Dying to be English:

Suicide Narratives and National Identity, 1721–1814

Kelly McGuire


Gender and Genre
Hb: 304pp: February 2012
978 1 84893 110 7: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
E ISBN   978 1 84893 111 4

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

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

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