Better off dead: Euthanasia and Victorian literature

Nancee Reeves, Purdue University

Abstract

Our contemporary concept of euthanasia dates from 1870 when Samuel D. Williams introduced the idea of medical mercy killing in his essay "Euthanasia." The general consensus, of both Victorian and modern critics, is that euthanasia as a concept did not exist in the Victorian mind until medical science made the suppression of pain possible and Williams connected the innovations to death. While it is true that the development of anesthesia and ether answered the questions of how to practice euthanasia, we should not link the concept wholly to technology. Technology does not equal cause. I assert that the idea of euthanasia, as a theoretical and moral concept, was alive in Victorian England before 1870, incited by laws and political movements that marginalized and vilified nonessential and redundant groups until it was accepted that certain people were better off dead. The catalyst for this trend was the 1834 New Poor Law, which, according to its detractors, was nothing more than governmental sanctioning of shame, starvation, and a slow, painful death. Outraged over an agenda that seemingly condoned the miserable deaths of the unwanted and the superfluous, citizens began to merge the early-nineteenth century evangelical idea of euthanasia, a good or happy death, with the yet-to-be-expressed idea of euthanasia, in which deliberate action is taken to ease suffering. Literature was both a cause, and a symptom, of this philosophy that saw death as compassionate. Social suffering, politics, and literature were inexorably bound and, together, they conceived and disseminated a theory of euthanasia which influenced and encouraged the philosophical and medical euthanasia debates that are still alive today. The majority of studies on euthanasia and the Victorian world focus solely on eugenics or medically assisted euthanasia. My dissertation takes a larger, social view. I show how tangible social issues forced Victorians to consider the practical benefits of death over the evangelical idea that life is a gift. Literature became the mouthpiece for this discourse of euthanasia, picking up on thoughts evident in the zeitgeist, and spreading them far and wide, eventually resulting in the introduction of a mainstream philosophical argument for active euthanasia.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Allen, Purdue University.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature

COinS