Books : Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 (Gender Relations in the American Experience)
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN num: 9780801868702
ISBN number: 080186870X
Label: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 264
Printing Date: June 15, 2001
Publishing house: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 186448
Studio: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The period of 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 alcohol 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 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.
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. 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.
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Catherine Murdock's book 'Domesticating Drink' is an intiguing and insightful look into the world of alcohol in the US between 1870 and the Second World War. In direct opposition to the many historians who claim that Prohibition was caused by the interests of big business, Murdock's study brings the locus closer to the home, a locality that she claims was responsible for the majority of change. Utilising cookbooks, etiquette guides and department store catalogues as primary sources, Murdock reveals the major part that alcohol played in the everyday life of the middle class woman in the time under study. Fascinating for it's attention to detail and it's myriad of sources, Murdock's treatment of the lead-up years to Prohibition, and the eventual breakdown of the Eighteenth Amendment makes for compelling reading. A great introduction into a hotly contested debate, and a welcome change from texts which ignore the role of women in the 'Noble Experiment'.
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