At the Confluence of Profit and Morality: An Examination of the American Funeral Industry in the Jessica Mitford Papers

In her 1963 exposé, The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford explores the egregious abuses of the funeral industry in the United States. In doing so, she divulges the industry's unscrupulous business tactics designed to exploit grief as a means of maximizing profit. Examining the continued, sharp increase in the price of funeral services over the past century reveals the industry's prioritization of its rapacious pursuit of monetary gain over the emotional needs of those they are serving. In equating emotional healing with spending power, the avaricious undertaker has convinced the American public of the dollar's pecuniary catharsis: one can purchase a way out of grief. Through lavish and grandiose funeral services that beautify the deceased, it becomes possible to distance oneself from the harsh and brutal reality of death. Such an escapist attitude is a symptom of society's overemphasis on wealth which then facilitates the suppression of human emotion through the aforementioned process of beautification. Beyond this, however, the inability to provide such services implies a moral failure, suggesting that a lack of elaborate services would be to do one's deceased loved one a profound disservice. Bearing these factors in mind, this exhibit endeavors to examine not only the shift in funerary costs over time, but also the underlying causes thereof and, in doing so, aims to identify the role of money as an insufficient coping mechanism, one which alienates man from the very natural process of death.