attitudes towards death: Major Movements
Mid 18th-mid-19th century:
Domestication and sentimentalization of death
Effect was to significantly increase the role of death and the dead in the world of the living
Later 19th century through the later 20th century:
Major withdrawal on the part of the living from communion with and commitment to the dying and the dead
Death became alienated from life and the world of the dead was lost to the living
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Grief in the Colonial Era
Widespread belief in existence of God and an afterlife meant that death did not constitute an important challenge to the individual’s sense of self
Life was viewed as a pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world to an ultimate home in the next; thus, life itself was unimportant except as a trial and preparation for the coming “eternal” home – life was to be endured
Death was not denied:
there was too much of it, particularly among children; it was generally accepted as a commonplace if harsh reality to be followed by entrance into a heavenly state
In Massachusetts, 1 out of 4 children born up to the mid 18th c. did not survive past 10 years old; every couple could expect to lose 2-3 children
Proper place for death was in the home, surrounded by loved ones, including children; ideally, the dying person “presided” over his or her death, fully aware of his or her condition
Focus was on death, which was feared; little public interest in grief
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Grief in Colonial Period
Death of an individual was experienced as a community loss; thus, community rallied to assist the bereaved family:
Disposition of the body:
Laying out (dressing) and attending to the body in the home until burial
Construction of a coffin
Bearing the body to the burial site
Digging and covering the grave
Commemorating the deceased: role of clergy was minimized and instead the funeral was often the occasion of socializing and festive in nature
Impact of death passed quickly as bereaved spouses remarried shortly, often in less than a year
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Hallmarks of Victorian emotional culture
Intensity of emotion but at the same time control of emotion: i.e., the capacity for deep feeling along with the capacity to direct that feeling to appropriate targets
Division between the public and the private is a crucial aspect
What this public/private dichotomy meant for men:
burden on men was greater because they had to develop two emotional faces –one domestic and the other economic and political; thus men were allowed more emotional range than women
Example: songs about grief often used examples of women’s death, which then emphasized the male role in grief and reminded the audience of female frailty
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Effect of Victorian Emotional Culture
Amplified changing role of family that had been going on for previous 100 years
Impacted public institutions, affected individual experience, and colored the way middle-class Americans reacted to the emotions of others
Emotional rules encouraged high peaks and considerable duration, especially where love and grief were concerned
emotional intensity of others accepted as long as settings were appropriate
Emphasis on importance of family members and friends generated a sense of social similarity across gender lines
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Causes of Victorian emotional culture
1) industrialization and urbanization
Emergence of middle class
Separation of home and work
Role of competitiveness in public sphere
Emergence of middle-class values
Gender purposes
2) shifts in emotional culture which led to more shifts in emotional culture: intense love leads to intense grief
3) changing conceptions of the body from the 17th c to the 19th c
4) changes in religious culture
Mainstream Protestantism
Religiosity
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1) industrialization/urbanization
capitalism led to formation of class, and emotional expression and restraint provided a basis for middle class to distinguish itself from working class
By 1830s, impact of commercializing economy began to be felt, which enhanced special emotional role of family – absence of father/husband from home required emotional style that separated public from private and standards that were intensified in order to protect the established value of family life – family seen as an emotional haven
By late 1840s, industrialization also required new emotional motivations for competitive work – Victorian standards were meant to enshrine family while providing spur to achievement in public life (for men)
Industrialization and urbanization made class boundaries more vivid, and middle class prided itself on its restraints and subtleties (courage, channeled anger, although class differentiation began in late 18th c among upper-class)
emotional arguments helped justify confining women to home, which became a necessity as the location of men’s work shifted to outside the home; men welcomed emotional badges (such as channeled anger and courage) because these bolstered male qualities at a time when industrialization created masculine insecurities; emotional masculinity complemented men’s increasing role as economic provider
3) Conceptions of body:
17th to 18th centuries: emotions were linked to bodily fluids and functions – traditional view that connected emotion and physical sensation;
18th century: this idea began to give way to a more mechanistic view of the body, and in this mechanism, emotions were harder to pin down; emotions came to be discussed as independent entities (things)
19th c.: new basis for emotional intensity outside of the body
4) Changes in religious culture:
Changes in mainstream Protestantism supported Victorian optimism about the consequences for intense emotion – the belief in a benign God led solace in times of grief as heaven was seen as a place to reunite with loved ones
Changes is commitment to religiosity: as fewer Americans were religiously active and religious dogma lost some of its fervor (because to some degree of the rise of science, urbanization, industrialization), emotional intensity could be sought as a substitute for religious experience (recall that romantic love was seen as spiritual)
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Culture of Death in Victorian Era
Death is more public in Victorian era and becomes more of a private experience after WWI
Studies of death in this period focus on growth of rural cemetery movement in early 19th c., ostentatious memorials as a signifier of social status, and growth of elaborate funeral customs
Advances in medicine were influential in changing attitudes towards death and dying, but religion and demography were probably principal engines of change
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Changes in culture of death: 18th to 19th century
Major changes from 18th to 19th century:
Greater role given to death in the living world
More genteel perspective towards dying and dead
Change locked in by mid-19th century:
Death was seen within the context of a growing attachment to life
Growing uncertainty over whether there was an existence after death
Thus, dead should not be allowed to truly die; they must be kept in some form in the living world
Death became less and less acceptable, not only for self but for others close to us, leading to it become domesticated and beautified
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Attitudes about death in Victorian Era
The good death:
evangelical model characterized by persistent faith, humility, and submission to the will of God
prolonged and agonizing deaths were seen as good deaths because they emphasized that suffering with fortitude was a virtue and gave unbelievers time to repent
The bad death:
sudden deaths, suicides, deaths of unbelievers;
these deaths exacerbated grief of the religious bereaved
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Class basis of attitudes about death
working-class culture of death revealed 3 concerns:
Respectability (including beautification)
Fear of pauper burial
Fear of dissection
Respectable burial meant avoiding the pauper grave – it signified poverty, suggested insufficient grief, and condemned the death to obscurity/anonymity
These concerns led to relative extravagance on the part of families when burying their dead
strategies to avoid pauper’s grave: pawn possessions, buy burial insurance, have a pauper corpse exhumed in order to be reburied in a private plot
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How was emphasis on respectability manifested?
Mourning jewelry: transformation of mourning rings (worn in colonial period) from harsh depictions of death to more sentimental depictions
Funeral eulogies: transformed from an obsession with harsh detail of death and sermons of judgment to a less straightforward addressing of death and more sentimentality
Gravestone language: went from “here lies” or “here lies buried” to the more abstract “in memory of” to “sacred to the memory of,” which indicates an interest in keeping the dead as part of the living world
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How would dead be kept alive?
Rural cemetery movement
Preserving and presenting the dead
Communing with the dead
Funeral rites and other public displays
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Rural Cemetery Movement
began in 1830s with burial site given new significance by living who sought to keep dead alive by making the burial site an attractive popular location
initial motivation for establishment of cemeteries was to maintain public health as old graveyards from 18th c were deteriorating, crowded, offensive quagmires
new motivation was to create a beautiful rustic environment without the gloom of death; dead would now receive appropriate respect in serene burial site and living would use these sites as parks
at first nature was emphasized but this gave way to elaborate man-made structures and statues
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Rural Cemetery Movement
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Preserving and Presenting the Dead
Burial containers:
moved from rough-hewn coffins to the casket which was durable and ornate –
movement from merely encasing the body to presenting the dead, like a jewel box
coffin had been hoisted on shoulders, now casket had handles for carrying
Embalming:
Need for body to be preserved:
as population dispersed, body had to be kept preserved for longer periods so that mourners could have time to gather for the funeral,
Civil War presented problem of returning corpses home
French historian Phillippe Aries noted that this obsession with embalming was peculiarly American and considered it a form of death denial
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Victorian caskets
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Other ways to keep dead alive
Communing with the dead:
Spiritualism: reached a peak in the 1850s and then peaked again in the 1870s, after the Civil War
Photographs of dead
Formal displays of grief:
complex system of mourning developed
Funeral rites
mourning paraphernalia (jewelry, clothing)
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Victorian mourning jewelry
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Victorian attitudes about death: Conclusion
Comparative differences:
U.S. vs. Great Britain: in U.S., emphasis was on beauty and expressiveness, while in Britain mourning was more gloomy and formal
In rural areas the role of the community remained more significant for longer and mourning remained more simple
Conclusion:
The presence of the body constituted and assurance that the deceased would not really die for a long time to come
Death and the dead gained an increasingly substantial place in the lives of the living
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