“THEY ALL KNOW WHAT I AM”: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND ALCOHOL
Wojciech Klepuszewski
Wydział Humanistyczny Politechnika KoszalińskaAbstract
Drink literature is something which has been drawing critical attention for a few decades. This is most transparent in the number of studies concerning various attempts to literarise alcohol, in whatever form or genre. What is immediately striking, though, is that most literary works fitting this thematic context are written by male writers, to mention Malcolm Lowry or Charles Jackson, and they usually feature male protagonists. Women seem to be inconspicuous here, both as authors and as literary characters, the latter usually limited to marginal figures who are victims of male drunkenness. This article targets the ‘neglected’ gender in the fictional representations of alcohol by briefly surveying the motif in the literature written on the British Isles and then focusing on two women writers, Jean Rhys and A.L. Kennedy.
Keywords:
Women’s fiction, alcohol, British literature, J. Rhys, A.L. KennedyReferences
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& Windus.
Bret Millier C. 2009. Flawed Light: American Women Poets and Alcohol. Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press.
Brontë Anne. 1996. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. London: Wordsworth Classics.
Carr Virginia Spencer. 2003. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers.
Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Daiche David. (ed.). 1990. A Wee Dram: Drinking Scenes from Scottish Literature. Lon-
don: Andre Deutsch.
Deeping Warwick. 1907. A Woman’s War. London and New York: Harper & Brothers. Delaney Shelagh. 1974. A Taste of Honey. London: Eyre Methuen.
Duras Marguerite. 1990. Practicalities. (Translated from the French by Barbara Bray).
Grove Press: New York.
Eliot George. 1906. Scenes of Clerical Life. London: MacMillan.
Gaskell Elizabeth. 2009. Mary Barton. Auckland: The Floating Press. Gefou-Madianou Dimitra (ed.). 1992. Alcohol, Gender and Culture. London and New
York: Routledge.
Glyde Tania. 2009. Cleaning Up: How I Gave Up Drinking and Lived. London: Serpent’s
Tail London.
Grant Elizabeth. 1911. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. London: John Murray. Hailwood Mark and Toner Deborah (eds.). 2015. Biographies of Drink: A Case Study
Approach to Our Historical Relationship with Alcohol. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cam-
bridge Scholars Publishing.
Hawkins Paula. 2016. The Girl on the Train. London: Black Swan.
Kennedy Alison Louise. 2000. Introduction to Good Morning, Midnight. London: Penguin. Kennedy Alison Louise. 2005. Paradise. London: Vintage.
Keyes Marian. 1999. Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married. London: Arrow Books.
Lister David. 1997. Writers find inspiration at the bottom of a bottle. “The Independent”
27 November [Accessed 24 II 2018].
Logan Anna Deborah. 1998. Fallenness in Victorian Women’s Writing: Marry, Stitch,
Die, or Do Worse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
McCormack Kathleen. 2000. George Eliot and Intoxication: Dangerous Drugs for the
Condition of England. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
McCormack Kathleen. 2002. Intoxication and the Victorian Novel. In: A Companion to
the Victorian Novel. Eds. W. Baker and K. Womack. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press: 137-148.
Miller JP. 1973. Days of Wine and Roses. A Play in Three Acts adapted to the Stage
by J.P. Miller. Based on His Original Television Play. New York: Dramatists Play
Service Inc.
Millier Bret Candlish. 2009. Flawed Light: American Women Poets and Alcohol. Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois.
Mitchell Kaye. 2008. A.L. Kennedy. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nardin Jane. 2006. As Soon As I Sober Up I Start Again: Alcohol and the Will in Jean
Rhys’s Pre-War Novels. “Papers on Language and Literature” Vol. 42, No. 1: 46-72.
Owen Katie. 2004. It’s drink that’s the problem. “The Telegraph” 5 September [Accessed 07 IV 2018].
Pizzichini Lilian. 2009. The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys. London: Bloomsbury. Rhys Jean.1981. Quartet. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Rhys Jean.1982. After Leaving Mr Mackenzie. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Rhys Jean. 2000. Good Morning, Midnight. London: Penguin.
Savory Elaine. 2009. The Cambridge Introduction to Jean Rhys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wade Rosalind. 1956. Come Fill the Cup. New York: Pantheon.
Wedge George. 1998. Alcoholism as Symptom: The Life and Works of Jean Rhys. “Dio-
nysos Journal of Literature and Addiction” Vol. 8, No. 1: 23-33.
Wyndham Francis and Melly Diana (eds.). 1984. Jean Rhys: Letters 1931-1966. New
York: Viking.
Klepuszewski, W. (2019). “THEY ALL KNOW WHAT I AM”: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND ALCOHOL. Acta Neophilologica, 2(XX), 85–88. https://doi.org/10.31648/an.3638
Wojciech Klepuszewski
Wydział Humanistyczny Politechnika Koszalińska
Wydział Humanistyczny Politechnika Koszalińska
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