Suicide in Eighteenth-Century England: The Myth of a Reputation
| Autor: | Roland Bartel |
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| Rok vydání: | 1960 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Huntington Library Quarterly. 23:145-158 |
| ISSN: | 1544-399X 0018-7895 |
| DOI: | 10.2307/3816205 |
| Popis: | XTEAR THE start of the eighteenth century the English people 1N acquired a reputation that they came to regard as a major national problem. They were accused of committing suicide at the slightest provocation and of having the highest suicide rate in the world. They accepted this reputation as a fait accompli for so many years that it became proverbial for both foreigners and Englishmen to refer to suicide as the great English malady. How did they acquire this reputation and to what extent was it justified? It is generally assumed that England got its reputation from abroad. The French and German tourists who visited England in such great numbers undoubtedly helped to perpetrate the notion that England was a land of suicide. In I 7 2 5, for example, an observer wrote that "the English die by their own hands with as much indifference as by another's: 'Tis common to hear People talk of Men and Women, that make away with themselves, as they call it, and generally for Reasons that would appear to us but as Trifles'. Twelve years later another traveler was puzzled by the frequent suicides "committed by Persons of good Families, as well as by the Dregs of the People'2 In 1 775 a famous German physicist repeated a popular belief about England's gloomy climate |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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