Word: mitfordly
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...American Way of Death, Mitford...
...American Way of Death, Mitford...
...Miss Mitford emphasizes that morticians take advantage of bereaved friends and relatives. This is undoubtedly true, but people have arranged funerals, both in America and else-where, for a long time, without allowing morticians to take advantage of them. What is peculiar about Americans which makes them so vulnerable...
Unfortunately, this is a question she hardly considers at all, although one might expect it to be a central question about The American Way of Death. Miss Mitford is content to delineate a scandal, with only the most cursory attempts to explain its presence in our society...
Certainly, American attitudes toward death are complex, and the manner of dying is just a partial reason for these attitudes. Miss Mitford has chosen to disregard the problem, to deny the perceptiveness of the undertakers while she decries their sales pitch. Some readers may find her own singleminded emphasis on money just as distasteful as the embalming practices she describes. But because her appeal is essentially emotional--and Americans are always emotional about money--her book will have impact, and produce results...