“A Rather Spectacular Figure”: The “Society” Drug Addict in 1930s Britain

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of a selfhood organized around the experience of drug addiction in 1930s Britain, taking as its focus the autobiographical writings of the aristocratic “society” drug addict Brenda Dean Paul. It details the various discourses deployed by Dean Paul in her process of self-fashioning, and so builds on recent work demonstrating the agency exercised by addicts in the face of proliferating systems of control constructed in these years by illustrating their simultaneous discursive agency. In addition, the study offers a new perspective on the relationship between class and culture in interwar Britain. In contrast to other accounts that explore how the critique of popular culture offered by upper-class commentators served to reinforce social hierarchies, this article demonstrates how, in other hands, popular culture provided a vehicle for bridging the gulf between classes.