Western Attitudes Toward Death
French historian, Philippe Ariès theorised that societal attitudes towards death in western culture had passed through four distinct phases. Ariès named these four phases or timeframes as, “Tamed Death,” One’s Own Death,” “Thy Death,” and “Forbidden Death”.
Existing before the seventeenth century, the oldest and longest lasting of these involved a resignation and an acceptance of death. Ariès describes dying with family surrounding the deathbed. In a calm and planned manner, the person dying would express regrets and sorrow, seeking pardon and passing on their possessions and hopes. The thoughts of the dying would then turn from the living to their God. Death was seen as a normal part of life, conducted without much emotion or theatrics. One final consideration was what people did with the dead. In ancient times, the body might have been interred at home, the dead person remaining as part of the family unit. Ariès says that people did not want the dead close by. Since Roman times, the dead had been interred outside of city walls. Only later, as settlements expanded, did it become the custom to bury the dead in churchyards within the bounds of these settlements (Ariès, 1975, pp. 1–25). Ariès named this timeframe “Tamed Death” to contrast with a later and less tamed or planned attitudes This attitude towards death persisted until the eleventh and twelfth centuries when Ariès tells us there was a shift towards a different set of attitudes which he named, “One’s Own Death”. He emphasises that the old beliefs didn’t go away but that this new idea was a subtle alteration of perspective on existing ideas. This change was framed around the Christian concept of what happened after death. Heaven for the good and Hell for the bad with a weighing and judgement of good deeds versus bad deeds. One subtle change was belief that the measuring or judgement of a person’s life takes place on last day of the world and not at the point of an individual’s death. The traditional deathbed scene now had an addition burden on the dying where the actions and achievements of the dying were measured and judged with particular interest in how the dying might respond as the deeds were played back to them. In this period, there was a desire to name a person on their tombstone. This marking of graves had been common in the Roman times but had vanished and was not a feature of “Tamed Death”. Ariès tells us that the art involving corruption of the body and of the flesh being consumed had a religious warning telling the populace to be good lest moral corruption result in physical corruption. (Aries, 1975, pp. 27–52) The depiction and recording of ideas surrounding death through art and literature which extends to the modern day, are of particular interest to my study. By the eighteenth century, Ariès tells us that there was a clear divergence from earlier attitudes towards death. The new period he called, “Thy Death”. This period is when acceptance and being a witness to death shifted and mourning and grief became more common. By the eighteenth century the custom of having marked tombs or inscriptions had extended ever to the lower classes as people became more conscious of their place in time, their place in the world and how their death sat within this awareness. This development in western attitudes towards death had shifted from an acceptance than death was a normal part of life towards the idea of a ‘break’ or a ‘rupture’ from the normal day to day of life. The development of thoughts about death lead to the idea of animalistic eroticism and then towards romantic death and impacted upon the ideas of mourning and grief towards the dead. It seems that ideas were mobile but in general could be considered more expressive. I have to pause here as I wondered, had grief not been linked to death forever? Allan Kellehear comments that grief is a psychological reaction to loss but that the sense of loss is about the passing of an identity, but crucially not all identity, “because few in earlier societies held that kind of nihilistic view”. (Kellehear, 2007, p. 111) The idea that death was a transitional rite is interesting to help explain Ariès. If death is in part defined by the social preparations around death and dying and importantly as a passage to an afterlife rather than by a sense of grief which focuses on the loss of an individual, it seems that modern grief is focused on the here and now, while earlier thoughts about death placed the here and now in a broader belief-based construct. Moving back to Ariès and ‘Thy Death’, he touches upon art and graves. This stemmed for an apparent unwillingness to accept the death of a loved one. Some took this to extremes and would keep the physical remains. The living didn’t wish to pass their loved ones into the care of the church but to keep them close, to have family burial plots which could be seen as an extension of the home. This concept was related to the idea of a familiar place filled with memories. The memory was alien from what the church taught, but through memory came the idea of immortality. Even people who were not religious, who might not visit churches would visit graveyards to pay respects to loved ones in a place familiar to them and filled with memory. This idea expanded to a cult of memory where the state would venerate the graves of ‘the great’. The state might also shift such veneration back into the church with tombs within the walls of great abbeys. Ariès ends this chapter by mentioning that different countries started to diverge in how they treated their dead often because of which was the dominant religion. (Ariès, 1975, pp. 55–82) The final period in Ariès book started in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I suppose this continues to this day. Ariès called this period, ‘Forbidden Death’. I can almost write about this without referring to Ariès words as this period seems so familiar to me. Death now takes place in hospitals and care homes and hospices. Interesting when hospitals really are places to try and cure the living that they have become places for the dead. All of this resulted in avoiding speaking about death and the suppression of natural emotions with resultant health issues. The attitudes to death shifted. No longer did everyone wear black at a funeral. No longer was solemn music played. Cremation became more common and the extension of the home, the grave and place of pilgrimage changed.
I will quote Ariès speaking of this period,
“Too evident sorrow does not inspire pity but repugnance, it is the sign of mental instability or of bad manners: it is morbid. Within the family circle one also hesitates to let himself go for fear of upsetting the children. One only has the right to cry if no one else can hear. Solitary and shameful mourning is the only recourse, like a sort of masturbation.” (Ariès, 1975, p. 90)
This echoes the thoughts and ideas of Geoffrey Gorer who writes,
“human beings mourn in response to grief, and that, if mourning is denied outlet, the result will be suffering, either psychological or physical or both.”
He goes on to further explain that death and mourning are treated in a similar prudish manner and that control of sexual impulses and of mourning is possible by strength of will and character. Grief is denied public expression and pushed into the private realm much the same, “as if it were an analogue of masturbation.” (Gorer, 1965, p. 111)
There seems to be a similarity between death and birth. The last breath seems to be an odd reflection of the very first breath. Both have been pushed out of the home. Both are passed into the hands of professional staff in a hospital or similar setting. Shame seems to have become common to both. The privacy of the naked body and of intense emotions are shared with strangers but less frequently with family or friends and the emotion of death is tightly controlled and kept from the dying much as excessive displayed of emotion are less visible or socially acceptable. Control over the facts of death has been lost. The pain and ugliness of death could be kept from the living. The family and friends might even miss the death and only medical staff who don’t know the person be present at the point of death. While death changes for the family, at the same time death becomes a lonely experience for the dying. There is also a move towards suicide in the elderly who express the loneliness of old age, fear of dying along, health issues, care homes and the loss of control through mental illnesses such as Alzheimer’s which might take away choice. (Balasubramaniam, 2018) It is worth noting that elderly males over the age of 65, especially white males, are three time more likely to commit suicide than other age groups and eight times more likely to kill themselves than females of the same age. (Yin, 2006) It seems to me that this suicide in older males is an extension of the idea of ‘Forbidden death’. I can understand this point of view from my own experience. Who wants to suffer needlessly? Or put others through the pain of watching you suffer? Who wants to get to stage where we no longer recognise our family? Who wants to outlive their friends or families? It becomes a balance of reasons to live and reasons not to live. Kellehear describes death in nursing homes as being neither a good death nor a well-managed death. (Kellehear, 2007, p. 186) The terms of good and bad death fit Ariès descriptions. A good death might be surrounded by family and friends where doctors have taken away the pain, although it might also be sudden if this takes away suffering. A bad death might be sudden or unexpected as in an accident or a drug death or a lonely death away from home and family.
It is interesting to me that I have stumbled onto the idea of good and bad deaths and suicide, whether subconsciously or because my interests have led me in this direction.
I might return to this area in more detail in another essay.
References
Ariès, P. (1975) Western Attitudes Toward Death: from the Middle Ages to the Present. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Balasubramaniam, M. (2018) ‘Rational Suicide in Elderly Adults: A Clinician’s Perspective’. doi: 10.1111/jgs.15263.
Gorer, G. (1965) Death, Grief, and Mourning in Contemporary Britain. London: The Cresset Press.
Kellehear, A. (2007) A Social History of Dying. Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.
Philippe Aries (1975) Western Attitudes towards Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present: 3 (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Compative History). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Yin, S. (2006) Elderly White Men Afflicted by High Suicide Rates | PRB, Population Reference Bureau. Available at: https://www.prb.org/resources/elderly-white-men-afflicted-by-high-suicide-rates/ (Accessed: 23 January 2023).