Women, Grief, and the Art of Lamenting in Maronite Christian Funerals in Lebanon

Abstract: Among the Maronite Christians in Lebanon, laments performed by women played a vital role in the funeral rituals until their gradual erosion beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. Today this practice has almost entirely disappeared, and its continued presence will be determined by the lifespans of the performers who are all women over the age of sixty-five. This article examines the female lament tradition in Lebanon as an integral part of the social work of mourning, and the sociopolitical and cultural factors that are leading to its disappearance. I first show how the gradual disappearance of lament has affected the expression of grief among the female mourners on both the individual and the communal levels. I then explore the impacts of modernization, immigration, the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the advent of church parlors, and the influence of the clergy on the fading of this tradition. These factors have resulted in a new culture of mourning not dissimilar to the "modern mourning culture" that has dominated many parts of the Western world since the nineteenth century, and which discourages the collective expression of grief and promotes private emotionality and individualization of bereavement.