Posted on Friday 22 November 2002 to Story So Far

A memento mori is a form of image that urged a European person of the late Middle Ages to "remember thy death." To do this, a memento mori might represent death as a human skeleton--perhaps as the Grim Reaper gathering his harvest--or it might depict human bodies in an advanced state of decay. Its purpose is to remind the viewer that death is an unavoidable part of life, something to be prepared for at all times. Memento mori images are graphic demonstrations of the fact that death was not only a more frequent, but a far more familiar occurrence in medieval Europe than it is today. They express a concept of death that is characteristic of a specific time and place. The subject of this essay is an imagery of death characteristic of another time and place: nineteenth century America. Although the nineteenth century is much closer to our own era, these photographs and other images represent a concept of death that is in many ways as different from ours as that of the Europe of the Middle Ages.

The British sociologist Geoffrey Gorer makes some interesting observations on the difference between cultural attitudes toward death in the Victorian era and our own. In his 1955 article, "The Pornography of Death," Gorer points out that death is treated in twentieth century society much like sex was treated in the nineteenth century. The subject is avoided, especially with children, or spoken of in euphemisms if it cannot be avoided. Death now, like sex then, is hidden, an event which takes place behind closed doors. The opposite is also true: in the nineteenth century, death was discussed as freely and openly as sex is today. If, as Freud has postulated, society is founded upon--and defined by--its repressions, our society has undergone a psychological about-face since the nineteenth century.