ABSTRACT
The female alcoholic heroine in the 1980s inherits several complex structures of meaning. As a third-generation cultural creation, she wears the halo of denigration established by her predecessors in Smash-Up, I'll Cry Tomorrow, and The Days of Wine and Roses. She has low self-esteem, has hit a sexual bottom, found and lost men, and in the process has experienced sexual degradation. The female alcoholic heroine in the 1950s became alcoholic, in part, because she had forsaken either family for work, or work for family. Finding that she had no place to go, her drinking became a means of dealing with her loneliness and estrangement from others. She was trapped in a double-bind. The woman alcoholic of the 1980s seeks and expresses a freedom from traditional boundaries and barriers that was not available to women in the immediate postwar years. Her entry into treatment is not solely based on family matters.
