In Consuming Anxieties, Dayne C. Riley traces the satirical treatment of wine, beer, ale, gin, pipe tobacco, and snuff from the beginning of Charles II’s reign, through the boom in tobacco’s popularity, to the end of the Gin Craze in libertine poems and plays, anonymous verse, ballad operas, and the satire of canonical writers such as Gay, Pope, and Swift. Focusing on social concerns about class, race, and gender, Consuming Anxieties examines how satirists championed Britain’s economic strength on the world stage while critiquing the effects of consumable luxuries on the British body and consciousness.
Here we talk with the author about historical perspectives on overindulgence, questions of class as they intersect with substance use, and how early trade expansion in England foretold some of the pitfalls of contemporary capitalism.
BUP: To what extent did writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attribute the misuse and abuse of alcohol and tobacco to individual failings versus to the burgeoning consumer culture of the time? How did these views reflect their understanding of Britain’s economic position in the world?
Riley: Writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tended to view the overindulgence of both alcohol and tobacco as a marker of individual moral weakness. One of the most important things to understand about the period is that there really is no cultural concept of mental or chemical addiction. Rather than view certain people as uniquely prone to overindulgence—that some aspect of their physical makeup might lead them to have less control over their use of a substance—citizens of early modern England tended to view those misusing such products along traditional moral lines. The overuse of alcohol and tobacco were most often viewed through the lenses of gluttony (imbibing alcohol and “swallowing” tobacco smoke), idleness (sitting and smoking to get out of working), and arrogance (pride at one’s ability to outdrink others).
That being said, writers and thinkers of the period were also witnessing the expansion of global trade, and despite trade leading to greater economic prosperity for their country, authors often viewed the increased availability of alcohol and tobacco products as a moral corrupter. In the texts I discuss, writers were constantly investigating the tension between national economic strength and the moral (and physical) health of the nation.
BUP: How did the consumption of substances influence other areas of society at the time? Did increased commerce bring about changes in mindset towards other behaviors or activities, and do you think these changes carry on to the modern day?
Riley: Interesting question! English citizens of the period consumed printed material (moral pamphlets, political poetry and prose, short farcical plays, for example) in a way that greatly resembles their indulgence in these physically consumable substances. This similarity is particularly striking among the developing middle class. The period saw literacy explode among the middle class, and understandably, the market for poetry and prose catering to this audience expanded. Much like the Claret and Port wines they so craved (both traditionally aristocratic beverages due to the high import prices), the middle class thirsted for written work, but especially those that spoke to their unique place in society.
BUP: In what ways do you see the influence of the satirical treatment of alcohol and tobacco on the modern consciousness of consumable goods? Do the ideas you trace about class, race, and gender in relation to the use of consumable substances pertain to the present as well?
Riley: Our modern views of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs are very different from such substances from the early modern period. I, along with other scholars of this period, tend to see some of the foundational ideas of the modern disease model of addiction—the idea that certain people’s physical and mental makeup cause them to be more prone to substance abuse and thus less culpable for that overuse—develop from some of the seismic shifts in alcohol consumption during the period, namely English Gin that I discuss in the final chapter in the book. That being said, you can see a lot of parallels between substance abuse of the period and the use of certain consumable items, particularly illicit ones, in the world today. The Gin Craze (a period of alcohol abuse among the lower class and of extreme moral panic among the middle and upper classes) is particularly analogous to some responses we see to the current opioid pandemic. I like to think that our recent, more nuanced understanding of addiction is helping to de-stigmatize substance abuse and to work toward providing assistance to those who need it, but I am by no means an expert in that area of study.
BUP: How do the concerns surrounding the proto-capitalism of England during the period you study relate to the current capitalist system? Are the concerns of the past still pertinent to the question of indulgent consumption?
Riley: While modern readers have had the (dare, I say?) luxury of seeing how capitalist systems have played out since 1751, many of the satirists I discuss were pinpointing issues that can arise from financial systems that would later coalesce in capitalism. Despite The Beggar’s Opera being published almost a half-century before Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, John Gay clearly outlines problems that occur when the powers that be stand to gain much by being personally invested and involved in the marketplace. Gay recognized the rampant corruption in his own country’s government and gestures very clearly to what he saw as the source of that corruption. These questions regarding the separation of public service and financial systems are, of course, ones we still wrestle with today.
BUP: To conclude our conversation, what have you been reading recently?
Riley: For the scholarly answer, I am currently reading Liz Bellamy’s excellent book, The Language of Fruit: Literature and Horticulture in the Long Eighteenth Century. For the less scholarly answer, I am finishing up the last Hunger Games book. An interesting pairing now that I think about it!
Consuming Anxieties: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Trade in British Satire, 1660-1751 is available to order here in paperback, hardback, and ebook.
Dayne C. Riley is the Program Officer for the University of Tulsa Honors College. He lives in Tulsa with his wife and dogs.