The Prohibition Movement in New Zealand

It is difficult to come to grips with Reed’s novel without some understanding of the prohibition movement which The Angel Isafrel supports. First, we need to recognize that drinking had, for many people, “become a real social problem” (Bollinger 21)² in New Zealand. Even in 1896, it was asserted that prohibitionist agitation - extreme though their view is - has done a great deal of good in awakening the national conscience to the evil side of the drink traffic.... moderate men are far too apt to ignore these evils, simply because they have long been familiar to us. (Otago Witness 19 November 1896)³. Society’s blind eye towards alcohol abuse is evident in the early chapters of The Angel Isafrel; Moulton’s drunkenness in the opening of The Angel Isafrel is coyly summarised as “Well, he wasn't quite as he ought to be,” (Reed 11)⁴ and the result of the inquest is a verdict of ““Accidental drowning,” with the “rider that there was “Nobody to blame.”” (Reed 12)⁵. But in attempting to stir up prohibitionist sentiments, Reed’s novel does not accuse the man who drinks of wrong doing (“the trade” are, however, unsympathetic). Throughout The Angel Isafrel men are considered slaves to drink; the evil always lies in the bottle. Reading The Angel Isafrel a century later, these same extreme views present both a firm stance on controversial topic of the culpability of an intoxicated person, and an alternative point of view on the acceptability of the established “drinking culture” of New Zealand.

But what kind of behavior led to the various prohibition movements in New Zealand? As an extreme example, there were recorded occasions in Parliament where members had to be locked up by Whips in small rooms to keep them sober enough to stand up for a crucial division.... on one occasion political opponents tried to defeat the purpose of the incarceration by lowering a bottle of whisky to such a prisoner (it was E. J. Wakefield, in 1872) down the chimney on a piece of string. (Bollinger 23-4)⁶ .Even twenty years later in 1893, when the temperance and prohibition movements were steadily gaining ground, staff of the New Zealand Herald could not complete their evening shift for the noise of “free fights and the yells and shrieks of murder which nightly rent the air” (qtd. in Grimshaw 21-22)⁷ outside the bars and pubs. E. J. Wakefield’s career was by this point “clouded by alcoholism and disgrace,” (“Edward Jerningham Wakefield” DNZB)⁸, but the episode nevertheless suggests a degree of indulgence for drunken behavior (that the honorable members felt they could get away with being drunk in parliament) that seems shocking in the men responsible for governing the country. The television footage of a drunken Prime Minister Muldoon happily announcing the snap election in 1984, along with the high voter turn out and Muldoon’s heavy defeat at the polls that year, suggests that such tolerance is long past.

In the 1870s, William Fox (an ardent prohibitionist politician) asserted “Five hundred persons die in this colony every year from the excessive quantity of intoxicating drink which they consume.” (qtd. in Bollinger 26)⁹. But as Isafrel tells Mr Webster, “Drunkards do not suffer half so much as others who have done nothing to deserve it.... If the drunkards only had to be considered—let them bear it.” (Reed 18)¹⁰ - the prohibitionist movement considers alcohol to have implications stretching beyond the person who drinks it, affecting families, friends, or even strangers. Some of the tragedies Reed uses to punctuate the anti-prohibitionist sentiments in The Angel Isafrel are drawn from real examples. The mother who kills herself with rat poison (Reed 21)¹¹ might have been drawn from any of several suicides or drunken accidents in the 1890s (Otago Daily Times 18 June 1894; Marlborough Express 9 July 1895)^{12, 13}.

However in spite of these examples of harm caused by alcoholic abuse, contemporaries of the period often disagreed with the claims made by the prohibitionists as exaggerated. In a speech made in 1896 arguing against the perception of New Zealand as a drunken colony, William Collins claimed that the rate of drunken offences per 1000 population was as low as 7.6 in 1893, making New Zealand the second most sober colony in Australasia (after Tasmania) (Wanganui Herald 29 September 1896)¹⁴. Police statistics in 2009 are recorded as 29.3 per 10000 (“New Zealand Crime Statistics 2009”)¹⁵. The Websters voted license out of complacency and kindness, because “We said to ourselves it would be a pity to take the bread from Mrs. Bradley's children's mouths... comfortable in the thought that drunkenness could not touch our house,” (Reed 16)¹⁶. The extremist claims of the prohibition movement, as well as the severe restrictions they aimed to achieve, meant that some of the opposition to the prohibition movement (including William Collins) was not motivated out of any strong preference for alcohol, but out of an attempt at moderation. Temperance was seen as a less extreme answer to whatever alcohol problems New Zealand faced; but in spite of such moderating attempts to counteract the claims of the prohibitionists surrounding alcohol, towards the close of the 19th century a vocal proportion of the New Zealand population had joined the prohibition movements.

And it is the prohibition movement that chiefly concerns us; Reed’s vision of a South Sea utopia in the final chapter of The Angel Isafrel demands a national prohibition as catalyst. But as outlined in a meeting of the New Zealand Alliance and Prohibition League in 1895, the prohibition movement was “not going to try... to force prohibition on an unwilling people. They would not have it... unless it were to be obtained by the voice of the people.” (Timaru Herald 14 June 1895)¹⁷. The insistence on a democratic process for the implementation of prohibition was seen as a vital component of the movement; the prohibitionists recognised that success could only be attained with willing co-operation, having learnt from the failed attempts in America (William Collins cited figures from 1874, that in Boston there were 11,592 arrests for drunken misconduct under prohibition, while only a year later under the licensed provision of alcohol there were 10,825 offenses) (Wanganui Hearald 29 September 1896)¹⁸. New Zealand already had the beginnings of a democratic approach to liquor licensing; the Licensing Act 1873 allowed the populace of a district to prevent the granting of a liquor license if a two-thirds majority could be obtained (Bollinger 24-5)¹⁹. This power was gradually extended to licensing polls that could revoke existing licenses, until in 1893 a triennial vote was established whereby a district could vote to enact local prohibition provided they could win a three-fifths majority (Bollinger 31-2, 38)²⁰. The three-fifths requirement was a cause of some contention, seen by prohibitionists as unfairly allowing two-fifths of the community to dictate to a majority, while the opposition considered it as allowing a majority (whatever the size) to dictate what the minority eats and drinks (Otago Witness 19 November 1896)²¹. Nevertheless, “The Clutha district voted No-License in 1894, and was gradually followed by a large number of others, in spite of the three-fifths handicap.” (Bollinger 43)²². These successes increased the prohibitionist momentum, and calls were made for a national referendum to settle the question decisively, as Reed dramatizes in The Angel Isafrel (Bollinger 43)²³. In reality, the first national prohibition poll was held in 1911, although since 1902 votes for No-License across districts had outweighed the votes for Continuance (Dalton 30; Bollinger 43)^{24, 25}; nevertheless, national prohibition was never enacted in New Zealand.

Ironically the most significant outcome of the prohibition movement in New Zealand may not have had much to do with alcohol; instead, it was through the heavy efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), one of the major players in the prohibition campaign, that women were granted suffrage in 1893 - making New Zealand among the first countries in the world with truly universal suffrage (Bollinger 37)²⁶. The popular conception was that a woman’s vote would be an anti-liquor vote, arising out of the various threats alcohol was seen to pose to domestic harmony and financial security (Bollinger 37)²⁷ - set after the success of the suffrage movement, Isafrel is still adamant “That any woman... will not vote against the liquor traffic, I cannot believe”. (Reed 52)²⁸. Women were petitioning for the right to vote in licensing polls by 1884, and the formation of the WCTU in 1885 soon led to a series of petitions being presented to parliament, the last in 1893 with 32,000 signatures leading to the enfranchisement, just ten weeks before the election that year (Dalton 20; “Katherine Wilson Sheppard” DNZB)²⁹. It is perhaps unsurprising that shortly afterwards the prohibitionists were given the victory of local option polls, given the sudden flood of new votes that popular opinion claimed would be in favour of prohibition (Dalton 22)³⁰. A. J. Grigg claimed that this popular conception of the women’s vote was a myth, and that in fact women would simply be led by their men (qtd. In Dalton 22)³¹. But in The Angel Isafrel, the reverse is played out, with women taking responsibility for influencing at least one man to vote in favour of prohibition; Reed’s women go one better than simply following their own choices. While Reed, writing three years after the enfranchisement, considers (through Isafrel) that perhaps the women have not to some extent realised the responsibility that accompanied the great gift, and the great moral force that it was given us to wield.... our efforts have in some cases been misdirected, and we have not achieved those high results which might have been expected of us (Reed 44)³².But in spite of these reservations, it is unquestionably the efforts of the women of New Zealand who orchestrate the success of the national referendum in Reed’s novel, so that when the utopian success of prohibition is attained, “the glory of the women of New Zealand would be in every land” (Reed 100)³³.

The Angel Isafrel: Melodrama, Prohibition Novel, Utopia

The novel’s melodramatic tone is tied to the prohibition lobby; jingoisms and highly emotive language were common elements in the movement, earning them the label of extremist fanatics (although in The Angel Isafrel the title is reclaimed as a badge of honour). The “demon drink”, a name clearly associating alcoholic substances with the devil, made drinking into a sinful indulgence, although from the perspective of the heavily Christian prohibition groups the term was apt for a substance that was linked to so many tragedies and miseries. At the height of the prohibition movement, didactic plays were performed depicting reforming alcoholics; alcohol depicted as a “rum bottle... usually an outsize stage prop with a stuffed snake inside it” (Bollinger 40)³⁴ to underscore the point. The melodrama content was such that in the 1960s what had been an earnest American temperance play, The Drunkard, was re-played successfully in Wellington as a farce (Bollinger 21)³⁵. At the time, prohibition conventions (much like those outlined by Reed in the build up to the National Referendum) were designed to incite their audiences into a kind of mass hysteria, combining Christian hymns with sentimental melodramas and the presentation of recovering alcoholics so that participants would “then rush out into the streets to fight the good fight with renewed zeal.” Bollinger adds that “We New Zealanders regard ourselves as a stolid and essentially unemotional people. But this movement bowled us over like nine-pins.” (Bollinger 41)³⁶.

Accordingly, Isafrel’s grand statements, that “I have never encountered a case of domestic misery but I was able to trace it to drink as the cause” (Reed 25)³⁷, and Isafrel’s claim that alcohol represents “a slavery that is more cruel, more tearful, more heartbreaking than negro slavery ever was” (Reed 33)³⁸ are, I think, astonishing ones, but not claims that were made in isolation (Fielding Star 29 April 1896)³⁹. Alison Parker’s article on the American WCTU’s literature programme says that “If melodramatic tragedies could mobilize readers to moral action and reform... WCTU editors... were willing to expose... the negative aspects of cities and alcoholism, such as saloons, poverty, and death.” (Parker 140)⁴⁰); a similar statement might easily be applied to the New Zealand prohibition movement and its supporters. Parker relates a typical story (“The Little Captain”) published in 1911 in the Young Crusader, the American prohibition youth magazine, of an episode of drunken violence at home: James returned home to find that Margaret had sold the clock... to feed her starving children. Ignoring their plight, James demanded the money. When his wife refused, he violently threatened her... Mrs. Grey stood fearlessly before him; the brutal arm was raised; but Jamie, with a wild cry, threw himself between, and the ill-directed blow fell heavily upon his upturned head. The child dropped as if he had been shot, and there was a moment of death-like silence. (Parker 140)⁴¹. Compare this scene with the intervention in The Angel Isafrel that costs Isafrel her life:“Her father had come home under the influence of drink, and in a wilder mood than any time before. The children, frightened and crying, ran to her, but thrusting them aside she hastened into the dining room, where her father and mother were. As Isafrel entered the room her mother was rushing towards the door to escape from his violence, and Isafrel hastening forward threw her arms around her father to restrain him. “Off, you wretch,” he cried out, as he flung her violently from him, and staggering back she fell heavily, striking her side on the corner of the couch, and rolled to the floor in a faint.” (Reed 54)⁴². In both cases the authors aim clearly to illustrate the disastrous effect alcohol might have on the home environment, with violence and murderous action taking their most tragic effect on the purest members of the house - “Little Captain” Jamie and Isafrel respectively. Indeed, much of The Angel Isafrel reads like a catalogue of sad stories caused by alcohol, listing suicide, domestic violence, parental abandonment, sailing accidents. Reed’s novel works on the same assumption as the American WCTU stance, hoping to inspire action through melodramatic tragedy. However this is not to say that the extremism was limited to the fanatics; a letter to the Ashburton Guardian in 1896 claims that prohibitionists would have the people do away with potatoes, barley and other vegetable products, on the grounds that they are used in the creation of alcohol; and this is taken as a proof “that abstention from alcohol is an impossibility, if mankind are to continue using the vital food stuffs they now exist upon.” (Ashburton Guardian 23 April 1896)⁴³. In fact, the intensity of feeling regarding the prohibition issue can make the conduct of characters in The Angel Isafrel look positively restrained: Bollinger relates the history of Opotiki in the 1880s as a typical example, and his account includes assault, libel and slander, legal proceedings, rioting, the burning of effigies, and a potential assassination attempt (Bollinger 34-5)⁴⁴. Understanding the frenzied context in which The Angel Isafrel was published is, I think, helpful in reconciling the melodramatic tone of the book with its serious political purpose.

The Angel Isafrel shares several features with other works of prohibition literature of the period as outlined by Kirstine Moffat in her article ‘The Demon Drink’; Reed’s novel was his only published work of fiction, obviously issued in New Zealand “for didactic reasons rather than for possible fame and wealth.” (Moffat 140)⁴⁵. One reviewer observed that “The book will rest for its success less on its plot than its purpose, less on its interest as a romance than on the ability with which Mr Reed argues the case he champions.” (Hawera and Normanby Star 1 December 1896)⁴⁶, and it is clear that above all else the novel is an attempt to stir its readers into support for the prohibition movement. But while in the latter part of the novel the narrative gives way to explicitly political speeches at public gatherings (not unlike what might be read in newspaper articles of the period), Isafrel’s efforts are targeted at bringing relief to those suffering through the effects of alcohol; her championing of the political movement becomes an extension of her charitable efforts to help people, mitigating one of the chief criticisms of the prohibition movement, that is that people are “endowed with inherent rights of personal liberty and with civil rights... and you cannot take away these rights by force.” (Reed 33)⁴⁷. But from the prohibitionist perspective, as Isafrel explains to Dr Wilmott, “The fanatics don't want anything for themselves... they are fighting to do good for other people,” (Reed 39)⁴⁸. Nevertheless, in the end the interest in reform dominates the novel, with the titular heroine almost disappearing during the second half, retired to her sickbed to watch and wait for the results of the referendum.

As a further example of Reed’s reforming purposes, we might consider the uncomfortable misadventures of Isafrel’s father as he attempts to find a doctor for his daughter’s injuries. Caught between the seriousness of the assault, and the doctor’s dire diagnosis, Mr Chalmer’s drunken bumblings are innocuously described, but have tragic consequences for the heroine. With the narrative focalised through his perspective, his seemingly innocent series of events - “Sitting down for a moment to rest and sip his liquor, he felt so much bettered by it that he thought he would take another,” (Reed 55)⁴⁹ leads to his passing out and delaying medical attention for his daughter until the next morning. Here it seems that Reed’s purpose is “awakening the national conscience to the evil side of the drink traffic” (Otago Witness 19 November 1896)⁵⁰, by emphasising how innocently Mr Chalmer’s actions appeared to him, and yet showing what severe consequences they yield.

As a contrast to the negative effects of alcohol, in the final chapter of The Angel Isafrel Reed creates a prohibition utopia, free of illness, corruption and cruelty. Notably Reed’s vision includes many social and egalitarian points - the punishment for possession of liquor in the colony is hard labour without option of a fine, “in order to make it equal to rich and poor” (Reed 93)⁵¹, and as a consequence of the money no longer being spent on alcohol, many men are able to take up shares in “co-operative institutions” (Reed 97)⁵² and even having the chance of “being his own employer” (Reed 97)⁵³. Reed’s utopia is one in which crime has been greatly reduced by the absence of alcohol; this contradicts the evidence from prohibition test cases like Boston in the United States and the Clutha district in New Zealand, but perhaps might be explicated by the greater difficulty in supplying an (almost) entirely “dry” island nation. Surprisingly, provision is made for the medicinal use of alcohol, which suggests that Isafrel’s decision to refuse the whisky offered her by the doctor is perhaps more for sensational effect than out of a hard conviction of the author. The chapter serves to answer all the worries and criticisms of a prohibition law, and simultaneously express the hopes of the movement; Reed gives the comforting message that with “these social, moral, and physical blessings.... there was not an interest in the country—social, moral, religious, commercial, or political—that did not feel” (Reed 98)⁵⁴ the benefit of the final defeat of liquor.

In ‘The Demon Drink’, Moffat claims that while Reed presents an alternative point of view to the drinking question (that of “the trade”), he does so only to satirise it. While certainly not disputing the astute judgements Moffat makes about the general arguments put forward by “the trade” and its supporters in The Angel Isafrel, I would draw attention to the interview between Isafrel and Dr. Wilmott. While his conversion to the cause (or at least the silencing of his pen) reads like a foregone conclusion, in the course of the debate are put forward some of the more reasoned arguments against the prohibition movement. Dr Wilmott argues that “each of us endowed with inherent rights of personal liberty and with civil rights that we are entitled to preserve” (Reed 33)⁵⁵ and that “the drunkards are really few compared with the multitude of people who drink in moderation, and who feel that it is at once a comfort and a benefit to them.” (Reed 36)⁵⁶. These are not the ludicrous claims of ‘the trade’ in the build up to the referendum (“What had made the name of a British citizen respected and feared in every land... It was beer.” (Reed 62-3)⁵⁷) but the arguments of moderate men - like William Collins - who might not even be opposed to temperance, but draw the line at an outright prohibition (Wanganui Herald 29 September 1896)⁵⁸. Isafrel’s argument with the doctor covers religion and politics; they argue the rights of the individual against the rights of the community. This chapter is the novel’s greatest acknowledgement of the alternative views on prohibition, and yet while Isafrel is successful in converting Dr Wilmott, her passionate responses put her, I think, at a disadvantage when compared with her opponent’s rationality; Isafrel appears unfavourably as a fanatic herself.

Isafrel: Angel of the Home, or New Woman?

In spite of her fanaticism, Isafrel is in many ways an archetypal angel of the home, the Victorian ideal of feminine purity, self-sacrifice and religious piety firmly ensconced in the domestic sphere. She is universally adored by everyone she meets - George remarks on the “dirty little urchin” (Reed 21)⁵⁹ that kisses the hem of her dress, and Isafrel herself casually mentions her interactions with half a dozen different religious organisations, that we are told “all looked on Isafrel as belonging to themselves,” (Reed 20)⁶⁰. Isafrel’s friendship with the Chinese man, John, and the urchin, were significant enough to raise a skeptical comment in the Observer’s review: “Such a reverential urchin and so soft-hearted a Chinaman we fear are rather scarce in the land.” (Observer 28 October 1896)⁶¹. George explains away this phenomenon to Isafrel: it is your own goodness, darling, that you see reflected in everybody you meet, and they're all good because they can't be anything else when you're with them. (Reed 22)⁶². Isafrel’s powerful influence is reinforced by her role within the family; she tells Dr Wilmott that when her father is drunk “he is kind to me; and when in his greatest frenzies, for sometimes he is so wild to others, I lay my hand on his arm and look in his eyes and say ‘father,’ he is as quiet as a lamb,” (Reed 37)⁶³. Her brothers and sisters look to her for comfort, and when even her mother flees for safety, Isafrel tries to intervene in her father’s drunken madness. When Isafrel appears at the National Convention, having humbly tried to shrink from taking a part in the proceedings, her youth and purity are emphasised - her appearance on the stage is as “one graceful willowy girl, clad in white,” (Reed 43)⁶⁴. It is her religious piety that transfigures her; “That slight, lissome, girlish figure appeared to assume an aspect of majesty. Her face beamed with fervour,” (Reed 45)⁶⁵ as she speaks out against the demon drink, compared with the “great quietness... almost in a monotone, the softened cadences and measured words” (Reed 45)⁶⁶ with which she had initially addressed the crowd. Isafrel’s femininity, her youth and purity and piety are emphasised, drawing on the archetype of the angel in the home to establish her goodness.

But in spite of these very feminine traits and characterizations, Isafrel is also an extremely empowered young woman, drawing on the emerging image of the new woman. She was young, middle-class, and single (on principle).... She exhibited emancipated behaviors such as smoking, riding a bicycle, and taking the bus or train unescorted. She belonged to all-female clubs and societies where the talk was of ideas, and she sought freedom and equality with men. (T. Collins 310)⁶⁷. Isafrel also fulfills a majority of these characteristics in her heavily political engagement with the world. While she does not smoke, she does ride a bicycle on her unescorted visit to Dr Wilmott; while she technically does not belong to any of the charitable organisations, she is still “the life and soul of the whole movement,” (Reed 42)⁶⁸. Her athletic fitness is evident from the first chapter, in which she not only rows the boat with George, but “putting her foot on the gunwale, she sprang into the water in the direction of the drowning girl” (Reed 9)⁶⁹. Isafrel is not only fit, but educated, being “well acquainted with the methods of the Humane Society for restoring the drowned” (Reed 10)⁷⁰. Perhaps the most incredible feat for the young, angelic girl, is the justification for her claim, “I am as strong as a horse. You don't know that I knocked a man down the other day.” (Reed 24)⁷¹. In the defence of a mother from her drunken husband, Isafrel not only comes between them when he attempts to hit his wife, but claims:I sprang at him and seized him by the wrist, and, oh! I felt as strong as a lion, and I gave such a wrench to his arm, and with my other hand I wrested the tomahawk out of his hand, and I flung him from me, and he fell in a heap to the floor. “You ruffian,” I cried, “how dare you lift your hand to the woman that you swore to love?” He picked himself up and looked me in the face. I had still the tomahawk in my hand. (Reed 24)⁷². How do we reconcile this sensationalised image of an axe-wielding defender of the down trodden with ““That slight, lissome, girlish figure” (Reed 45)⁷³ at the National Council of Women? Is Isafrel an angelic paragon of Victorian virtue, or an athletic and politically empowered New Woman?

While the angel of the home and the New Woman were “socially polarized archetypes” (Norcia 347)⁷⁴ as a traditional virtue against modern liberalism, this did not prevent them being united in one character. In Four On An Island, L.T. Meade creates Isabel, a heroine who “realizes her Adventurous Angel possibilities by combining her domestic Angel skills with her adventurous impulses.... power comes from her association with both the adventurous and the domestic realms.” (Norcia 353)⁷⁵. Similarly, Isafrel’s political influence comes from the virtues that make her an angel in the home: her compassion, her kindness, her self-sacrifice. Slightly less radically, the WCTU pursued a line of argument that attempted to legitimize their political activities by enlarging the domestic sphere that was woman’s domain; “the WCTU attempted to expand the sphere of home and family by claiming the world with the labels of sisterhood, brotherhood and maternity.” (Dalton 17)⁷⁶. In The Angel Isafrel, the heroine’s involvement is similarly justified, because alcohol “is so clearly the enemy of home, which is woman's world” (Reed 52)⁷⁷. In fact, Isafrel’s conviction is so sure, that when one woman “made the idiotic remark that ‘woman's proper place was home,’ and that for herself she never mixed up in politics,” (Reed 38)⁷⁸ Isafrel confesses to a strong desire to swear. The combination of her virtuous refusal to swear with her sincere desire to do so help keep Isafrel engaging, much as her charity work is revealed to have led her into a physical confrontation with an axe. The unexpectedly forceful side of her character builds an interesting dynamic with her feminine virtue. When she is confined to a sick bed for the second half of the novel, her charismatic presence is greatly reduced, as Reed seems to have lost interest in his rather remarkable heroine in favour of political reforms; nevertheless, Dr Wilmott finds that ““he thought that a bicycle was the prettiest and most graceful vehicle he had ever seen to carry a lady.” (Reed 41)⁷⁹ - reclaiming the stereotyped image of a “New Woman” as a fetchingly feminine means of conveyance, symbolic of the amalgamation in Isafrel of those two “socially polarized archetypes” (Norcia 347)⁸⁰.

In Conclusion

In spite of the spirited efforts of the prohibition movement, New Zealand never underwent a national reform. After the peak in 1911, and a close call in 1919 when only the votes of overseas troops prevented the fanatics’ victory, the movement stalled (Moffat 161)⁸¹. Districts that had voted “dry” gradually revoked the decision, and the movement appears to have faded from memory, with books like The Angel Isafrel left as some of the last remnants of this fervent period of New Zealand history.