Essay about Mouring in the Victorian Era

Dead?" AlterNet. In this article, Frankie Colmane looks into how dead bodies are treated in the United State even after Mitford's expose of the funeral industry was published. The article takes both a philosophical and scientific issue with the procedure of embalming sighting proven negative effects to human beings and the environment. Colmane shows that even though people are aware of the malfeasance and misappropriations of the funeral industry following pieces like Mitford's, very little has changed. Therefore problems that have been discussed in earlier works should not be forgotten. Rather they should be continually brought up until the issue is solved. During the 1800s, embalming became common practice because the dead family member would lie in state within the home for a period of days or weeks until it would be buried (Colmane 2010). The article shows the duplicity such as when "funeral directors were arguing forcefully against charges that their mediation between the living and the dead translated into social obstruction that barred the stricken from facing death with maturity, realism, and honest" (page 2). This article will be used to illustrate that things have not changed with funereal practices despite the publication of Mitford's essay.

A typical eulogy consists of praise, happy memories, stories, and positive personality features of the one deceased. In opposition, this particular eulogy had a negative tone regarding the sadness in her life, as well as blaming the royal family and the paparazzi for her untimely passing. This eulogy used aspects that most speeches, essays, and other forms of writing use, including pathos, ethos, logos, parallelism, imagery, and negative comments toward her unfortunate loss of life.

The Black Death was the name given to a plague that occurred in the mid 13th century which caused at least a third of the world’s population to perish. During the years in which the plague spread across Europe, many aspects of life for the people that lived were altered forever. This epidemic was like no other in history and had an unprecedented outcome. The effects of the Black Plague on society were substantial resulting in great changes of social classes through role reorganization, changes in belief systems, and ways that society interacted. Before the Black Plague came to Europe, there was a great famine during the early years of the 13th century.

While reading through the lossography I found a common similarity among most of the lossographys’, which is the ritual of having a funeral or a wake after someone has died. A specific example, is when a classmate describes the experiences of his grandfather’s wake (pg.8). I noticed most of the lossographys included some kind of ritual either mourning or celebrating the death of a loved one. I also noticed how age and

Both the “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson contain age-old themes. These themes focus on inevitable feelings and events of life; love and death. Although both “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” contain the two themes, they differ greatly in how they are presented and what they represent. In “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” a husband traveling away from his wife is consoling her.

Funeral ceremonies were extremely elaborate, especially for upper class citizens. Funerals had five parts in Ancient Rome; the procession, the cremation and burial, the eulogy, the feast, and the commemoration. Ceremonies began closely after death, as soon as all necessary preparations were made. At the home, the deceased’s body would be washed with warm water and then anointed. If the deceased person had held office, a wax impression of his features would be taken. Next, the body would be dressed in in a toga with all the regalia of the rank he was allowed to wear. Incense would be burned and pine woul dbe places outside the door to signify death in the house. In early and late times, when burial was more popular than cremation, a coing would be placed in between the teeth of the deceased, as payment for Charon, the ferryman of the underworld. These rites were simplified in poorer funerals, as well as done by a family member. However, for the rich, an undertaker, or designator, would do so().

     Today there are companies that offer caskets that one can make by themselves. They can use the casket as a coffee table until it needs to be used for its other purpose.

In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Edmund Burke writes, “It is the nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that attend to it”. Burke’s writing attempts to clarify the “pictorial, literary, cultural, economic and psychological” phenomenon of sublimity, explicating the ways in which power, vastness, obscurity and beauty intersect to form emotional response. A Philosophical Enquiry elucidates why so many Romantic poets and writers would make grief, mourning and death the subjects of their works; the limitless, obscure, infinite theme death corresponds to the existential, contemplative and introspective ideas Romantic writers were attempting to interrogate. But the subject of death in Romantic literature transcends the topic of corporeal death and explores the death of memory, of youth, of innocence and of the past. Furthermore, the Romantic writers were grappling with a shifting, changing society that caused a sense of pervasive loss in their works; as artists, authors and the population attempted to navigate a society characterized by political revolution and technological innovation, poems about mourning act as almost consolatory works.

Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe were both nineteenth century gothic poets known for their lifelong fascination with the theme of mortality, but their style and approach to writing could not be more contrary. Although death is inevitable, the idea of it was a painful subject for many in this particular day in age; death and illness was much more common. These two poets not only spoke about death in the majority of their literature, but they were obsessed. Poe and Dickenson were from around the same time period and region, and the way they spoke about mortality had different effects in their communities. Dickenson’s free-flowing style in her writings about death and nature was elegant and subtle, while Poe wrote articulate and flamboyant tales of horror and insanity. These poets may have had similar interests, but the way society received their work was completely different.

The Greeks often buried dead people, and marked graves with carved gravestones. Large pots were also used to mark graves. The deceased were usually buried in graveyards outside the city walls. When the procession reached the burial place, the body could be buried, or it could be burnt, and the ashes were buried. The dead person was often buried with some of their belongings.

The Victorian Age's morality also condemned any kind of sexual reference in literature. Victorian critics demanded from "serious" literature a didactic content and respect to the Victorian conventions which established that sex

Emily Dickinson was thought to have an obsession with death due to her many poems and letters that contain the subject. In the later stages of her life, many of her friends and family members died. There is a window in the house where she lived that looked over the cemetery where she was a witness to many funerals that occurred. To see such a repeated reminder of loved ones lost and the presence of death in her backyard, her thoughts frequently turned to death. Poems like 280, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (87) shows a clear insight into how she was affected by death. In that poem, Emily Dickinson wrote about a funeral service that she must have witnessed. “And Mourners to and fro/ Keep treading – treading – till it seemed/ That Sense was breaking through”(87). Funerals can be very hard to digest for the people attending. From the few funerals I have attended, people are

Victoria was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. She was the only daughter of Edward, the Duke of Kent. Her father died shortly after she was born and she became heir to the throne. The Victorian Age was characterised by rapid change and developments in almost everything. From advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge, to changes in population growth and location. Today, we associate the 19th century with the work ethic, family values, religious observation and institutional faith. In 1840, Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. At first, the British public did not particularly like the German prince, and he was excluded from holding any official political position. At times, their marriage was hectic because they both had

The Victorian Period was a great influence to the authors who composed novels at that time where distinctions between social classes as well as between men and women were strongly marked. During this period, it was precisely a woman who ruled. Alexandrina Victoria who was born on May 24, 1819 became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22, 1901. Victoria’s reign was one of the longest of a female in history. At only the age of 18, after her uncle William Henry IV died, she began a span of 63 years of reign. In spite of her independence and power, Victoria fell into a deep depression when her husband died in 1861 and ever since she wore black every day for the rest of her

great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,