The sanctuary of sobriety: the emergence of temperance as a feminine virtue in Tudor and Stuart England*

Abstract

This study examines the reasons why temperance was viewed as an appropriate virtue for women in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It makes use of contemporary literature to document shifts in attitudes toward women who drank in a public and conspicuous fashion, and examines the economic and cultural changes that contributed to those shifts. The literature consulted in this study would suggest that up until the first decades of the sixteenth century men and women both enjoyed considerable freedom as to where and when they might consume alcohol, and would further suggest that it was only during the economic and social crises of the early modern period that two distinct drinking cultures started to emerge, one centred in the home and exclusive of men, the other centred outside the home and exclusive of women. The emergence of temperance as a virtue specific to women happened to occur at a time when real wages were in sharp decline, and effectively sanctioned the redistribution of household income in favour of men, whose right to drink was never seriously challenged. Criticism of women who drank in a public and conspicuous fashion also happened to coincide with the rediscovery of classical texts commending the supposed temperance of the women of early Rome.

Consuming Male Identities: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Alcohol Consumption in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Willott and Griffin, ; Campbell, ). This gendered separation of drinking places in the West occurred from the 16th century when public domains and specific arenas such as the pub were gradually dominated by (particularly working class) men (Warner, ). In the 19th century in Aotearoa NZ, British settlers replicated the British postindustrial revolution patterns of male socialising, namely, meeting and drinking in the pub.…”

Gender differences in alcohol consumption and adverse drinking consequences: cross‐cultural patterns

“…It has often been feared that women' s intoxication reduces social control of their sexuality, by making women either more sexually disinhibited or more vulnerable to sexual advances (Gomberg, 1982;Snare, 1989;McLaughlin, 1991;Stewart, 1992;Purcell, 1994). Women's drinking has also been discouraged or concealed because the intoxicating effects of alcohol were considered incompatible with women' s traditional domestic roles, and might signal a dangerous failure of social control over women' s family relationships and public behavior (McLaughlin, 1991;Ikuesan, 1994;Kua, 1994;Mphi, 1994;Purcell, 1994;Warner, 1997).…”

“…Attempts to analyze women' s and men's drinking in terms of gender roles also have other limitations: (1) Such analyses provide little basis for predicting how men' s and women' s drinking behavior, and gender differences in drinking behavior, will vary from one society to another. (2) Such analyses often explain the ideological justi® cations for gender differences in alcohol use, but usually do not explain how those differences originated (but see Warner, 1997). (3) Since gender roles impose somewhat different rules for behavior in different cultures, they cannot adequately explain why men' s alcohol use and related problems exceed women' s so consistently and cross-culturally.…”

Women's intoxication as ‘dual licentiousness’: An exploration of gendered images of drinking and intoxication in Sweden

“…The proposition that women's drinking is seen -and feared -as 'dual licentiousness', and that social control over women's drinking is therefore harsher, is not proposed as an explanation that specifies cause and effect. It can be brought together with, e.g., Warner's (1997) suggestion that economic circumstances played a role in the emergence of 'temperance as a feminine virtue' in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, and, by way of extension, that economic circumstances as well as changes in social roles for women are relevant in regulating women's drinking also today. Warner's study and the proposition in this article are two sociological ways of explaining (the economic circumstances) and understanding (women are seen as closer to nature) the differing social reactions to women's and men's drinking.…”