The Secret Feminist History of the Temperance Movement
The radical women behind the original “dump him” discourse
A couple years ago, while researching my memoir about a love affair with a man addicted to heroin, I got lost in the testimonies of temperance women. I was trying to understand the deleterious effects of men’s addictions on women’s lives throughout history; still, it was a somewhat surprising place to find myself. The temperance movement, as I learned about it in middle school, was part of a puritanical Christian bid for the total prohibition of alcohol. I was led to imagine angry, humorless middle-aged white women pouring out crystal decanters of brandy or smashing barrels of rum in dark saloons. Ruining men’s party, in effect. Really not my kind of ladies — or so I thought.
Once I began reading about the movement, I discovered it was far bigger than I imagined, and far more nuanced. The temperance movement was one in a constellation of social and moral reform movements that followed the 18th century Protestant revival known as the Second Great Awakening. It arguably began with the publication in 1784 of a tract by Benjamin Rush called An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind, which argued a point that seems obvious now: that drinking too much alcohol was bad for one’s health. (Rush’s inquiry may…
