¹ Feifel, Herman, ed., The Meaning of Death (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959)Google Scholar; Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, On Death and Dying (Toronto, Canada: Macmillan, 1969)Google Scholar; Mitford, Jessica, The American Way of Death (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963)Google Scholar; Fulton, Robert, “ Death, Grief and Social Recuperation,” Omega, 1 (02 1970), 24Google Scholar.

² There are two additional volumes which are aimed directly at death-related behavior and thought in the United States. Both include useful historical observation but neither have history as a primary concern. They are Dumont, Richard and Foss, Dennis, The American View of Death (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1972)Google Scholar; and Mack, Arien, ed., Death in American Experience (New York: Schocken, 1973)Google Scholar. The quality of the essays in the latter varies considerably.

³ Habenstein, Robert and Lamers, William, The History of American Funeral Directing (Milwaukee: Bulfin, 1955)Google Scholar, Ariès, Philippe, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1974)Google Scholar; Stannard, David, ed., Death in America (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A fourth volume should at least be noted in passing. This is Coffin, Margaret's Death in Early America: History and Folklore of Customs and Superstitions of Early Medicine, Funerals, Burial and Mourning (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1976)Google Scholar, a somewhat misleading title since comment extends across the nineteenth, and at points into the twentieth century. While worth examination, this volume lacks the stature of the other three works. It is written for popular consumption, is lacking in scholarly development, and is vague on chronology.

⁴ For an excellent discussion of the dynamics of fear among Puritans see Stannard, David, “ Death and Dying in Puritan New England,” American Historical Review 78 (12 1973), 1305–30CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

⁵ In using the word “ denial ” I do not intend to enter the so-called acceptance versus denial debate which sets up a false dichotomy of mutually exclusive alternatives. In fact, I would suggest that few commentors in using these words ever intended the dictionary literalism which Dumont and Foss in discussing that “ debate ” apply to them in The American View of Death. I agree with William May and others who point out that the real question is the degree of avoidance rather than one of blind denial. The word denial is used here in this relative sense. On May see “ The Sacred Power of Death in Contemporary Experience,” Mack, , ed., Death in American Experience, p. 106Google Scholar. For a well developed argument that American death behavior does represent a high degree of acceptance, see Parsons, Talcott and Lidz, Victor, “ Death in American Society,” in Shneidman, Edwin, ed., Essays in Self-Destruction (New York: Science House, 1967), pp. 133–71Google Scholar.

⁶ Stannard, David, “ Death and the Puritan Child,” American Quarterly, 26 (12 1974), 465 (also in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The entire article (pp. 456–76) is most germane to the topic of death attitudes in colonial America.

⁷ It is interesting to note, as more than one scholar has done, that in the face of the high degree of infant mortality adults may have developed the psychological defense of deliberately maintaining social distance and limiting emotional investment in very young children. David Stannard, “ Death and the Puritan Child,” p. 466; Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage, 1962), pp. 38–39Google Scholar; Illick, Joseph, “ Child-Rearing in Seventeenth Century England and America,” in de Mause, Lloyd, ed., History of Childhood (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), pp. 310, 324–25Google Scholar; Saum, Lewis, “ Death in the Popular Mind of Pre-Civil War America,” American Quarterly 26 (12 1974), 485–86 (also in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, pp. 58–68Google Scholar.

⁹ Covey, Cyclone, The American Pilgrimage: The Roots of American Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1961)Google Scholar. See especially Chs. 1 and 6.

¹⁰ Bode, Carl, The Anatomy of American Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), pp. 269–76Google Scholar. The other themes are Love and Success.

¹¹ Saum, , “ Death in the Popular Mind of Pre-Civil War America,” pp. 477–95 (also in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)Google Scholar.

¹² Spiritualism reached high peaks of popularity in the 1850s and again in the 1870s and was in sharp decline by the end of the century. Among the several recent works on this subject two are particularly valuable. Nelson, Geoffrey, Spiritualism and Society (New York: Schocken, 1969)Google Scholar; and Kerr, Howard, Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972)Google Scholar. The latter looks at spiritualism in creative literature up to 1900. The former provides theoretical materials on the origin and dynamics of the phenomenon. It also compares spiritualism in the United States and England.

¹³ Fales, Martha, “ The Early American Way of Death,” Essex Institute Historical Collection, 100 (04 1964), 75–84Google Scholar; Draper, John, The Funeral Elegy and the Rise of English Romanticism (New York: Phaeton Press, 1929 & 1967), Ch. 6Google Scholar. Useful also is Hershey, Constance, “ Mortuary Art in Charleston Churches,” Antiques, 98 (11 1970), 800–7Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Mann, Thomas and Greene, Janet, Sudden and Awful: American Epitaphs and the Finger of God (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1968), pp. 19–20Google Scholar. This source is of limited value being largely an uninterpretive collection of epitaphs.

¹⁵ Some useful sources are: Forbes, Harriette, Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them, 1653–1800 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Ludwig, Allan, Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650–1815 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Sandrof, Ivan, “ As I am now so you must be,” American Heritage, 11 (02 1960), 38–43Google Scholar; Marsal, Sonia, “ Mortality Writ in Stone: Early New England Gravestones,” Americas, 16 (08 1964), 22–30Google Scholar; Francis, and Rigby, Ivan, “ Early American Gravestones,” Lithopinion, 39 (Fall, 1975), 48–63Google Scholar (this is a photo essay); Neal, Avon and Parker, Ann “ Graven Images: Sermons in Stones,” American Heritage, 21 (12 1969), 18–29Google Scholar; Dickran, and Tashjian, Ann, Memorials for Children of Change: The Art of Early New England Stonecarving (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1974)Google Scholar. The last two are the most adept at interpreting the stones in a cultural context.

¹⁶ Deetz, James and Dethlefsen, Edwin, “ Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow,” Natural History, 76 (03 1967), 28–37Google Scholar; Dethlefsen, Edwin and Deetz, James, “ Death's Heads, Cherubs, and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries,” American Antiquity, 31 (04 1966), 502–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An additional article by Dethlefsen alone examines the value of New England cemeteries in general demographic research. See “ Colonial Gravestones and Demography,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 31 (Winter, 1969), 321–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ The two most informative pieces on the movement are: French, Stanley, “ The Cemetery As Cultural Institution: the Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘ Rural ’ Cemetery Movement,” American Quarterly, 26 (03 1974), 37–59 (also in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bender, Thomas, “ The ‘Rural’ Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the Appeal of Nature,” New England Quarterly, 47 (06, 1974), 196–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The former takes the broader view.

¹⁸ Frederic Sharf discusses this trend in the prototype rural cemetery of Mount Auburn outside Boston, in “ The Garden Cemetery and American Sculpture: Mount Auburn,” Art Quarterly, 24 (Spring, 1961), 80–88Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Harris, Neil, The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years, 1790–1860 (New York: George Braziller, 1966), p. 202Google Scholar. Harris devotes only seven pages to the “ rural cemetery movement” but he makes several significant points, not the least of which is the relation of the movement to doubts about immortality.

²⁰ There is little scholarship on early interest in container improvement or body perservation beyond that of Habenstein and Lamers, but their chronicle is essentially sound. See The History of American Funeral Directing, Chs. 6 and 7.

²¹ Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, pp. 97–102Google Scholar.

²² Parsons and Lidz offer an interesting observation on this matter quite different from comments by Ariès or myself. They argue that American commitment to presentation of the corpse in an ornate setting, cosmetically “ restored ” and posed in lifelike fashion, springs less from denial than from two very practical considerations. In the activistic society of the United States we attempt to display the deceased in a way to make his former active capacities recognizable. Such appearance facilitates the aim of honoring his worldly attainment, as it facilitates the specific acts of “ paying last respects ” and “ saying good-bye ” to the deceased. Secondly, this setting is part of the American orientation toward suffering in general. The logic goes, “ if the sick and dying should not suffer, why then must the bereaved be mourners? ” Therefore the effort is made not to exacerbate the problem of mourning by calling attention anew to the suffering, loss of capacity, perhaps mutilation which the deceased underwent in dying. See Parsons, and Lidz, , “ Death in American Society,” Shneidman, , ed., Essays in Self-Destruction, pp. 155–56Google Scholar.

²³ Morley, John, Death, Heaven and the Victorians (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Curl, James, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Detroit: Partridge Press, 1972)Google Scholar. The latter does provide limited comment on the United States. The whole volume is marred, however, by the author's peculiar attachment to old Victorian cemeteries.

²⁴ Habenstein, and Lamers, , The History of American Funeral Directing, p. 393Google Scholar.

²⁵ A useful contrast to urban form may be found in Clark, Thomas, “ Death Always Came at Night,” Ch. 15 of Pills, Petticoats and Plows (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), pp. 260–74Google Scholar.

²⁶ The best source, and the one on which much of my comment is based, is a chapter-length treatment by Bowman, Leroy in The American Funeral: A Study in Guilt, Extravagance, and Sublimity (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1959), pp. 112–28Google Scholar.

²⁷ Blauner, Robert, “ Death and Social Structure,” Psychiatry, 29 (11 1966), 384CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. On this point see also Pine, Vanderlyn, “ Social Organization and Death,” Omega, 3 (Winter, 1972), 149–53Google Scholar.

²⁸ Ariès, Philippe, “ The Reversal of Death: Changes in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies,” American Quarterly, 26 (12 1974), 542 (also appears in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article (pp. 536–60) is a superb treatment of the emergence in the West of death denial and death as a taboo topic. Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, p. 88Google Scholar.

²⁹ Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, pp. 87–88Google Scholar. A good brief summary of main points from the book on the declining significance of death as an event is Ariès, Philippe, “ A Moment That Has Lost Its Meaning,” Prism, 3 (06, 1975), 27 ffGoogle Scholar. This entire issue of Prism is devoted to death.

³⁰ A useful empirical study on how death is handled in the hospital is Sudnow, David, Passing On: The Social Organization of Dying (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967)Google Scholar.

³¹ Robert Fulton and Gilbert Geis, “ Death and Social Values,” and Fulton, Robert, Introduction to Part IV, “ Ceremony, The Self, and Society,” both in Fulton, , ed., Death and Identity (New York: John Wiley, 1965), pp. 67–75, 333–38Google Scholar; Robert Fulton, “ Death, Grief and Social Recuperation,” pp. 23–28; Blauner, “ Death and Social Structure,” pp. 367–94. The latter is a perceptive cross-cultural treatment.

³² Fulton, , Introduction to Part IV, Death and Identity, p. 336Google Scholar.

³³ Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, pp. 85–95Google Scholar.

³⁴ Fulton and Geis, “ Death and Social Values,” pp. 67–68; Gorer, Geoffrey, “ The Pornography of Death,” Encounter, 5 (10 1955), 51Google Scholar. Gorer's statement on the emergence and consequences of death as a taboo subject is classic.

³⁵ Gorer, Geoffrey, Death, Grief, and Mourning (New York: Doubleday, 1965)Google Scholar.

³⁶ Wolfram, Sybil, “ The Decline of Mourning,” The Listener, 75 (05 26, 1966), 763–64Google Scholar.

³⁷ Gorer, , Death, Grief, and Mourning, pp. ix–xGoogle Scholar. While hardly conclusive evidence on the decade, two intriguing contemporary statements directly related to the issue are: Anon., “ And the mourners go about the streets,” The Unpartizan Review, 12 (07, 1919), 173–81Google Scholar, and Waldman, Milton, “ America Conquers Death,” American Mercury, 10 (02 1927), 216–21Google Scholar. The former amounts to a classic statement of “ fun-morality.” The latter observes with some concern the disappearance of the “ sense of death ” in America.

³⁸ Simple perusal of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature under the topics of death, funerals, and burial will verify the point.

³⁹ Mitford, The American Way of Death; Harmer, Ruth, The High Cost of Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1963)Google Scholar. Harmer is the more restrained of the two.

⁴⁰ Comment on this matter is based largely on two very insightful sources: Fulton, “ Death, Grief, and Social Recuperation,” pp. 23–28; Blauner, “ Death and Social Structure,” pp. 379–89. See also on this matter Reiss, Paul, “ Bereavement and the American Family,” in Kutscher, Austin, ed., Death and Bereavement (Springfield, Ill.: Charles Thomas Co., 1969), pp. 219–21Google Scholar.

⁴¹ The variety and, by present standards, extravagance which could be reached in nineteenth century markers may be examined in Gillon, Edmund Jr, Victorian Cemetery Art (New York: Dover, 1972)Google Scholar. The volume includes 260 photographs of cemetery sculpture from the New York and New England areas.

⁴² It is interesting to contemplate these trends within the context of a larger phenomenon which John Lofland labels the “ dramaturgic revolution.” In this revolution of “ styles of doing things,” all primal scenes, from sexual intercourse to dying and death, have shifted from “ relatively commonplace openness to delicate concealment.” Lofland uses as a case study state executions in England and the United States circa 1700 to circa 1950. See “ Open and Concealed Dramaturgic Strategies: The Case of the State Execution,” Urban Life: A Journal of Ethnographic Research, 4 (10 1975), 272–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Wigginton, Eliot, ed., Foxfire 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1973), Chs. 14–15Google Scholar; Montell, William, Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills (Knoxville, Tenn.: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1975)Google Scholar. While only Chs. 14 and 15 are relevant in the former, the latter is given over completely to death omens, death-related behavior, and ghostlore. Neither volume, however, attempts interpretation.

⁴⁴ Blauner sees a connection between belief in ghosts and demography. He points out that ghosts are most prevalent in societies characterized by extensive child and mid-life death, the deceased having departed with still unfinished business in this world. He concludes that the relative absence of ghosts in modern society is not merely the result of the routing of superstition by science but also reflects the disengaged social situation of the majority of the deceased who are perceived as having completed their earthly course. See “ Death and Social Structure,” p. 382.

⁴⁵ An example of an area only recently fully subject to the secular trends of this century may be found in Crocker, Christopher, “ The Southern Way of Death ” in Moreland, Kenneth, ed., The Not So Solid South (Athens, Georgia: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1971), pp. 114–29Google ScholarPubMed. Note, for example, Crocker's observation that, in his research locale, hospital visiting does not taper off once the “ dying ” category is applied. Rather the reverse is true (p. 117).

⁴⁶ While her aim is much broader, the point of a living relationship with the dead world is well illustrated in Douglas, Ann', “ Heaven Our Home: Consolation Literature in the Northern United States, 1830–80,” American Quarterly, 26 (12 1974), 496–515 (also in Stannard, , ed., Death in America)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Ariès, , Western Attitudes Toward Death, p. 103Google Scholar.