Death

Abstract

The omnipresence and inescapability of death was a reality vividly imprinted upon the seventeenth-century Frenchwoman’s mind. Preachers brutally emphasised that her pampered flesh would one day rot and serve as worm-fodder.¹ Moralists urged her to prepare early for the last journey if she wished to lessen anxiety over departure and the risk of travelling to the wrong destination. Moribund parents had enacted before her eyes the sombre drama of which she herself was condemned one day to be the central figure, and infant offspring succumbing to disease and doctors reminded her that the final bow might well be taken prematurely. Criminals swinging from the gibbet along the highways; beggars withering in the gutters; dignitaries stonily recumbent on their tombs in churches; skeletons dancing and skulls grimacing in paintings, engravings and sculptures² — wherever she looked, gruesome images of humanity’s ultimate fate seemed to stare her in the face.