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603 reviews for:
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
Therese Oneill
3.76 AVERAGE
603 reviews for:
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
Therese Oneill
3.76 AVERAGE
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.
Funny, fascinating, at times disturbing and horrifying. Therese Oneill sardonically de-romanticizes the Victorian Era in the style of a tour guide throughout the centuries. I would 10/10 recommend this book.
I think this book could be good for someone who is completely new to Victorian-age ideals, or has an interest in steampunk and wants to know some actual history behind the modern fashion, but as a costume designer I didn't really find much that I didn't already know. It paints a broad brush over the decades without getting too specific about any one thing, and accuracy is sometimes foregone in favor of humor. That said, it was an quick, mostly amusing read.
The blurb on the front of this book describes it as "unsettlingly fascinating," which I think is quite correct. This book is a journey through some of the rules and expectations placed on women's dress, hygiene, health and behavior in Victorian times. And holy geez, is it ever weird and disturbing. The author describes (with a good sense of humor) what it was like for women to get dressed, go to the bathroom, have periods and have sex in a time during which they were completely powerless in the eyes of the law. Chapter one is entitled "Getting Dressed" How to Properly Hide Your Shame" and it describes all kinds of garments and undergarments whose main purpose was to hide the layer of garment below it and disguise all the parts that women were supposed to be ashamed of or that could cause lust in any nearby men. It talks about a "cage crenoline" which was (as the name states) a wire cage in the shape of a skirt that women would wear underneath all of the fluffy layers of their dresses to hold the fabric (sometimes 40 POUNDS worth) away from their bodies so they wouldn't trip when they tried to walk. (Women were LITERALLY WEARING CAGES!)
The book also contains fascinating discussions about the proper way to flirt (DON'T DO IT OR YOU ARE A FLOOZY WHO WILL DIE ALONE.) and the best way to obtain wrinkle-free skin (Bind your face with thin slices of raw beef!) There are lots of quotes from lots of "learned men" of the time about how women were supposed to behave on their wedding nights, which should be the first time they even THINK about sex. And there are lots of hilariously inaccurate ideas about female anatomy (again, from the minds of a bunch of dudes).
Reading this book, it was kind of depressing to see how many vestiges of the Victorian Era we are still dealing with as far as how women are "supposed to behave." This book talks about how women are supposed to dress when they go out in public, and how they are basically "asking for it" if they show some ankle or walk around by themselves or with a group of single girls. These ideas are not too far removed (except by a century) from complaints about yoga pants on girls being "too distracting" for male students in the classroom. There were actually a lot of things like this that made me sink into a bit of despair over how far we have not come in so many ways. But overall, the book was mostly just funny and entertaining.
The book also contains fascinating discussions about the proper way to flirt (DON'T DO IT OR YOU ARE A FLOOZY WHO WILL DIE ALONE.) and the best way to obtain wrinkle-free skin (Bind your face with thin slices of raw beef!) There are lots of quotes from lots of "learned men" of the time about how women were supposed to behave on their wedding nights, which should be the first time they even THINK about sex. And there are lots of hilariously inaccurate ideas about female anatomy (again, from the minds of a bunch of dudes).
Reading this book, it was kind of depressing to see how many vestiges of the Victorian Era we are still dealing with as far as how women are "supposed to behave." This book talks about how women are supposed to dress when they go out in public, and how they are basically "asking for it" if they show some ankle or walk around by themselves or with a group of single girls. These ideas are not too far removed (except by a century) from complaints about yoga pants on girls being "too distracting" for male students in the classroom. There were actually a lot of things like this that made me sink into a bit of despair over how far we have not come in so many ways. But overall, the book was mostly just funny and entertaining.
I love Therese Oneill's writing voice. Every time she addresses the reader as "Darling", or some similar Victorian era diminutive, I was charmed to her all over again. She covers, in this book, the side of this particular period that we never see in our novels or films, and it's even more interesting than I'd imagined when I came across this book and read the title.
I'd never really wanted to travel back in time to this era anyway, but now I have an actual reason. Several reasons, really. No rights, lack of real medicine, and lack of real feminine hygiene, just to name a few. Thanks, Therese Oneill; I don't know what I would have done without your guidance.
I'd never really wanted to travel back in time to this era anyway, but now I have an actual reason. Several reasons, really. No rights, lack of real medicine, and lack of real feminine hygiene, just to name a few. Thanks, Therese Oneill; I don't know what I would have done without your guidance.
My interest was piqued after a conversation with coworkers concerning this book and the pineapple-like qualities of the (supposedly) ideal breast, so how could I resist reading the whole thing? The approach is more humorous than scholarly, with lots of uncredited and out-of-context images that serve as punchlines, but the author also cites some genuinely off-the-wall quotes from various bit of Victorian health and beauty advice that serve the thesis of "men sure had a lot of medically dangerous opinions without any knowledge to back them up." I learned quite a bit about what wombs are apparently supposed to do, and enjoyed many a horrified laugh reading bits aloud to my girlfriend re: face enameling and burning off one's freckles.
Reviewed on Books Cats Tea
The beginning of Unmentionable calls out directly to Oneill's target audience: those who are madly in love with the Victorian times through the highly romanticized mediums of film and books. Not specifically fitting into this category, I felt a little spoken down to at first, though I understood the set up the author was trying to create. The dramatic differentiation between the things Victorian era fans imagine and the realities of a time when women were expected to be submissive and obedient to men, the laws they created, and the society they run are topics that I imagine fans understand, but only in a topical level. This is also what the author assumes.
Unmentionable offers answers to those questions which are still often considered to be inappropriate conversations in polite company (by some). Details on how women handled their periods (and how men believed women should handle their periods), how a woman should approach sex (and how men believed women should approach sex), and the finer points on the appropriate weight, dress, and manners a woman should have (and how men believed women should....well, you get the point by now) are presented with numerous quotes from primary sources.
After getting over the initial way that Oneill presents her assertive and matter-of-fact voice, I began to get into the way she creates her narrative. The tone feels like a no-nonsense matron/fairy godmother-like voice, who has granted your deepest wish to travel back in time and live in the Victorian times. She guides you along, giving stark advice and information to help you fit in and not be burned for being a witch...or worse...a spinster.
The book covers a good deal of interesting and everyday topics. Chapters include: getting dressed, going to the restroom, bathing, menstruating, diet, beauty, courtship, the wedding night, birth control, being a good wife, running a household, public behavior, hysteria, and masturbation. The life of a woman in the Victorian era was grim and full of rules, typically created by men for their pleasure or relief, but at the same time, those women who lived those lives pushed for better standards and treatment. Birth control became a life saver to many women (and their families), though it was illegal, and women taking up the suffrage cause stems from these times as well. Unmentionable allows us to look back on the women who had much more difficult lives than (many) women do now. It also allows us to look at parallels in topics that are still (bafflingly) being discussed, without the input of women, today. It can also help us recognize that there are still women out there who live under patriarchal and draconian rules and laws and that we still have a ways to go before women gain equal footing globally.
The beginning of Unmentionable calls out directly to Oneill's target audience: those who are madly in love with the Victorian times through the highly romanticized mediums of film and books. Not specifically fitting into this category, I felt a little spoken down to at first, though I understood the set up the author was trying to create. The dramatic differentiation between the things Victorian era fans imagine and the realities of a time when women were expected to be submissive and obedient to men, the laws they created, and the society they run are topics that I imagine fans understand, but only in a topical level. This is also what the author assumes.
Unmentionable offers answers to those questions which are still often considered to be inappropriate conversations in polite company (by some). Details on how women handled their periods (and how men believed women should handle their periods), how a woman should approach sex (and how men believed women should approach sex), and the finer points on the appropriate weight, dress, and manners a woman should have (and how men believed women should....well, you get the point by now) are presented with numerous quotes from primary sources.
After getting over the initial way that Oneill presents her assertive and matter-of-fact voice, I began to get into the way she creates her narrative. The tone feels like a no-nonsense matron/fairy godmother-like voice, who has granted your deepest wish to travel back in time and live in the Victorian times. She guides you along, giving stark advice and information to help you fit in and not be burned for being a witch...or worse...a spinster.
The book covers a good deal of interesting and everyday topics. Chapters include: getting dressed, going to the restroom, bathing, menstruating, diet, beauty, courtship, the wedding night, birth control, being a good wife, running a household, public behavior, hysteria, and masturbation. The life of a woman in the Victorian era was grim and full of rules, typically created by men for their pleasure or relief, but at the same time, those women who lived those lives pushed for better standards and treatment. Birth control became a life saver to many women (and their families), though it was illegal, and women taking up the suffrage cause stems from these times as well. Unmentionable allows us to look back on the women who had much more difficult lives than (many) women do now. It also allows us to look at parallels in topics that are still (bafflingly) being discussed, without the input of women, today. It can also help us recognize that there are still women out there who live under patriarchal and draconian rules and laws and that we still have a ways to go before women gain equal footing globally.
It's fun and the snark is entertaining, for the first half of the book, but does get a little patronzing. This is definitely popular history, so if you are deeply immersed in the historical record and familiar with women's history of the era, it's probably not for you.