Don Marquis

As for the consumption of spirits per se, it's true that cocktails became more popular in the 1920s than they had in previous years, and both men and women drank cocktails enthusiastically. In fact, historian Catherine Gilbert Murdock, in her phenomenal book Domesticating Drink, argues that Prohibition had a dual effect on the way women and men socialized. Where previously men had gone to saloons to drink beer (or whiskey) alone, during Prohibition, women – either with partners or friends – went to speakeasies without fear of social retribution.

Etiquette books for women, and women's magazines, urged “respectable” women to serve drinks and to drink themselves; one advice writer suggested courting couples each have the chance to see each other “unpleasantly drunk” before tying the knot. Department stores and catalogs pushed cocktail shakers and glassware during the 1920s, since cocktail, uh, paraphernalia was not illegal (nor, for that matter, were home winemaking kits); books of cocktail recipes were marketed to the home bartender, not the pro. Punches (eggnogs, grogs and milk punch – which I had the opportunity to try this weekend and which is far tastier than it sounds) were around in the 19th century, and so were some drinks we'd call cocktails now (like the mint julep). Cocktails – and the cocktail party – didn't really become part of the American drinking scene until the 20th century, though. The rise of the cocktail both influenced, and was influenced by, shifting gender politics in the United States – but also by liquor control laws.