Global Comparisons: Self-Sacrifice and Gender

Up to now we have dwelled on the history of suicide in Europe during the early modern period, and there is an obvious reason for this: of all places and times, this geographic area has been the subject of far more research than any other.

One potentially fruitful linkage is found in the religious meanings of self­sacrifice; for despite harsh punishments for some self-killers, even Christianity treated self-sacrifice with ambivalence towards an intentional act resulting in one's own death, as long as it contributed to the cause of religious-based communal values and ideals. Nearly every society accepts virtuous and heroic acts of self-sacrifice on behalf of the greater good. At first glance, a direct linkage between martyrdom and suicide may seem contro­versial, particularly to the adherents of any religious or ethical persuasion. However, even a cursory examination of the entry for ‘martyrdom' in the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Religion immediately refers the reader else­where: ‘For discussion of ritual death in a cross-cultural context, see Suicide'.^[566] Indeed, while self-killing precludes accidental death and homicide, high-risk behaviours taken without regard for personal safety and in certain knowledge of self-annihilation, especially in fulfilment of a religious or ritual obligation, evidence suicidality in the strictest possible sense.

Perhaps the most compelling early modern case for interpreting martyr­dom as self-killing is provided by a haunting inquiry composed by the seventeenth-century English clergyman John Donne about one of the most famous martyrs of all time. Donne convincingly argued that Jesus' death on the cross could be clearly construed as the ultimate act of self-sacrifice; in effect, it was an early modern interpretation of what we today might view as ‘death by cop'. As postulated in his controversial 1608 essay, BIA0ANATOE [Biathanatos, or Self-Killing]: A Declaration of that Paradoxe, or Thesis, that Selfe­Homicide is not so Naturally Sinne..., he enumerated a variety of peculiar circumstances that justified self-sacrifice for the sake of charity and the greater glory of God, chief among them the Passion of Christ. Donne, fully cognisant of the danger his assertion held both for his person and his career, as well as the potential for misinterpretation as a blanket legitimisation of self­killing, refused to allow its publication during his lifetime. Instead, he left the manuscript in the care of a close friend, Robert Ker, with instructions to ‘keep it... with... jealousy... Publish it not, but yet burn it not'. Ultimately, however, his son granted permission for its publication in 1647, sixteen years after Donne's death. In the seventeenth century, needless to say, its attribu­tion to a clergyman provoked something of a scandal.

Religious martyrdom is one extreme form of self-sacrifice offered up here in evidence of the linkage to suicide. Another ubiquitous example is self­sacrifice in battle as intentionally suicidal behaviour. In full accordance with Durkheim's dictum that suicide rates decrease among civilian populations during wartime, suicide historian Georges Minois recounts how the option for heroic self-sacrifice in battle offered suicidal nobles an honourable death in combat as an alternative to the shameful crime of self-murder.

Most early modern cultures honoured self-sacrifice in battle, not least the samurai tradition of Edo/Tokugawa Japan from 1603 to 1868. Regulated by the Bushido ethical code of the warrior, which tempered the violent lifestyle of practitioners with a serene acceptance of death in the face of adversity, it was steeped in the religious ethics of Zen Buddhist stoicism, neo-Confucian filial piety and the Shinto proclivity to view all human activity as part of the cycle of nature.^[568] From childhood, the code schooled young samurai to constantly ponder death through self-sacrificial immolation. On the battle­field, the samurai were notoriously fearless. The customary practice of preserving honour off the battlefield through seppuku, or self-disembowel- ment, however, generally involved a second, who delivered the coup de grace from behind immediately after the self-killer first plunged his sword into his entrails. Technically mandated by the code, seppuku was not self-killing per se, but rather an act of restoring honour reserved solely for the samurai class.

Other acts of self-destruction were alternately considered as both martyr­dom and self-killing, depending on the perspective of the observer. While religious and ethical values played a significant role in interpretations of self­killing beyond the warrior cult of the samurai, the role of gender in the self­sacrifices of women offers another useful litmus test for comparative analysis. In Japan, the self-killing of one noble woman demonstrates differing cultural perspectives on the same event. In 1549, the arrival of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier in Japan met with resistance. In 1587, daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi, de facto ruler of Japan, issued a prohibition against Christian missionary activities, initiating a persecution of converts.

For commoners, one form of honourable self-destruction was shinju, literally ‘in the heart', or figuratively meaning ‘the faithfulness in one's heart'. Shinju was the mutual suicide of star-crossed lovers who defied social convention, and has been described as ‘frequent' during the Edo/Tokugawa era, particularly among courtesans and their lovers.^[570] Erotic love between courtesans and their admirers is celebrated in the quasi-pornographic wood­cuts and pamphlets of shunga, literally ‘pillow books', employed by both men and women to excite themselves during masturbation.^[571] If shunga celebrated spaces of emotional liberty against an otherwise repressively circumscribed regime of socially acceptable courtship, so too did accounts of shinju. Most incidents of dual suicides arose out of illicit relationships forged in the yuri, brothel quarters located in larger cities where the samurai and geisha coupled. While the ‘customer-lover' might demand an act of self-harm from his lover (e.g. ripping of fingernails, cutting off hair or stab wounds inflicted with a knife) to prove fidelity when he proposed redeeming her through marriage, in other circumstances when marriage was entirely forbidden, both lovers refused to bow to social pressures and took the ultimate pledge to engage in double-suicide as a protest against a prevailing emotional regime.^[572]

Probably the most famous practice of self-sacrifice to prove fidelity is the Indian sati, the ritual self-immolation of widows at the funerals of their husbands. Depictions of the practice by shocked Westerners are legion: awestruck, the Venetian jeweller, Cesare de' Fredrici, described the self- sacrificial burning of a widow in 1587, bejewelled and apparelled as a bride, while merchant Gasparo Balbi related a similar incident in 1580, noting how a widow was carried in a sedan and assisted into a flaming pit to join her deceased husband.^[573] Noted scholar Jorg Frisch suggests that, in fact, the voluntary self-sacrifice of the sati (that is, a bride who was to remain faithful, chaste and virtuous through self-destruction upon her husband's death) was anything but voluntary, implying that widows may frequently have been drugged or pushed on their husband's funeral pyre against their will.^[574]

The Qing dynasty in China witnessed the unique phenomenon of a cult dedicated to pious widows who killed themselves to defend their honour and chastity.

In Chinese culture, however, suicide is perceived less as a cry for help and more as an angry indictment of wrongdoing. Harried by their in-laws or sexually assaulted by would-be grooms, many women chose death rather than the loss of their autonomy and in order to protect their honour, proving their piety to society at large. Thus accused by the self-killer, if the in-laws were found out, if foul play were proven or if the suicide was motivated by sexual assault by an overzealous suitor and the crime were discovered, then the full weight of the law fell upon the convicted perpetrators.^[576] Furthermore, families frequently went to court to prove that the widow had killed herself out of loyalty to her deceased husband in an attempt to defend her honour and chastity, thereby rendering her eligible for public veneration as a martyr by entering her name on the roster of pious widows on ceremonial public arches constructed throughout the countryside.^[577] The practice became so popular that later Qing emperors intervened directly to limit the proliferation of ceremonial arches in order to discourage widows and so-called betrothed widows (fiancees) from taking their lives too lightly.^[578]

Pious female suicides are a common trope in Japanese and Chinese literature of the early modern period.^[579] In art, however, the most popular representative of self-killing to preserve female honour is undoubtedly the depiction of Lucretia by Renaissance painters.

In reality, however, actual female self-killing in early modern Europe was usually motivated by far less lofty aspirations. Suicide by proxy, a peculiarly gender-related phenomena of the age, witnessed a peak in the late seven­teenth to early early eighteenth centuries. The rise and fall of female suicide by proxy coincided with the beginning and end of a judicial campaign against infanticide, though the definitive relationship between the two remains unclear. Arne Jansson demonstrates how desperate women in Sweden resolved to end their lives, and balked at religious prohibitions against suicide which carried the sanction of eternal damnation.^[580] As a desperate alternative, a spate of women began throwing young children, either their own or others, from bridges in Stockholm. Arrested for homicide, they confessed and repented the deed, accepting death through public execution. In a twisted logical consequence, they avoided damnation for suicide by repenting the crime of homicide, while still achieving self-destruction. Remarkably, as prosecutions for infanticide abated in the eighteenth century, so too did incidences of suicide by proxy. The realities of female self-killing for women in the early modern era, it seems, often had little to do with the virtues and piety extolled in literature and art.