Lady Lushes

According to the popular press in the mid twentieth century, American women, in a misguided attempt to act like men in work and leisure, were drinking more. "e;Lady Lushes"e; were becoming a widespread social phenomenon. From the glamorous hard-drinking flapper of the 1920s to the disgraced and alcoholic wife and mother played by Lee Remick in the 1962 film "e;Days of Wine and Roses,"e; alcohol consumption by American women has been seen as both a prerogative and as a threat to health, happiness, and the social order. In Lady Lushes, medical historian Michelle L. McClellan traces the story of the female alcoholic from the late-nineteenth through the twentieth century. She draws on a range of sources to demonstrate the persistence of the belief that alcohol use is antithetical to an idealized feminine role, particularly one that glorifies motherhood. Lady Lushes offers a fresh perspective on the importance of gender role ideology in the formation of medical knowledge and authority.