(253).
Mitford's tale begins with the arrival of Mr. Jones at the mortuary and ends with his body being lowered into the ground. The use of a sarcastic tone in the midst of bloody details serves to lead the reader to the conclusion that Mitford is against the practices of embalming in America. .
Because "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain- is so one sided, it is more than likely that someone reading this with no prior knowledge of the topic would be molded into a similar way of thinking. It is important to note that Mitford herself is British, and open caskets and embalming are very uncommon overseas. It is literally a foreign concept to Mitford, and it is unlikely that she grew up going to open casket funerals, seeing firsthand her loved ones who have just been embalmed. Her experiences shaped her into believing this was wrong, a view she claims to be common among the English. One woman who had moved from England to San Francisco as an adult described her first, and last, American open casket funeral: "I myself have attended only one funeral here [. . .]. Then and there I decided that I could never face another American funeral-even dead- (257). The purpose of the English woman's excerpt in Mitford's piece is to get a firsthand account of another person horrified practices regarding American funeral. There is no opposing account, no second viewpoint to offer the advantages of this practice. Therefore, those with little or no understanding of this American funeral tradition would most likely be shocked by reading Mitford's essay.
On the reverse side, what if the reader was educated on the topic? What if an individual's experiences led them to consider embalming a decent and acceptable practice? This second viewpoint does exist in the form of Thomas Lynch's essay, "The Undertaking,"" a rebuttal to Mitford's claims. While Mitford chose to write about something she only knew about in research, Lynch wrote about what he knew and what he encountered as the undertaker in a small town.