Domesticating Drink

Download or read book Domesticating Drink written by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sale and consumption of alcohol was one of the most divisive issues confronting America in the 19th and early-20th 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 this study, 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-related 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 towards 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.