Domesticating drink : women, men, and alcohol in America, 1870-1940 / Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murdock, Catherine Gilbert.

Series:

Gender relations in the American experience

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drinking of alcoholic beverages--United States--History.

Drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Men--Alcohol use--United States--History.

Men.

Men--Alcohol use.

Drinking customs.

Women social reformers.

History.

United States.

Women--Alcohol use--United States--History.

Women.

Women--Alcohol use.

Women social reformers--United States--History.

Drinking customs--United States.

Physical Description:

244 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Summary:

The sale and consumption of alcohol was one of the most devasive issues confronting America in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. According to many historians, the period of its prohibition, from 1919 to 1933, marks the fault line between the cultures of Victorian and modern America. In Domesticating Drink, Murdock argues that the debates surrounding prohibition also marked a divide along gender lines. For much of early American history, men generally did the drinking, and women and children were frequently the victims of alcohol-associated violence and abuse. As a result, women stood at the fore of the temperance and prohibition movements (Carrie Nation being the crusade's icon), and, as Murdock explains, would effectively use the fight against drunkenness as a route toward poetical empowerment and participation. At the same time, respectable women drank at home, in a pattern of moderation at odds with contemporaneous male alcohol abuse.

During the 1920s, with federal prohibition a reality, many women began to assert their hard-won sense of freedom by becoming social drinkers in places other than the home. By the 1930s, the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform was one of the most important repeal organizations in the country. Murdock's study of how this development took place broadens our understanding of the social and cultural history of alcohol and the various issues that surround it.

As alcohol continues to spark debate about behaviors, attitudes, and gender roles, Domesticating Drink provides valuable historical context and important lessons for understanding and responding to the evolving use, and abuse, of drink.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [175]-215) and index.

ISBN:

0801859409

OCLC:

39195378