Title: Domesticating drink
First published: 1995
Description: 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 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, effectively used 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 abstemious 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.
Subjects: Alcohol use, Alcoholic beverages, Drinking customs, Drinking of alcoholic beverages, History, Men, Prohibition, Women, Women social reformers, Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, Histoire, Boissons, Consommation d'alcool, Alcoholgebruik, Hommes, Femmes, Temperance, Geschlechterrolle, Drankbestrijding, Interpersonal Relations, Alcohol Drinking, Geschichte 1870-1940, Women's Rights, Fonctions sociales, Alkoholkonsum, Men, history, Women, alcohol use, Drinking of alcoholic beverages--history, Drinking of alcoholic beverages--united states--history, Men--alcohol use--history, Men--alcohol use--united states--history, Women--alcohol use--history, Women--alcohol use--united states--history, Women social reformers--history, Women social reformers--united states--history, Drinking customs--united states, Hv5292 .m86 1998, 1999 f-892, Hv 5292 m974d 1998, 394.1/3/0973, Social sciences - general & miscellaneous, United states history - general & miscellaneous, General & miscellaneous cooking, Social & cultural history, Women's history, Social problems
Places: United States
LC classification: HV5292 .M86 1998