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Suicide is such an intensely private act it cannot easily be linked to broader social factors. Or can it? In his classic study of suicide, The Savage God, Al Alvarez makes a persuasive case for a connection between the rise of social turmoil in the 20th century and that of the artistic self-destroyer: think Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Mark Rothko or Sylvia Plath. Making art out of the messy materials of modern life, Alvarez argues, was a way of both subduing or attempting to master chaos; a risky see-saw act that could, and so often did, fail. Interestingly, suicide among artists was much less common in previous centuries.¹

Most people are not creative in this extreme sense. They have not tried to express the mayhem of their age and paid the ultimate price for it. But numerous citizens experience social upheaval as extreme as war or as ordinary as divorce and many have felt the same things as the despairing artist: anger, bleakness, a complete absence of hope. Judging by the contemporary suicide statistics, it seems to be men who are feeling these emotions most acutely. How do we account for this gender gap in death?

The higher incidence of suicide by men always surprises me as if, at some unconscious level, I still think of killing yourself as a soft option, a kind of giving up, which goes against the traditional masculine grain. But despair is irrational in one important sense: no one, man or woman, chooses to feel it. Instead, they find themselves overwhelmed by bleakness and cannot find the mechanisms to cope. So, why do so many men feel such hopelessness about life?

It is not that hard to understand. Despite feminism and the so-called feminisation of the economy, women are still largely expected to make sense of their life through human connections be it friendship, sexual love or motherhood.

A woman may become frightened or depressed by separation from the crowd, even if involves success rather than failure. She may not even be able to distinguish between the two. The resignation last year by education secretary Estelle Morris from the Cabinet was a good example of how uncomfortable women can feel about the natural offshoots of power and success, including high levels of personal attention and conflict.

In contrast, men still tend to prove themselves through work, achievement, personal success. The intense turmoil in the economy over recent decades has had a massive effect on the male psyche. In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett shows brilliantly how the decline of long-term security in employment has had a devastating impact on the self-esteem of a generation of working and middle class men.²

Women tend not to experience the impact of economic change so acutely. Our place in the economy still feels somewhat tentative and conditional. In some way, we are still so amazed to have a job or a profession at all. Losing one or the other might be a financial blow but it doesn't feel like the alienation of a birth right.


Women are also better at interrogating their feelings, including those of apparent personal failure. But to those whose emotional literacy is less developed powerful emotions can feel like the definitive statement, the final bulletin on the condition of their own reality rather than a temporary disturbance.¹

Suicide is not just a collapse into nothingness, the final defeat. It is also an act of unique aggression. Indeed, some people who have attempted suicide but failed have later reported that they believed the act to be somehow temporary and reversible. They thought they would retain some degree of consciousness after their death which would allow them to experience the guilt of those around them. Thus, their desire to punish was even stronger than their apparent understanding of death itself.

In a post script to The Savage God, Al Alvarez describes his own attempted suicide. His own period of disturbance might fairly be seen as a kind of existential crisis. But he also describes a life of little sleep, enormous amounts of drinking and precious little relaxation. Such everyday bad habits are not a strictly male failing but preoccupation with looks and shape and general care of the self perhaps makes women quicker to understand the beneficial effects of a good diet, exercise, rest and sleep in preserving their mental health. Living wisely is so often a question of getting the small things right; life so often looks a great deal bleaker after three hours sleep than it does after eight.

¹ A Alvarez, The Savage God. A Study of Suicide, Penguin Books, 2002

² R Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, WW Norton and Co, 1998

Melissa Benn is a journalist and novelist.