Jessica Mitford Embalming Quotes

Jessica Mitford uses several different quotes to bring written explanations to how the process of embalming works and to also support her view that embalming is a horrible process. After reading these quotes, an uneasy and negative feeling towards the practice and the people who perform and support it. The reason being is that Mitford uses quotes that use a passive tone towards the subject being talked about. She also uses quotes that make it personal to the reader. By quoting these specific words and phrases, Mitford portrays embalming and those who perform it as insensitive to the postmortem ceremony.

Although unmentioned, Mitford leaves underlying hints to her opposition to embalming. One of the ways she does this is by quoting certain

pieces of text that explain the object of the part or paragraph, but have a tone of indifference to the underhand subject. Such as in the section where Mitford is explaining people's fear of live burial. She gives an example from a text that states: “One of the effects of embalming by chemical injection, however, has been to dispel fears of live burial.” Mitford follows this with a sarcastic joke, making the quote stand out as uncaring to people’s concern. She uses then follows this up by providing a quote that says, "every operator has a favorite injection point to," it leads on to say that the favorite site can be a "handicap" when the operator refuses to choose another spot. Mitford uses both of these examples to prove to her readers that there is not a care for those who perform the embalming to the extent that they might not risk their favorite injection spot even when the situation calls for it. Although there is no extra context to prove that this happens often, Mitford uses carefully selected pieces of text to persuade the reader that what she writes is a common happening. She manipulates what is there to her own use, which in turn grabs the reader's attention and pulls them to see her point of view.
Another example from Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain, is when Mitford used a piece from an English woman who talked about her experience of an American funeral. The woman explains the horror of seeing her past friend lying open in a casket all dolled up. Unlike other examples, Mitford uses something that was written by someone who should not be related to the topic, yet is. This makes Mitford’s argument stronger and more appealing to those who read it because the example that she used is from a person who is like them; not involved with embalming, but affected by the process anyway. Instead of only providing examples from seemingly heartless individuals who perform and support embalming, she strengthens her argument by also including an example of someone who is new to the unusual process and their reactions to what is considered horrid and dishonorable. Mitford successfully provides opposing views from hers and makes them seem wrong heartless, making a reader feel as if they received all the information that they need from the topic.
Jessica Mitford uses several different quotes to bring written explanations to how the process of embalming works and to also support her view that embalming is a horrible process. Effectively, she manipulates and picks quotes that will illustrate her view on the subject as the better one. She provides examples that cause a feeling of uneasiness towards the subject of embalming and the ultimate outcome is disgust.