Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote

Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote

Author:Rachel Vorona Cote
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00


We don’t often read about Victorian women’s substance abuse, and with good reason. In the nineteenth century, a temperance movement loomed large in Great Britain. Men who drank were considered lowlifes, but women who drank were nothing short of fallen, that is to say, abandoners of the virtuous life they were expected to diligently follow. Engravings like “The Clew,”32 by Charles Keene, published in the March 8, 1879, edition of Punch magazine, illustrate with brevity Victorian society’s condemnatory view of female alcoholism. Our eyes are directed to the diminutive and ragged figure of a little girl, her hair shorn haphazardly, as if someone had attempted to cut it while reeling in drunken delirium. She is barefoot and, based on the wrappings of those surrounding her, vulnerable to the English chill. What’s more, Keene’s shadowing seems to imply grime as much as it supplies dimension to her small person. A policeman, together with a small crowd of concerned passersby loom over her, their gazes re-emphasizing our focus on the little girl and the policeman who has bent toward her and taken her hand. The corresponding text reads:

The child was evidently lost!—cried bitterly—could not tell where its Parents lived, or whether she was an Orphan, or what her Father was—or where she went to school.—Enter Intelligent Policeman.

Policeman (in a friendly whisper). “Where does your Mother get her Gin, My Dear?”

[And the mystery was solved.]



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