Facing the "King of Terrors": Death and Society in an American Community, 1750-1990 (review)

Facing The "King Of Terrors": Death and Society in an American Community, 1750--1990. By Robert V. Wells (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 301 pp. $44.95

Facing The "King Of Terrors" is a total history of death and society in Schenectady, New York, from 1750 to 1990, from Schenectady's early existence as a cohesive colonial village to its present circumstances as an industrial city. Wells' comprehensive treatment combines the methodologies of the now old "new social history," quantification and institutional analysis, with the newer, anthropologically oriented, cultural history, which focuses on artifacts, mentalités, and personal, familiar, and communal feelings and responses. Thus, the statistical examination of life expectancies; causes of death by disease, age, and ethnicity; and funeral expenses cohabit with reviews of public health policies and institutions; cemetery design; illustration and discussion of gravestone mark-ings and engravings; accounts of funerals and their impact upon individuals, families, and larger communities; and narratives and bereavement as negotiated in letters, diaries, reunions, and memorials. The last aspect of Wells' exploration shows the impact of death on the dying, on their families, and on ethnic, religious, and class enclaves and, in the demise of public figures, on the entire city.

Wells' theoretical framework is adopted from previous studies of the topic, relying chiefly on Phillipe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore, 1974), Robert J. Lifton, The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (New York, 1979), Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief, and Mourning (Garden City, 1965), David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study of Religion, Culture, and Social Change (New York, 1977), and James A. Hijiya, "American Gravestones and Attitudes toward Death: A Brief History," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CXXVII (1983), 339--363. The conclusions arrived at in Facing The "King Of Terrors" are similarly derivative: Decline of communal cohesion, organic solidarity and religious faith, the growing medicalization and professionalization of disease and death, and increasing privatization and individualism gradually resulted in an alienation from, and impersonalization of, death. Nevertheless, Wells' historical judgments and insights are generally relevant and penetrating, and his multivariate and data-rich presentation give Facing The "King Of Terrors" scope, diversity, comprehensiveness, and relevance beyond its geographical and historical boundaries.

Flaws in this study are infrequent and mostly minor. The rural cemetery movement began not with Mt. Auburn in Cambridge in 1831 (115), but in New Haven in 1796. A rare example of dubious reasoning is Wells' contention about what he regards as the most important "contrary observation" between his findings and those of the authors cited above. Wells asserts that, unlike their claims, America is not a death- denying society; it is, rather, preoccupied with "images and reports of death, but those deaths are frequently removed from our immediate experience, so that our intimacy is vicarious"(284). These other experts would not differ with Wells' conclusion. They would probably argue that repression and obsession are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, may be related. Wells' formulation of vicarious intimacy (possibly a contradiction in terms or at least an oxymoron) seems an apt description of just this state of mind.

The most significant weakness in Facing The "King of Terrors" is insufficient attention to religion. Wells might have elaborated upon the religious changes that occurred between 1750 and 1990, the transition from the Enlightenment to the Second Great Awakening, and the swells and valleys of religious fervor through several more national revivals, alternating with eras of comparative skepticism and secularism. In Wells' account of death in Schenectady, these changes over time are virtually ignored. Hence, their impact on personal and communal reactions to death go unexplored.

Frederic Cople Jaher
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

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