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601 reviews for:
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
Therese Oneill
3.76 AVERAGE
601 reviews for:
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
Therese Oneill
3.76 AVERAGE
I've been working on this book for a while. The chatty style wasn't my favorite, but it had good information in it. I liked the breakup of information into bite sized sections with headings, easy to read just a quick few pages in between chores.
This is funny and also a good reminder that life is relatively easy for middle-class women in the 21st century.
I really wanted to like this book. I loved the idea of a guide to time traveler. Additionally, my wife is a huge fan of the developments in fashion, women's health, and equality. I wanted to come away with interesting tidbits to share with her. To a certain extent this book achieved that goal. The problem was everything I found interesting came from the first couple of chapters. After that the style and focus completely changed.
In the first few chapters we learn about getting dressed. We learn why underwear was crotchless, what made certain shoes practical, and how to clean every part of a woman's attire. It truly felt like a guide to a woman who was dropped into Victorian society. After those chapters the book completely changes. It becomes more like a dissertation explaining what life was like supported with quotes from primary sources. Gone is the feeling that a woman can use this book as a travel guide for survival.
Perhaps if the author had a more narrow focus more attention could be put on guiding how to pass as a Victorian woman. Expand the chapters on fashion. Talk more about all the steps of cleaning, how to cook typical meals, and how to speak the lingo. Explain how to raise and educate children. Make me feel like I can take this book to Victorian times just like I can take a Rick Steves' travel book to France and not look like an idiot.
In the first few chapters we learn about getting dressed. We learn why underwear was crotchless, what made certain shoes practical, and how to clean every part of a woman's attire. It truly felt like a guide to a woman who was dropped into Victorian society. After those chapters the book completely changes. It becomes more like a dissertation explaining what life was like supported with quotes from primary sources. Gone is the feeling that a woman can use this book as a travel guide for survival.
Perhaps if the author had a more narrow focus more attention could be put on guiding how to pass as a Victorian woman. Expand the chapters on fashion. Talk more about all the steps of cleaning, how to cook typical meals, and how to speak the lingo. Explain how to raise and educate children. Make me feel like I can take this book to Victorian times just like I can take a Rick Steves' travel book to France and not look like an idiot.
Awesome
This book was hilarious and so interesting. It was so much fun to read. I want to read more by this author!
This book was hilarious and so interesting. It was so much fun to read. I want to read more by this author!
Unreadable. Nearly. (I read about 1/3.) Thought this might be a fun whirl through another era's underthings, but the ceaseless "aren't they just so backwards, aren't we just so much more enlightened, darlings?" tone got old and condescending fast. In fact, I'm pretty sure the author is wrong about a number of her conjectures, because she appears to have not have done or sought any empirical research. I haven't read Ruth Goodman's How to Be a Victorian yet, but based on her How to Be a Tudor, which was excellent, I have no doubt HTBAV is the better work. Goodman, in addition to academic qualifications, is a practiced living historian and far better informed about whether people of the past were actually as stinky as Oneill restates over and over and over.
3.5 stars. This leaves all the romanticism of Masterpiece in the dust. When finished, you will be quite glad you reside in the 21st century! A very interesting and humorous read that makes me thankful for all the feminists in generations before me. Hopefully, we can make paths to make life even better for women in the future.
Highly entertaining ...and horrifying! A fun, informative read that makes me happy to NOT be living in Victorian times.
Endlessly full of snark and tongue in cheek humor, but informative at the same time. I read it in small doses here and there, which worked perfectly--it kept the tone from becoming just too over the top.