I've been lurking on this list for sometime now, and I guess since I'm going to FINALLY contribute, I might as well introduce myself. I just completed my PhD in English at Stanford (hence the reason for lurking and not contributing -- the mad last six months of diss writing) and finished a dissertation called "Under the Influence: Drink, Discourse and Narrative in Victorian Britain." Yes, it'll be a book within five to ten years, I hope. Basically, I investigated the way temperance narrative operated at the level of discourse, and the way the basic temperance plot evolved through several popular medium -- from the didactic tale to popular culture to the Victorian novel. I could go on at LENGTH about this if anyone's interested, so feel free to email me privately if you'd like. Anyway, on to violence, gender, etc. My small suggestion is that you look at a published dissertation by Patricia Ann Dean called *The Meek Get in Their Licks: Temperance Literature of the Early NIneteenth Century As An Expression of Private Feminism* (U of Minnesota, 1981). Yes, it is still a diss and not a book, which has its drawbacks in polish (that's not intended as severe criticism Patricia, if you're reading this!) like any dissertation, but I think that she deals very interestingly with the whole idea of women as victims. One issue I did have with *The Meek...* was precisely that she does dismiss the whole issue of female intemperance. I haven't done as much reading in American temp narrative as British, but I have a sense that maybe female intemp was covered up somewhat by the American movement (contradict me if that's an untrue assumption, please! I'm very interested in finding out about this) -- perhaps this is the reason that (or a deliberate manuveur so that) the American movement could lead into a more coherent women's movement. In British temp tracts, intemp women have much more of a presence, even though 75% of all temp authorities still claimed that intemp women were irredeemable. I hope this helps somewhat. Christine Alfano Stanford University [log in to unmask]