Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Abstract

A. LYNN MARTIN. Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001. x+200 pp. $65.00.In Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, A. Lynn Martin juxtaposes two fruitful subjects of inquiry: sexual ideology and history of food and drink. Of particular interest to Martin is complicated relationship between actual drinking practices of medieval and early modern men and women, contemporaneous beliefs about effects of alcohol, sexual mores of time period, and gender paradigms. Martin notes that though drinking patterns vary in time and place, the association between consumption of alcohol and sexual activity has remained constant in Western culture (9)-even to present day. Though Martin briefly traces beginnings of this association to ancient Roman texts and biblical stories, his main purpose is to that in Western cultural tradition, especially in England, France, and Italy between 1300 and 1700, people learned that consumption of alcoholic beverages resulted in behavior that was erotic and violent (15). Martin is especially concerned about demonstrating way in which this behavior is learned-as opposed to being a result of physiological reactions to alcohol. In support of this claim, he presents for analysis works of literature, church sermons, cultural studies of alcohol consumption, production, and availability, as well as modern medical experiments dealing with physiological and psychological effects of alcohol.Martin observes that beer, and wine were essential elements of practically every social occasion, including baptisms, church functions, and political celebrations. In addition, citizens used alcohol for medicinal purposes and money-raising ventures. For example, when alcohol was sold during a help ale, proceeds of sale were donated to a needy family or parish member. Studies based on annual per capita consumption of wine in France and Italy or daily consumption of ale or beer in England demonstrate importance of alcohol in people's lives. In addition, these same figures illustrate likelihood that women as well as men drank significant amounts of alcohol during late medieval and early modern period.Though in practice both men and women drank regularly, not all members of society condoned consumption of alcohol. Intriguingly, number of writers who moralized on evils of drink is equally divided between those who addressed drinking by women, those who addressed drinking by men, and those whose comments were gender neutral (48). Stances on female drinking, though, were decidedly misogynistic. When men drank, effects of alcohol caused otherwise honorable men to sin; when women drank, alcohol acted upon already perverse and weak nature of women as set forth in sexual ideology of day. This view is apparent in contemporaneous church sermons, poetry, and ballads-an example of which occurs in a seventeenth-century ballad that states whenever a woman had been drinking 'all keys will fit her trunk' (48).Many writers, though, expressed opposing views and celebrated link between sex and drink. Martin observes that writers waxed poetic over alcohol's use as an aphrodisiac as well as its ability to make people fall in love. A mostly positive treatment of alcohol consumption occurs in writings pertaining to weddings. The Christian symbolism of wine, symbolic connection between alcohol and sexuality, fertility, regeneration, and life, role of alcohol in conception and pregnancy, praise and condemnation of drink for its erotic effects, and occasional inability to perform resulting from overindulgence all figure prominently in both writings about weddings and ceremonies themselves (51).Both positive and negative writings emphasize connection between alcohol and sex-a connection embodied in medieval and early modern alehouses. …