Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 (Gender Relations in the American Experience) Book

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. "Women's drinking . . . represents not a capitulation to male values but rather a domestication of male behavior. The replacement of the all-male saloon with the mixed-sex speakeasy and bar, and the integration of drinking rituals such as cocktail parties into the home, indicates more than the domestication of drink. On a fundamental level it speaks of the elimination of a masculine subculture based on exclusivity, inebriety, and violence within the United States."?from the introduction The sale and consumption of alcohol was one of the most divisive 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 lines 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 political empowerment and participation. At the same time, respectable women drank at home, in a pattern of moderation at odds with contemporaneous male alcohol abuse. Though dry women routinely criticized this moderate drinking, scholars have overlooked its impact on women's and prohibition history. 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.Read More