Abstract:

The most memorable figure of the London “Gin Craze,” a furor over cheap spirits from approximately 1720 to 1751, is the woman in the foreground of William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751), so deep in stupor that she fails to notice her tumbling child. Hogarth draws on a longer tradition throughout the Gin Craze of using individual drinkers—particularly women—to rhetorically invoke a drug crisis. This essay asks how such figures of individual drinkers come to betoken a larger crisis, and how they establish gin as the cause of that crisis, rather than a symptom of underlying dispossession. I explore how various portrayals of drinkers in Gin Craze discourse each work to exemplify the crisis and to posit gin as its cause. Further, I offer formal as well as historical explanations for why these figures are so often women: how the cultural institutions of eighteenth-century femininity, including maternity and coverture, convinced artists, authors, and readers that women were particularly well-suited to exemplify gin’s compulsions and depredations.

摘要：

伦敦“金酒狂潮”中最令人难忘的人物，大约是在1720年至1751年间对廉价烈酒的狂热，是威廉·霍加斯（William Hogarth）的金酒庄（Gin Lane）前景中的女性（1751年），昏昏欲睡，以至于她未能注意到自己的翻滚孩子。霍加斯（Hogarth）在杜松子酒热潮中汲取了更长的传统，使用个体饮酒者（尤其是女性）口口相传引发毒品危机。本文提出了这样的问题：饮酒者的这种数字如何引发更大的危机，以及他们如何将杜松子酒确定为造成这场危机的原因，而不是根本上被剥夺的症状。我探讨了金酒热话中饮酒者的各种描写如何发挥作用，以例证危机和将杜松子酒定为起因。此外，对于这些人物为何经常成为女性，我提供了正式的以及历史的解释：十八世纪女性气质的文化机构（包括生育和掩护），有说服力的艺术家，作家，