Dying to be English:

Suicide Narratives and National Identity, 1721–1814

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Kelly McGuire

Gender and Genre

Enlightenment assumptions regarding the gendering of suicide still persist in coroners’ investigations, statistical analyses and the media’s coverage of high-profile deaths. This study examines the presentation of suicide within the genre of the eighteenth-century novel as both a feminine action and a declaration of national identity. A perceived rise in suicide rates in the eighteenth-century led to the topic’s identification as an ‘English Malady’ and its treatment within the novel as a public, society-defining gesture.

Using the novels of several key writers of the period, including Frances Burney, Eliza Haywood and Samuel Richardson, McGuire demonstrates that their work inscribes a nationalist imperative to frame suicide as self-sacrifice. By considering the eighteenth-century novel as a cultural document, she combines literary analysis with cultural history, creating an innovative and challenging picture of the relationship between suicide, gender and national identity.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

Literature, Romanticism, History of Medicine, Social and Cultural History and Gender Studies

Contents

Introduction: A Genealogy of Suicide
1 Suicide and Spectrality in Eliza Haywood's Amatory Fiction
2 Mors Voluntaria: Clarissa and the Agency of Martyrdom
3 English Maladies and Material Culture at Mid-Century
4 The Pathology of Sentiment: Politics, Sacrifice and Wertherism in the English Novel of Sensibility
5 'The Death of Reason': Vitalism, Transnational Identity and Frances Burney
Conclusion

Related titles

• Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism
• Depression and Melancholy, 1660–1800
• A Political Biography of Frances Burney
• Samuel Richardson's Published Commentary on Clarissa, 1747–1765
• Selected Works of Eliza Haywood
• The Complete Plays of Frances Burney
• The History of Suicide in England, 1650–1850
• The Rash Resolve and Life's Progress: by Eliza Haywood
• The Works of Charlotte Smith

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