08.06.2021

‘But the climax of evil in a woman is the habit of drinking’. Was it all so bad? Representations of women’s drinking in Polish and British public discourses in the 19th century

The policing of women’s bodies and minds in the nineteenth century through the rhetoric of responsibility and moral duty was a marked feature of the articles and fiction published in the new periodicals. The choices of women regarding their personal consumption of alcohol were constrained, culturally and legally, by a perceived gender-specific responsibility to the family and community. Women’s drinking culture was reduced to two extremes: the fallen drunken woman, ‘mother of destruction’ and the sober mother, ‘the angel of the house’. In our research, we seek the middle ground between these two extremes to focus on the recreational female drinkers and the rebels. Thereby we aim to nuance and balance our understanding of representations of women’s drinking by investigating two extremely different examples of European cultures: Britain, a powerful international player and the scattered nation of Poland fighting for independence after the partitioning. This presentation will give an overview of the successful NCN Sonata project, ‘Between the drunken “mother of destruction” and the sober “angel of the house”’. Hidden representations of women’s drinking in Polish and British public discourses in the second half of the 19th century’ and some case studies on domestic spaces of alcohol consumption to give an insight into our planned approach.

Dorota Dias-Lewandowska – historian, anthropologist, post doc at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Her research interest evolved from early modern history of alcohol (project: ‘Cultural history of French wine in Poland’) and culinary recipes (project: ‘Old Polish culinary recipes. Compilation and edition of dispersed source material’) to drinking cultures and discourses concerning sobriety and drunkenness (project: ‘The culture of drinking in Poland in the second half of the 18th century. Alcohol, consumption patterns and images of drinking’).

Pam Lock – literary scholar based at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests are in alcohol in Victorian literature and culture. She is currently preparing her first monograph for Edinburgh University Press entitled ‘The Drunkard in Victorian Literature and Culture. From Conviviality to Cursed Thirst’ which will include significant focus on the fictionalisation of female drunkenness and the figure of the female drunkard.