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The Black Cat and The American Temperance Movement
The Temperance Movement was a social movement beginning in the early 19th century that encouraged either moderation or sometimes complete abstinence from alcohol. For the prior fifty years, alcoholism was becoming a pressing and dangerous problem in the United States. Starting in the mid-18th century, drinks with a higher percentage of alcohol, like rum and whiskey, became more widely available in the United States. Treating such alcoholic drinks in the same way as less alcoholic drinks like cider led to an increase in drunken violence. By 1830, the average American over fifteen years old drank as much as seven gallons of alcohol per year. Women in particular faced increased domestic violence, and because they were unable to own money or property, had no choice but to remain in dangerous living situations. In 1784, Founding Father Benjamin Rush wrote a pamphlet entitled An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind, which posited that alcohol was bad for one’s physical, emotional, and mental health, which, in combination with social pressure from both Protestant and Catholic churches, marks the origins of the temperance movement. From 1800 onward, organizations dedicated to temperance began to appear all throughout the United States.
These early calls for measures to regulate alcohol consumption coincided with the Second Great Awakening, a revival movement of Protestantism throughout the United States. Amongst many churches, the idea arose that personal salvation was not the sole goal, but instead the salvation of the whole community. The faithful, particularly middle-class women, pushed for social reforms such as abolition, prison reform, care for the poor and disabled, and, of course, temperance. The Temperance Movement appealed to women for several reasons. First, women bore the brunt of the violence called by alcohol. Promoting temperance also dovetailed with Protestant ideas around women’s role as the moral center of the home. Temperance organizers pushed for laws restricting amounts of alcohol that could be sold and laws that would allow voters to decide on whether alcohol could be sold in their counties. Beyond political reform, temperance activists turned to art to get the word out about the dangers of drinking. Temperance plays were performed throughout the country, and songs, pamphlets, and stories were published and disseminated.
One common reading of “The Black Cat” is as a temperance tale, or a story warning about the dangers of alcohol. Although Poe garnered a reputation as a drunkard, it’s now believed that he did not drink often. When he did drink, it was to dangerous excesses that cost him socially and financially. He took multiple pledges throughout his life to abstain from drinking, but as with any addiction, abstinence is difficult to maintain, and Poe often fell back into binge drinking. Near the end of his life while he was living in Richmond, Virginia, he joined the Shockoe Hill Division of the Sons of Temperance. “The Black Cat,” like many temperance tales, illustrates how alcohol can destroy a happy family. However, Poe pushes the boundaries of the genre by lingering more on the extent to which the narrator is driven to destruction than on prolonged moralizing.
