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Katherine Chavigny, Michelle McLennan. Lady Lushes: Gender, Alcoholism and Medicine in Modern America, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 74, Issue 3, July 2019, Pages 362–364, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrz016
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Extract
Previous book-length studies have demonstrated that popular and professional understandings of alcoholism in twentieth century America were heavily gendered. The modern alcoholism movement, which included scientists, social workers, and health care professionals, as well as the lay participants in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), urged the public to sympathize with white middle-class male alcoholics as they struggled for sobriety, and encouraged their wives to support them. So why do we need another book-length inquiry into the gendering of alcoholism in pre-1970s modern America? Michelle McLennan’s Lady Lushes illustrates the fresh historical insights into gender dynamics that can only be gleaned through an inquiry focused on women.
After the repeal of Prohibition, drinking alcohol became socially acceptable. In contrast to the pre-Prohibition period, women could now be “lit” and be ladies, that is, maintain their respectability. While men were free to enjoy drinking while socializing and engaging in business, women were regarded as less experienced drinkers and more apt to need male supervision. Hence women’s drinking post-Prohibition usually occurred at home at the behest of their husbands or at social gatherings that included their husbands. McLennan brings to light the dynamics by which gendered assumptions deprived women alcoholics of sympathy, and relates it to the heavy price women paid for the privilege of imbibing: loss of their moral eminence in the family that had been the linchpin of women’s public moral authority in the Victorian period.
