Read the article \"Women Suffer Too\" http://silkworth.net/bbstories/2nd/222_229

Question

Read the article "Women Suffer Too" http://silkworth.net/bbstories/2nd/222_229.html in its entirety, keeping in mind how the study of life histories or oral histories can reveal important features of societal norms and everyday life. Pay close attention to how the story describes both deviant behavior and the process of deviance avowal, and consider the following questions:

1. Identify the incidences of deviance described in the writer's story. Why do you consider these behaviors deviant?
2. In what ways was she in denial, or actively trying to disavow the deviant behavior?
3. How did deviance disavowal affect her self-concept?
4. In what ways did deviance avowal allow her to consider err past in a different light?
5. How has her deviant identity become a positive part of her life?

Explanation / Answer

Question:. Identify the incidences of deviance described in the writer's story. Why do you consider these behaviors deviant?

Answer: A few incidences of deviance described by author who had been suffering from alcohol dependence include the feeling of abnormal physiological symptoms like –

Cold chills started chasing up and down my spine; my teeth were chattering; my hands were shaking so I tucked them under to keep them from flying away.

The shakes grew worse and I looked at my watch—six o'clock. It had been one o'clock when I last remembered looking. I'd been sitting comfortably in a restaurant with Rita, drinking my sixth martini and hoping the waiter would forget about the lunch order—at least long enough for me to have a couple more. I'd only had two with her, but I'd managed four in the fifteen minutes I'd waited for her, and of course I'd had the usual uncounted swigs from the bottle as I painfully got up and did my slow spasmodic dressing. In fact I had been in very good shape at one o'clock—feeling no pain.

I slept for short spells and woke dripping with cold sweat and shaken with utter despair, to drink hastily from my bottle and mercifully pass out again, "You're mad, you're mad, you're mad!" pounded through my brain with each returning ray of consciousness, and I drowned the refrain with drink.

All of these deviant experiences sign and symptoms of her alcohol dependence sometimes called symptoms of withdrawal. The kind of behaviour and experiences mentioned by author are not commonly shown by normal and healthy people therefore these behaviours were deviant.

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