“The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen for themselves.”
Sophocles’ Oedipus the Tyrant
A messenger arrives to report that Jocasta, queen of Thebes, has killed herself. To prepare listeners for the terrible news, he begins with this announcement.
This deeply personal memoire by Edith Hall, Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, is about how her own life and psyche have been shaped by suicides in her family – her mother’s grandfather, mother, and first cousin. And how the Ancient Greeks have enabled her to come to terms with this inheritance.
Her inspiration for this book was to help herself and others understand and recognise the psychological damage that suicide inflicts on those left behind which, especially when hidden, can continue down generations. Bereavement by suicide is not like any other, it mostly can’t be talked about and often close family survivors feel silenced and shamed. Many countries still punish suicide attempts. Hall claims the only similar bereavement to self-killing is murder. I think she’s right in saying it leaves greater scars on the bereaved and prejudice increases the burden on those already suffering.
Hall only recently started to acknowledge her own experience and to break free from the taboo of silence. She hopes this will help others who have also suffered from bereavement by ‘this saddest way of dying’ (pg2). She draws parallels between her own family history and characters from Greek tragedy relating the impact of suicide to the ancient Greek idea of a family curse and the myth of the Furies who sought bloody revenge on those who committed murder or harm to kin. She also hopes to contribute to a secular philosophical case against suicide which she traces back to Aristotle.
She says she was saved from her own suicidal impulses by studying Classics at university. In particular Euripides’ play Heracles Mad about a suicidal crisis where Heracles is persuaded out of taking the irrevocable step by a close friend Theseus who comes without judgement to ‘participate in his agony’ (pg185) and help him bear the calamities sent by the gods and to go on living rather than compound misery with misery.
In her chapter on the Greek tragedians she shows how their plays explored a range of moral dilemmas including suicide and are remarkably non-judgemental about it while voicing different reasons for those choosing it and the feelings of the bereaved through many deeply affecting speeches. These playwrights were free within limits to alter the traditional myths in order to continue exploration of issues. For example, Euripides wrote an alternative ending to Jocasta’s story in Phoenician Women where she lives to an advanced age with her blinded son/husband Oedipus. In his Antigone she does not kill herself. Hall thinks Euripides wanted to show suicidal impulses are a temporary phenomenon and where there’s life there’s hope.
She draws parallels between characters from Greek tragedy and her own relatives, including her great-grandfather, whose death bore similar motivations to Sophocles’ Ajax – both men probably overwhelmed by shame and humiliation. Ajax died at his own hand after a manic episode, attacking livestock in mistake for enemy soldiers. The Greeks recognised mental illness and attributed it to the gods – as punishment for an insult, jealousy or some other petty motive.
She discusses how her studies of these timeless plays have helped her work through the loss of her grandmother and namesake Edith and understand her relationship with her own mother. The wisdom and solace found in the ancient tragedies, she argues, can help someone choose survival over painful adversity and offer comfort to those who are tragically bereaved.
Her memoire opens in 2021, five years after her mother’s death, when she began her exploration into the lives of her suicidal ancestors about whom she knew very little – as so often the case, photos and other mementos of the deceased having been destroyed. The following year she made a tour to their homes in Scotland to see where they lived and to leave flowers at the sites where they died. This brought her ‘overwhelming relief’ (pg3) and in the process brought to light all their considerable achievements, happy moments and good deeds.
In her chapter ‘Who is damaged by Suicide’ (pg26) she explores the philosophical arguments on suicide, from Plato and Aristotle to Hume, Sartre and Camus, among others. She makes an interesting point about Socrates – that he did have a choice, he could have been allowed exile. Instead his suicide and the manner of going about it makes him seem callous. He rebuked his friends for their tears and sent away the women and children to avoid being disturbed by them. This contrasts sharply with Aristotle who when charged with impiety chose exile rather than death and when he died of natural causes left a will planned for the care of his wife and children and his slaves who were given their freedom.
In Aristotle’s time suicide was neither proscribed nor sanctioned by law but his own deliberations led him to conclude that when we exercise a right to kill ourselves it almost invariably violates the rights of those to whom we owe moral duties. Hall’s point about insufficient concern and empathy for those left behind is an important contribution to existential thinking which mostly focuses on discussion around individual freedom rather than Aristotle’s Role Responsibilities argument.
Then Hall’s book becomes more autobiographical with chapters on her great grandfather’s tale, her grandmother’s tale, her mother’s and cousin’s tales and finally her own. Her great grandfather came from an impoverished background and through hard work raised himself through society becoming highly esteemed for his contribution so that when he drowned himself in 1912 the presiding (and unusually enlightened) Reverand gave a full account of his good deeds and loss to the community and enjoined the congregation not to judge his ‘sad and serious limitations’ (pg94). Hall thinks he may have been alcoholic and killed himself from shame after a very public episode.
Her grandmother, a highly intelligent and educated achiever, suffered depression all her life and was often bedridden. Hall discusses research on the typical effects of a father’s premature death on his daughter, made worse if the mother is emotionally inexpressive as Edith’s mother was. Daughters often blame themselves for their father’s decision to die, are susceptible to bouts of grief and depression, and more likely to have difficulties with romantic relationships. Edith was in an unhappy marriage, had lost a child and was overly dependent on her daughter. She killed herself by jumping from a hotel window.
Hall’s mother was an only child who suffered from an unavailable and sometimes unkind mother until WW2 provided an escape from her ‘suburban genteel captivity’ (pg149). Universities were encouraging teenage girls to apply to fill their empty lecture halls which she did. Her cousin, to whom she’d been very close, who had survived service in WW2 and resumed his veterinary practice shot himself in 1959. She however made a happy marriage and died a natural death in old age having bravely ‘stared the Furies in the face’ (pg203) and not given into them.
Hall has experienced Reflecting on suicide ideation since teenage and suggests controversially this may not always be harmful, that paradoxically life becomes more bearable when escape is a possibility. She is encouraged in this view by examples like Churchill who told his doctor he didn’t like to stand near the edge of a platform with an express train due. However research from Glasgow University and elsewhere suggest ideation can lead to actual suicide. Instead we need to eliminate stigma so people feel able to talk about it openly and not be silenced and ashamed. Hall’s book is an important step along the way.
Overall I enjoyed this book and think it can be helpful to our readers in contributing to the conversation about suicide and in achieving another of Hall’s hopes for her book – that these plays to find a place in our discussions. She ends her book on a positive note with this exhortation to lament but believe the future may be better, as it has been for her:
“Sing the song of sorrow, but let good prevail”
The Chorus, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon