- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Lady Lushes
About This Book
According to the popular press in the mid twentieth century, American women, in a misguided attempt to act like men in work and leisure, were drinking more. “Lady Lushes” were becoming a widespread social phenomenon. From the glamorous hard-drinking flapper of the 1920s to the disgraced and alcoholic wife and mother played by Lee Remick in the 1962 film “Days of Wine and Roses, ” alcohol consumption by American women has been seen as both a prerogative and as a threat to health, happiness, and the social order.
In Lady Lushes, medical historian Michelle L. McClellan traces the story of the female alcoholic from the late-nineteenth through the twentieth century. She draws on a range of sources to demonstrate the persistence of the belief that alcohol use is antithetical to an idealized feminine role, particularly one that glorifies motherhood. Lady Lushes offers a fresh perspective on the importance of gender role ideology in the formation of medical knowledge and authority.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. The Female Inebriate in the Temperance Paradigm
- Chapter 2. âLit Ladiesâ: Womenâs Drinking during the Progressive Era and Prohibition
- Chapter 3. âMore to Overcome than the Menâ: Women in Alcoholics Anonymous
- Chapter 4. Defining a Disease: Gender, Stigma, and the Modern Alcoholism Movement
- Chapter 5. âA Special Masculine Neurosisâ: Psychiatrists Look at Alcoholism
- Chapter 6. âThe Doctor Didnât Want to Take an Alcoholicâ: The Challenge of Medicalization at Midcentury
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Read More in the Series