Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century

During the nineteenth century, the American temperance movement underwent a visible, gendered shift in its leadership as it evolved from a male-led movement to one dominated by the women. However, this transition of leadership masked the complexity and diversity of the temperance movement. Through an examination of the two icons of the movement -- the self-made man and the crusading woman -- Fletcher demonstrates the evolving meaning and context of temperance and gender. Temperance becomes a story of how the debate on racial and gender equality became submerged in service to a corporate, political enterprise and how men’s and women’s identities and functions were reconfigured in relationship to each other and within this shifting political and cultural landscape.

"Drawing on her 2004 dissertation, Holly Berkley Fletcher has written a provocative, well-researched, and mostly persuasive first book. It is based on many manuscript and prited sources, including innumerable periodicals and an enormous body of secondary literature. ... Like any good book about temperance, Fletcher's is more than that. Surveying almost a century from the American Temperance Society to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Fletcher focuses on two gendered icons, the self-made man and the crusading woman. ... " -- CHOICE February 2009 Vol. 46 (D. M. Fahey, Miami University) , "Recommended." - D.M. Fahey, Choice