Peter Marris - Widows and their families

AFRICA
In 26 Volumes

First published in 1958

Reprinted in 2004 by

Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

1958 Institute of Community Studies

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Widows and their Families

ISBN 978-0-415-32996-5

ISBN 978-1-136-53192-7 (ePub)

Miniset: Africa

Series: Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

With the publication of this book, the Institute of Community Studies completes a Bethnal Green trilogy. Each volume reports the findings of an empirical study of family life: the first through the eyes of middle-aged husbands and wives, the second through those of the aged, and this one through the eyes of widows.

In our present Western civilization to be widowed is to be twice-stricken: both grief and poverty are the widows lot. A satisfactory study requires therefore an understanding both of the emotional and the economic implications of widowhood, and of their interaction with each other. It requires also an ability to look at suffering dispassionately and without flinching. It seems probable that one reason for the neglect of the problem is the rarity of investigators with this combination of gifts.

Grief is no respecter of persons. Whether the bereaved is young or old, rich or poor, to lose another with whom his feelings are closely linked is to suffer emotional disruption. Not only is the external pattern of his life abruptly changed, but he finds himself at the mercy of conflicting impulses of great intensityto remember, to forget; to blame, to forgive; to seek companionship, to avoid company. No wonder this is an experience which can endanger physical and mental health, both in the short-term and the long. For the psychiatrist and the psycho-analyst the problem is to understand the nature of the processes set in train by bereavement, and the conditions which assist these processes to reach a healthy outcome or which hinder it; since without such understanding neither therapeutic nor preventive measures will be well-based. Hitherto, however, there have been too few empirical studies, and this contribution will be warmly welcomed.

But central as grief and mourning are to the student of mental health, they are experiences which are of concern also to all members of a community. Disliked as painful, they are too often dismissed as irrational. As a result our culture provides but poor guides for the conduct of mourning, either for the bereaved or for his relatives and friends. Let us hope that a deeper understanding of the import of bereavement will point the way to customs which will provide both clearer guidance to friends and more effective support for the bereaved.