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  • The Dead Cannot Reply: Suicide in Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century English Literature by Aaron Botwick book cover
  • The Dead Cannot Reply: Suicide in Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century English Literature by Aaron Botwick book cover
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The Dead Cannot Reply: Suicide in Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century English Literature

by Aaron Botwick

Suicide, fiction, and changing public debates

$116.69 USD
$116.69 USD $116.69 USD

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Suicide, fiction, and changing public debates

Aaron Botwick traces a shift in English discussions of suicide from nineteenth-century questions of punishment and public consequence to twentieth-century efforts to understand motive and experience. The book reads novels including *Nicholas Nickleby*, *Jane Eyre*, *Daniel Deronda*, *The Man of Property*, *The Good Soldier*, and *Mrs. Dalloway* as part of that intellectual history. Its central concern is how fiction can stage questions about a person’s inner experience when the person is no longer able to testify, and how literary depictions contributed to changing debates around voluntary death.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English literature and literary criticism.
  • Those interested in the history of suicide discourse and the development of suicidology.
  • Readers exploring how fiction represents inner experience and public concerns.

Themes

Suicide in English literatureThe history of suicidologyPunishment, motive, and voluntary deathFiction and testimony

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

An intellectual and literary history of the professionalization of suicidology at the turn of the 20th century which shows that fiction played a significant role in the transformation of the debates on voluntary death.

In 19th-century England, the main point of contention around suicide was the punishment. Should "self-murderers" still be staked through the heart? Should the crown continue to seize their assets? In the 20th century, the questions shifted to motives: Why does someone commit suicide? What does it feel like to be suicidal? And can these questions, asked about a subject who is no longer present, be answered without their testimony? As The Dead Cannot Reply shows, the emphasis shifted from effects to causes.

Fiction, unbound by factual truth, offers an ideal space for these debates. Nicholas Nickleby, Jane Eyre, and Daniel Deronda illustrate the 19th-century understanding of suicide as a public event whose meaning is located in its meaning for others. The Man of Property and The Good Soldier confront the limits of our understanding on the subject. Mrs. Dalloway imagines what it feels like to take the leap, and Golden Age detective fiction, like

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