The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death- Jill Lepore

In the common experience of humanity, questions of life, meaning, and death are all central drives to making sense of our own lives. In her 2011 book, The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death, Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore explores these themes through various vignettes of American history. At the dawn of the 19th century, one of the most popular board games in Western history was introduced to America. The Mansion of Happiness, as it was called, was based on Indonesian games of virtue, where the player is taken on a voyage in which their virtues and vices are brought to the forefront of the game. By the middle of the century,  Milton Bradley used this game as inspiration for his own creation: a board game called the Game of Life. In contrast to The Mansion of Happiness’ emphasis on virtuous behavior, the Game of Life’s teleological end goal centered around wealth and prosperity. This new game “was the genius of Milton Bradley’s invention: he took a game imported from India and made it into the story of America. He turned a game of knowledge into the path of prosperity” (xxvii). Traversing wide spans of American history, Lepore brings together several disparate strands of historical events in order to construct a brief intellectual history of life, death, and the construction of the category of distinct “life stages” in American political/cultural discourse.

Tackling large and contentious issues in American policy/discourse, Lepore weaves these complex narratives into accounts that accentuate the ever-evolving sets of ideologies that propel various cultural movements in American history. Arguably, her central thesis can be articulated when she writes, “Matters of life and death are not, inherently, partisan. They have been turned to partisan purposes, and that shift has fundamentally altered American political culture” (168). Accordingly, the structure of the book, which began as several articles published in The New Yorker, traces the intellectual history of American discourse through the lens of various life stages, including pre-conception, birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, parenthood, old age, and ultimately, death. The stories that she uses to illustrate these stages are, however, anything but chronological, as she circuitously jumps from 1965 Life magazine articles to Aristotle’s “chicken vs. egg” dilemma in the blink of an eye, catching any interesting historical development regarding the concept of the embryo along the way.

Subsequent chapters follow this breakneck pattern, as Lepore takes on the waxing and waning popularity of natural breastfeeding and the problems of taxonomical questions (Chapter 2), the advent of children’s libraries and the feud between Anne Carroll Moore and Stuart Little (Chapter 3), sex education literature (Chapter 4), marriage, race, and eugenics (Chapter 5), Lillian Gilbreth, housekeeping magazines, and Talorized efficiency (Chapter 6), the evolution of parenthood and abortion rights (Chapter 7), Freud Jung, and William James attending seances and the history of aging (Chapter 8), conversations regarding euthanasia in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan (Chapter 9), and the materialist opportunities for immortality through a visit to a cryogenics laboratory, of which Lepore, in no uncertain language, seems to be rather suspicious (Chapter 10). Obviously, with such an expansive range of topics, spanning over the course of the 20th century American context, it is difficult to succinctly summarize Lepore’s expansive work. Her examples are often eclectic and disparate, which can lead some readers to frustration. Yet, if one can let go and follow her train of thought, she more often than not weaves these stories into a rather cohesive and persuasive whole. Volumes could be written regarding any one chapter that Lepore has the bravery to take on, but they all contain a singular, connecting thread: the ever-evolving role of science and technology in regulating the stages of human life.  

Strikingly poignant is her final section, which serves as an incredibly moving conclusion in which she injects her own personal history into the project. Reflecting on her own experiences of loss, Lepore writes, “I have come to believe that what people make of the relationship between life and death has got a good deal to do with how they think about the present and the past...if history is the art of making an argument by telling a story about the dead, which is how I see it, the dead never die: they are merely forgotten or, especially if they are loved, remembered, quick as ever.” (192). By weaving her own personal story into the narrative toward the end, we, the readers, are afforded a quick glance into the emotional impetus behind the book, which is often rare to find from most academics, but is most appreciated.

Lepore’s account is certainly American-centric, as she believes that Americans are uniquely prone to fads and the latest wisdom from “experts.” Lepore calls the authority of these self-assured experts into question, arguing that our categories of distinct life stages often reveal more about who we are as a culture, rather than merely existing as objective entities in and of themselves. What we believe about these stages of life, Lepore ultimately argues, are culturally specific, prone to the same biases and fallacies as the ones who live through them. By tracing the American responses to the changes in its own social fabric, Lepore has written a brilliant and illuminating intellectual history of the ways in which we all wrestle with questions of birth, life, work, and death, taking note of our well-intentioned tendency to improve life, as well as our stubborn refusal to let it go.