"To make yourself less than something you can be-that too is a form of suicide."- Benjamin Lichtenberg. Throughout this unit we have encountered numerous suicides. The first was that of Edna Pontellier, who could not bear to live in a world where she is only granted freedom that could be snatched away at her husband's discretion. The second was that of the imaginary character Judith Shakespeare, who could not survive in a world where she could not demonstrate her genius. The third was the author of A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf, who suffered greatly as a woman writer. A fourth suicide could be considered, the fate of Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns. In killing Rasheed, Mariam faced certain death and she knew this. However this suicide is quite different from those of the other women mentioned. Before reading of the deaths of these women, I always considered suicide an act of cowardice and surrender. It seemed to me a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Artists like Shakespeare' sister and Virginia Woolf committing suicide seemed almost cliche to me. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers." However these women brought me to question, can suicide be honorable? The first quote I mentioned made me think, perhaps living in a world where they could not be free, simply because of their sex was the same as death for them. By opting not to exist in this world, they made a decision that no one else could make for them. This did show strength, not weakness as I originally thought. Indeed, choosing to end their lives rather than lower themselves to fit in societies definition of what a woman should be could be considered honorable. The woman whose suicide was most disconcerting to me was that of Edna Pontellier, who claimed that she loved her children but then took her own life instead of returning to them. Then I really thought about it, and realized that mothers of the time were not the doting caregivers of today. Edna's relationship with her children was never that of my mothers with her children, so to me her abandonment of her family is excusable.
Before I became familiar with these women I thought that suicide was only for the weak. Now I realize that these women were strong beyond belief in choosing their paths. For them, living as women during their time periods was a fate worse than death.
