ABSTRACT

This article addresses the intersection of femininity, shame, and alcoholism, considering the particular shame of the woman who drinks via a reading of Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight (1939) and Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering (2018). Suggesting that any study of women writers and their relationship to, and representation of, alcoholism raises questions about female embodiment, morality, visibility, sexuality, and the gendering of shame, the article identifies the stigmatisation of female alcoholism found in both popular and scientific discourse. It then offers an extended reading of Good Morning, Midnight, attending to the novel’s treatment of drunkenness as both pleasure and pain, both submission to and critique of a hostile world; as expression of, temporary antidote to, and ultimate compounding of a deep-seated female shame. The text’s formal disruptions and fragmentariness are also read, in relation to the disorientation of intoxication and the inexpressibility of shame. The closing analysis of The Recovering analyses Jamison’s more recent, more self-reflexive take on the myth of the heroic drunk male author, which considers the narrativisation of intoxication and recovery and the persistent shame of the woman who is ‘nothing but need’.

摘要

本文通过阅读让·瑞斯（Jean Rhys）的《早安，午夜》（1939）和莱斯利·贾米森（Leslie Jamison）的《康复》（The Recovering，2018）来探讨女性饮酒的特殊羞辱，从而解决了女性气质，羞耻和酗酒的问题。建议对女性作家及其与酒精中毒的关系和代表性的任何研究都提出有关女性的品格，道德，能见度，性行为和羞辱性别的问题，该文章确定了在流行和科学话语中发现的女性酒精中毒的污名化。然后它提供了对《早安，午夜》的扩展阅读。，将小说中的醉酒视为一种愉悦和痛苦，同时服从和批评敌对世界；作为一种深深的女性耻辱的表达，暂时的解毒剂以及最终的混合物。还阅读了有关醉酒的迷失方向和羞耻的不可表达性的文本形式上的混乱和不完整。《复苏》的收尾分析分析了贾米森（Jamison）对英雄喝醉的男性作家的神话的最新，更反身的看法，该神话考虑了醉酒和恢复的叙事方式，以及“只需要”的女人的持续羞耻感。