Lyndsay Galpin, Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th Century Britain

Abstract

Suicide is a catastrophic event. The ripples of a death extend through surrounding communities, bringing into question previously held certainties—about others, about relationships, about health, behaviour and identity. Speculation abounds in newspapers, magazines and official reports as writers search for meaning in the lives and deaths of those who die by their own hand. It is this focus on the process of forging meaning from the tragic deaths of others that informs Lyndsay Galpin’s book. Galpin offers a new perspective on suicide in Victorian England by interrogating these historical deaths for what they can tell us about ideas and ideals of masculinity. Galpin’s monograph draws critically on previous histories of suicide and attempted suicide in England, from the classics (Olive Anderson and Barbara Gates) to more recent work by Victor Bailey and John Weaver.1 She argues that suicide was not necessarily feminised, as others have assumed, with the lives and deaths of male suicides often compared to other men, rather than to women. While suicide, she explains, is a gendered experience, it cannot be labelled as either inherently masculine or inherently feminine.