Chapter Eleven Short Essay - The Business of Dying

Before the Victorian age, funerals were times of public mourning and long sermons in most of the United States. Most people were buried wherever it was convenient. The Puritans eschewed the displays of grief and buried the dead near churches, but still gave elegies and long sermons on the fate of the living, because in their minds the dead had already had their fate sealed.

With the introduction of industrialization, the need for a third party to handle funerals and burial became great enough that people began to make a living taking care of dead. But while industrialization created a livelihood, the funeral industry made sure they shaped public expectations to make work easier for them, by convincing people to focus more on comforting the survivors than facing the death and loss. Funeral directors talked the clergy into giving shorter and more uplifting sermons. They began removing the morbid and scary images from monuments and memorials. They beautified and preserved the corpse to give them a more peaceful look. They substituted the ominous coffin for the stately casket and decorated the interior to look like a bed. In short, they worked to make it more pleasant to have a “professional” do the funeral, than to adhere to older traditions.

Even in the twentieth century, funeral homes and cemeteries influenced burial traditions. The introduction of “lawn cemeteries” appeared. While they may argue that this is a far more peaceful atmosphere for grieving people, the ease of caring for a lawn cemetery is obviously a savings for whomever maintains them. As is the push to standardize grave markers and minimalize the amount of personalization of them. While the industry calls it aesthetics and making it more economical for the consumer, there is no doubt the main beneficiary is the industry itself.