Death & the Maiden

  • “You must be very sensitive”

    “You must be very sensitive”

    Artist Sarah Gay-O’Neill is here to explain that it’s very easy to normalize pain when people in authoritative positions, like doctors, tell you everything is fine and ‘normal’…but is it normal to feel the drag of a rusty pitchfork clawing at your insides?

  • The Gendered Garden: Sexual Transgression of Women Walking Alone in Cemeteries

    The Gendered Garden: Sexual Transgression of Women Walking Alone in Cemeteries

    Romany Reagan has been walking in Abney Park Cemetery for a total of nine years, often alone. As a walking practitioner dedicated to encouraging new perspectives within cemetery space, a recent personal revelation called for self reflection and a much wider contemplation.

  • Tubercular Venus: When the Beauty Standard was Dying

    Tubercular Venus: When the Beauty Standard was Dying

    If society’s beauty standard dictates a ‘proper’ woman should have pale skin and wear a crinoline that makes it near impossible for her walk through a doorway, chances are, that is a society that believes a woman’s place is in the home. So what does it say about a culture when the height of beauty…

  • Bluebeard & the Final Girl: Feminist Retellings of Perrault’s Classic

    Bluebeard & the Final Girl: Feminist Retellings of Perrault’s Classic

    Sonya Vatomsky is here to examine the myth of Bluebeard, Perrault’s text as a canonical work, is in dire need of retelling. Culturally, Bluebeard has found itself linked more to temptation/knowledge narratives like the Garden of Eden and Pandora’s Box than to narratives of heroic escape from monstrous kings and ogres. This in itself is…

  • On Death, Patriarchy & the Anti-Choice Movement

    On Death, Patriarchy & the Anti-Choice Movement

    Death-phobia pervades many a political and social movement, but few have perfected the manipulation of it quite as adeptly as the “pro-life movement.” Their rhetoric invokes death at almost every turn. Aside from the most blatant messaging which explicitly likens abortion to murder, they also invoke death-phobia in the way they legislate abortion. Caroline Reilly is…

  • Rizpah, Guardian of the Dead

    Host and creator of Kaddish the Podcast, Ariana Katz tells us the story of Rizpah. Appearing in 2 Samuel, first as a sexual commodity and later, as a fierce advocate for the dignity of her sons. Rizpah is the foremother of shmirah, the Jewish custom of guarding the dead between time of death and time of…

  • What The Texas Fetal Remains Ruling Really Means and How You Can Take Action

    Last Monday, after the Texas State Department of Health Services announced the addition of the word ‘cremation’ to their list of approved methods of disposition for the remains of an abortion or miscarriage, headlines were quick to appear suggesting a forced linkage between certain women’s health services and those of the funeral industry. Still in…

  • #NowGoCheckYourBits

    #NowGoCheckYourBits

    Sara Cutting was told she had cancer. Triple negative breast cancer to be precise. Sitting in the barber’s chair, she instructed a shocked hairdresser to shave her head. This was the beginning of the Daily Different Headgear Challenge, Sara never could have imagined how far it would go. Her journey is an inspiration, learn how Sara…

  • Death & the Maidens: Why Women Are Working With Death

    Death & the Maiden’s co-founder, Sarah Chavez, delves into the reasons underlying the current interest many women seem to have with death, and the rise of the Death Positive movement. Exploring a question persistently asked and rooted at the very core of Death & the Maiden: Why are so many women currently interested in death and…

  • The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

    Death & the Maiden’s own Sarah Chavez (Troop) shares the horrifying story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911. An entire nation grieved over the 148 deaths that occurred that day, so easily preventable. Their collective outrage changed U.S. labor laws and led to the adoption of fire…

  • The Best Of 2015

    Women and death, particularly the role women are currently playing in the death positive movement and as death professionals made frequent headlines this year. Here’s a recap of what 2015 had to offer from our co-founder Sarah Troop.

  • Monsters

    “Be home when the street lights come on!” Was a common directive during many of our childhoods, as we anxiously ran out into the world to play. However, in my neighborhood and for many of us who lived out our childhoods on the East Side of Los Angeles that directive also came with a sinister…

  • A Lady Undertaker: 1912

    In 1912 an American “Lady Undertaker” addresses the question of why women are especially suited to work with the dead.

  • Midwives, Layers-Out, and Lady Pole

    Patricia Lundy explores the relationship between women and death by reflecting on two books. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty’s memoir on her experience (past and current) in the death industry and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with specific focus on Lady Pole. In this post Patricia entertains the…

  • The Ascent of Female Funeral Celebrants

    I find myself wondering what this line of work is like for all of the other women who choose to walk this path? How do I take the complexities and subtle communication skills that I have honed, and use and embody as a funeral celebrant, and express them to others in such a way that…

  • Female Professional Embalmer, 1900

    Miss Katie Smith, daughter of the late Gran W. Smith, the only lady embalmer in the South, has made a long and successful study of the subject of embalming, and today she is recognized as one of the most proficient practicing that art. There has been a growing demand for her services recently, her reputation…

  • Proboscis Tongues and Demonic Queefing

    In examining the reasons why pregnant women and young infants have traditionally been seen as particularly vulnerable to demonic influences, it may be necessary to look at popular views concerning soul belief and young infants.  In many cases, very young children are seen as occupying a liminal status  between the world of the living and…

  • Transformative Powers through Making

    How exactly did Yuli Somme go from making colourful hand-made felt tea cosies, felted seamless jackets and hats, and the occasional wall hanging to soft coffins? In this beautiful account of how creative direction can change rather unexpectedly we learn that the physical act of creation can release emotion, that from sorrow something truly life affirming can…

  • Perfume of the Dead

    S. Elizabeth discusses the scent of death. Perfumes, oils, and other fragrances played a key role in the process of mummifying a body for burial, as well as denoting what status the person held in life. Scents of loss, grief, passage, and remembrance -perfumers and artistic noses have certainly attempted to create  fragrances based around these timeless…

  • Tears Become Ideas

    In some places, the ability to sing or recite ritual laments became part of a feminine portfolio of skills, along with cooking, spinning, mending and cleaning. Here, author Sarah Murray shares an adaptation from her wonderful book Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre, How We Dignify the Dead to give us insight…

  • The Corpse Brides

    If death is most often anthropomorphised into a foreboding, grinning male does it not make sense that his companion is female? The current ‘trend’ for women in the death industry is not a trend, then, but merely an influx of women taking their rightful place back at death’s side and, once again, becoming the guardians…

  • Death, Sex, Religion and the Erotic Women

    Death, Sex, Religion and the Erotic Women

    Dr Christina Welch explains that Europe has had a long history with Sex and Death, one intimately tied to religion. This post explores a genre of art produced during this time period that melds these themes. It examines ‘Death and the Maiden’ artworks by Germanic proto-and early-Reformist artists who highlighted the folly, futility and transience of…

  • Women in the Mourning

    Women in the Mourning

    Author of The Undertaker’s Daughter, Kate Mayfield is here to take us back in time. A time when women were not public figures in the funeral industry but played important roles ‘behind the scenes’ at her father’s funeral home, Kate’s childhood home.

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