Private Spirits, Public Lives: Sober Citizenship, Shame and Secret Drinking in Victorian Britain

Beckingham, David

Abstract

This article considers Victorian concerns about the rise of secret drinking amongst respectable women. These new, apparently dangerous, practices were blamed on licensed grocers and even railway station refreshment rooms. Understandings of different male and female natures went hand in glove with anxieties about the potential effects of drinking. That alcohol might be consumed in secret, at home, triggered concerns about the shameful state of womanhood and the risks for the domestic space and state of the family. This secrecy, and an apparent absence of reliable evidence as to the scale of the problem, is central to the methodological challenge and argument in this article. Using their knowledge of and putative responsibilities for the private sphere, women in the temperance movement organised against the grocer. The article analyses published accounts of women’s work in the Church of England Temperance Society, the British Women’s Temperance Association, and Women’s Total Abstinence Union. It argues that their efforts, rooted in private and domestic imperatives, tested the social and spatial reach of women’s reform work. Acting against the grocer, helped women to articulate a distinctively public model of sober citizenship.

Citation

Beckingham, D. (2021). Private Spirits, Public Lives: Sober Citizenship, Shame and Secret Drinking in Victorian Britain. Journal of Victorian Culture, 26(3), 419-434. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcab008

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 25, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Apr 22, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021-07
• Deposit Date: Mar 4, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 23, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Victorian Culture
• Print ISSN: 1355-5502
• Electronic ISSN: 1750-0133
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 419-434
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcab008
• Keywords: Literature and Literary Theory; Cultural Studies; History; Visual Arts and Performing Arts
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5365931
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/26/3/419/6245997