"Exchanging gin for gardening": The Treatment of Female Inebriates in Duxhurst Farm Colony, 1895-1914

This article investigates the fears raised by female alcoholism and the legislation it led to in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. It explores the interplay between gender and inebriety by focusing on Duxhurst, a farm colony for female inebriates founded in 1895 by Lady Isabella Somerset, a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEtudes anglaises Vol. 72; no. 3; pp. 274 - 378
Main Author Bonzom, Alice
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Paris Éditions Klincksieck 01.07.2019
Subjects
Alcoholism
Ambiguity
Attitudes
Biographies
Christianity
Colonialism
Edwardian period
Facilities
Females
Feminism
Gender
Legislation
Literary criticism
Literary devices
Morality
Phenomenology
Substance abuse treatment
Victorian period
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Summary:This article investigates the fears raised by female alcoholism and the legislation it led to in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. It explores the interplay between gender and inebriety by focusing on Duxhurst, a farm colony for female inebriates founded in 1895 by Lady Isabella Somerset, a wealthy philanthropist, Temperance advocate and Christian socialist. The history of the colony reveals tensions between a traditional approach to excessive drinking and a more novel, medical angle. The cottages where inebriates lived were synonymous both with a socially-inclined utopian scheme and a rather conservative, normative attitude to womanhood and deviant femininity. This article will endeavour to address the pioneering methods employed at the colony as well as the praise and criticism it received, in order to determine how far the Duxhurst experiment represented a radical break with previous practice.
ISSN:0014-195X
1965-0159