Devil of the Domestic Sphere: Temperance, Gender, and Middle-class Ideology, 1800-1860

by Scott C. Martin

Overview

Drink, in the minds of antebellum temperance reformers, represented the threat of an increasingly industrial world. Seeking to legitimate their own authority, reformers of the emerging middle class used literature to propagate ideas about intemperance as well as the nature of women and their domestic role. Ministers, novelists, journalists, and poets filled temperance literature with stories of women as innocent victims and loving saviors, wives beaten by drunken husbands, and mothers or sisters who rescued men from demon drink. Simultaneously, however, women were denounced as causes of intemperance, and a celebration of female victimization coexisted with praises of womanly virtues. Further, unless she remained vigilant, a woman might also succumb to drink, and reformers had very little sympathy for such a fallen angel. Scott Martin examines these contradictory images of women and reveals the reformers' commitment not only to social betterment but also to middle-class interests and a particular gender ideology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875806396
Publisher:	Northern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	05/28/2010
Edition description:	1
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Scott C. Martin is Associate Professor of History and American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Temperance Literature and Misogyny 3

1 Female Intemperance 15

2 Victims and Exemplars 39

3 The Suffering Woman 68

4 Female Moral Suasion 87

5 Toward Legislation 106

6 Protecting the Home 124

Conclusion: The Legacy of Middle-class Temperance Ideology 150

Notes 157

Works Cited 181

Index 199

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating analysis. An original and needed contribution to the literature of nineteenyh-century female activism."—Journal of Illinois History

“Martin’s argument is provocative and important, his documentation exhaustive. He challenges previous scholarship about American women before the Civil War by shifting the focus from anti-slavery to temperance and drink.”—David Fahey, Miami University, Ohio

“Excellent, solid, and well argued…. Martin takes offense at the many ways in which the temperance movement demeaned and even endangered women, and is sensitive to subtle expressions of misogyny.”—Elaine Frantz Parsons, Duquesne University

From the Publisher