July 9, 1999

'Surviving Literary Suicide'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Many authors romanticize suicide, celebrating characters who make grand statements with their self-destruction. Think of Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, who jumps to his death rather than face bondage under an oppressive psychiatrist. But with high rates of youth suicide, should literature professors take any special precautions when teaching such texts,

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