Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England

by Michael MacDonald, Terence R. Murphy

Sleepless Souls is a social and cultural history of suicide in early modern England. It traces the rise and fall of the crime of self-murder and explores the reasons why suicide came to be harshly punished in the sixteenth century, and why it was gradually decriminalized in the century and a
half following the English Revolution. Michael MacDonald and Terence R. Murphy employ a wide range of records from the period between 1500 and 1800 in order to place suicide in its contemporary context, and relate its history to political events, religious changes, philosophical fashions, tensions
between central government and local communities, class interests, and the communication media. The authors treat the crisis of death by suicide as a lens in which the forces that reshaped the mental outlook of different classes and social groups are reflected.

Genres: Psychology, History

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 29, 1990

Reviews

[Wynne Belk]

This is a wonderful analysis of the changing opinions and attitudes on suicide in England. It takes you right through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, where suicide was frowned upon as a reprehensible moral failing, and then on into the Enlightenment and Romantic Period where such writers as David Hume and Goethe questioned the traditional religious stance on suicide. According to Hume, suicide is permissible because it does no harm to society. I can't help but see in the changing tide of opinion (which was also a reaction against the religious enthusiasm that had precipitated the revolutions of the 17th C.) a strong individualist strain which partly explains our own modern understanding of our lives as deservedly free from all tyrannical obligation and restraint, posing a grim contrast to the Middle Ages where every individual action was understood to affect the entire community, hence the understanding of an individual's sin as a polluting agent. Whereas now, we understand our lives to be isolated monadic segments, freed from all obligatory ties and denying the intrinsic relational aspect of life.

Other trends emerging in this era is the rise of science as an explanation for suicide (suicide due to insanity rather than sin). However, the rise of this scientific understanding of the suicide act should be seen as a distinct phenomenon compared to the emerging philosophical view, which understands suicide as the ultimate rational act.