As drunkenness was experienced within a social, historical space, it was understood in different ways for distinct individuals in particular moments, ways that expressed historically specific values and fears. I have looked in different places where he, or she, became a subject of concern. At certain times various interpretations existed of how much of a certain beverage was considered ‘too much’ and for whom what type of behaviour as a result of intemperance was felt to be problematic. Generally, drunkenness represented a moment of chaos in which seemingly permanent cultural boundaries became blurred. Defining drunkenness therefore entailed asserting, negotiating and constructing social identities. Starting from this premise that representations of excessive drinking were fundamental signifiers for culture, ‘the drunk’ became a guide into important historical changes in Belgian society in the second half of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth.

Various narratives of drunkenness, shaped by and also forming experience, were produced at the intersection of so many social, political and medical ideas. They were certainly ambiguous, even contradictory and always shifting, but continued to recur over the period in different shapes and forms. They addressed mostly the fantasies and fears of the middle classes for whom drunkenness had become a serious issue of concern in the mid-nineteenth century and were endorsed by bourgeois social commentators, progressive lawmakers, asylum doctors and modern authors and artists.