Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (review)

In 1996, Gary Laderman published The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883, describing how attitudes towards the body and its place in the funeral had changed in the first half of the nineteenth century. With the de-Christianization of death, professional businessmen assumed control over the body and the rituals surrounding its disposal, in the process transforming it into a commodity of interest to a burgeoning industry.

Laderman begins Rest in Peace with the observation that although he had “vowed never to write on the subject again,” the story of the emergence of the modern American funeral was both incomplete and “too compelling to ignore.” (p. ix) This book has three main arguments. (1) The author takes pains to show how funeral directors constructed a unique American funeral tradition in the first part of the twentieth century, and then refined and defended that construction in response to a variety of critiques. (2) Central to his interpretation is the powerful effect of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 attack on the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, in shaping both public opinion and professional responses. (3) Laderman concludes that Mitford’s “analysis was simply, finally, dead wrong,” because funeral directors were not greedy exploiters of grief since “most Americans wanted the services they offered.” (pp. xli, 64)

Laderman begins the book with two prefatory sections. In the Prologue, he establishes a brief anthropological context for understanding the role of funeral directors, pointing out both the universal need to dispose of bodies and the often marginal place of corpse handlers in any society. His description of the twentieth century as the “embalming century” is central to how funeral directors acquired “the necessary authority, purpose, and values to promote their services.” (p. xix) In the Introduction, Laderman focuses on 1963, first discussing Mitford’s book and its immediate impact, and then on John F. Kennedy’s funeral and how it was shaped by Mitford’s critique. Chapter 1 traces the emergence and evolution of a new funeral “tradition” from 1900 to 1940, designed in part to domesticate death and remove fears of decay. Critical to this process was the industry’s creation of a new myth of origins via professional publications, referring to Egyptian customs to help justify embalming, which in turn was essential to emphasizing the visible body as central to the funeral. Chapter 2 covers to the years1918 to 1963, tracing pre-Mitford critics of the funeral industry, both journalistic and clerical, and professional responses to those complaints.

Chapter 3 demonstrates how Mitford drew on pre-existing stereotypes of undertakers, and the immediate industry response. Laderman’s approach to the English author, here as elsewhere, is ambiguous. On the one hand he recognizes The American Way of Death as a “bona fide cultural sensation,” but later refers to her “incredulous ravings.” (p. 83–84) Laderman is more sympathetic with the industry’s efforts to claim “total control over the experience of death” via the “production of a memorable corpse,” to provide a “comforting last look,” all justified by funeral directors recasting themselves as “grief therapists.” (pp. 100–118) Although Laderman replicates, in this chapter and throughout the book, at least part of Mitford’s method by offering extensive quotes from industry publications, and clearly shows recurring and quite conscious efforts by funeral directors to reform their practices to protect their businesses, he ultimately finds their perspective more congenial than Mitford’s.

The final two chapters bring the story to the start of the twenty-first century, and are in may ways the most innovative, engaging, imaginative, and wide-ranging parts of the book. Chapter 4 examines forces of change from about 1960 to 1980, including the death awareness movement, Federal Trade Commission efforts to regulate industry abuses, the counter culture of the 1960s, AIDS, and increasing cultural diversity. All combined to force funeral directors to be...