By: Kelly-Dee Anderson
Edited by: Madeleine Hamilton
“There is not a typical response to loss, as there is no typical loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives.” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Grief is fathomless in that way—impossible to define, and yet it somehow has a slot in the unwritten public dictionary of decorum. This unwritten definition rendered by society has turned around to hold its lexicographer captive; pitifully enough, that would be us. Yes, it’s no new portrayal that the personal affairs and manifestations of grief have been molded by society as far back as ancient times. The ricochet of the expectations, mandates, and scrutiny surrounding methods of coping with loss can still be felt today.
A notable unveiling of this is the social media criticism towards Erika Kirk for her perceived lack of mourning following her husband’s death. Some online commentators have questioned Erika’s composure, attire, and decision to appear and speak publicly so soon. Her non-black attire, high heels, and fully-done face of makeup has struck a dissonant chord among some observers—to critics, it isn’t a picture of “typical” funeral wear or the figurative “sackcloth” of mourning. In the weeks following her husband’s death, Erika posted to Instagram that “there is no linear blueprint for grief.”
Even so, certain voices have questioned and disapproved of her promotion to CEO of Turning Point USA in her husband’s place. Some have sparked debate as to whether or not Erika’s grief is a ploy to ease into a position of power. This line of thinking reckons that grief is insincere if it’s paired with productivity. Others conclude that this must have been what she wanted, feeding suspicions about the nature of her husband’s sudden passing. The entire consensus of this disapproval is that her manner does not copy the choreography of how a widow should appear in the face of loss. These are simply reverberations of a society that has been conditioned to police what mourning looks like.
You could say grief has been public property for ages. No, seriously. One of the earliest examples of the “grief police” can be found in ancient Athens where Athenian statesman, Solon, introduced laws to regulate mourning. Initially, the intent was to redirect public emotion: to garner praise instead of lamentation for slain soldiers. It’s important to note that women, at the time, had immense influence in the realm of mourning and funerary proceedings, so it’s unsurprising that these changes were not well-received. Many wished to continue traditional practices of mourning like communal laments, wailing, singing, and rending clothes.
How do you enforce laws the public won’t accept? Make them stricter, of course. Sarcasm aside, it’s exactly what Solon did. Traditional methods of mourning did not quite blend with his idea of civic order. Men within the state began perceiving traditional mourning as “distasteful”, “excessive” and “barbaric” (Tsakiropoulou-Summers, 2018, p. 14). The result was further restrictions on all funerals, private or public. Gynaikonomoi (overseers of women’s conduct) ensured that offenders of funerary laws were punished, including men who displayed effeminate behaviour (Tsakiropoulou-Summers, 2018, p. 15). Even literature reflects grieving constraints, with the Iliad’s Achilles weeping bitterly for his slain friend—an image later criticized by Plato fearing it would influence men to mourn too freely. In his accord, a “good man” was not to be “prostrated” by loss, since weeping for the dead was only for “inferior” men and women (Plato, ca. 375 B.C.E./2002, p. 34).
Centuries later, in the Victorian era, the grief police no longer bore the figurative badge of the state—instead they donned a black veil with an insurance policy. Burial insurance had become popular among the working class to guarantee a “proper” funeral, and more importantly, to avoid the dreaded “pauper’s burial”—a fate synonymous with shame. Even families with little income would use what they could to conserve their respectability. If black mourning array couldn’t be afforded, it was borrowed, dyed, or pawned to fit the costume of grief—a costume Erika Kirk is expected to wear today.
Victorian grief had moral and economic stipulations. Undertakers capitalized on this by scaling prices under the guise of catering to every income, however, it wasn’t uncommon for the minimum price of a “respectable” funeral to exceed two weeks’ wages for a working-class family. There were even etiquette manuals prescribing time restraints on mourning and disapproving appearances at public balls. Though mourning in the Victorian era didn’t hold the same legal constraints it did in ancient Greece, the social shackles remained in its place, incarcerating grief in the dictionary of decorum.
The shackles haven’t disappeared over time—they’re still in place in the form of online discourse. To circle back, the scrutiny of Erika Kirk’s mourning composure reclines into the age-old societal policing of overt and covert grief. Whether it echoes the ancient Athenian notion of doing too much or the Victorian fear of doing too little, the impulse is always the same: to measure the immeasurable and predict the unpredictable in an attempt to paint an objective picture of grief.
So in the end, perhaps the true scandal is not how you grieve, but that grief still needs public permission.
Image Citation: The White House. (2025). Mrs. Erika Kirk at Charlie Kirk’s Memorial, 21 September 2025 [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G1Z19c3WsAAtHeE.jpg
References:
A Member of the Aristocracy. (2010). Manners and rules of good society: Or solecisms to be avoided (38th ed.). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33716/33716-h/33716-h.htm (Original work published 1879)
Campoamor, D. (2025, October 12). Erika Kirk addresses criticism over her grieving process following husband Charlie Kirk’s death. Us Magazine. https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/charlie-kirks-wife-erika-addresses-backlash-over-public-grieving/
Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. (1869). Cassell’s household guide: Being a complete encyclopaedia of domestic and social economy and forming a guide to every department of practical life (Vol. 3). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/cassellshousehol03londuoft
Kirk, E. [@mrserikakirk]. (2025, October 10). …there is no linear blueprint for grief [Video]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/DPpST4Lkh0W/
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2014). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Simon and Schuster.
Plato. (2002). The Republic. Science The Earth. https://www.sciencetheearth.com/uploads/2/4/6/5/24658156/plato_-_the_republic.pdf (Original work published ca. 375 B.C.E.)
Strange, J.-M. (2002). ‘She cried a very little’: Death, grief and mourning in working-class culture, c. 1880–1914. Social History, 27(2), 143–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071020210128373
Strange, J.-M. (2003). Only a pauper whom nobody owns: Reassessing the pauper grave c. 1880–1914. Past & Present, 178(1), 148–175. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600760
Tsakiropoulou-Summers, T. (2018). Solon’s legislation and women’s incompatibility with state ideology. In Women and the ideology of political exclusion (pp. 33–56). Routledge. https://ir-api.ua.edu/api/core/bitstreams/e4c7ee15-c9a9-4800-af14-7a186dd408b9/content