- Anna Maria Junus
Review: Unmentionable by Therese Oneill
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
by Therese Oneill
Do you know what's better than accurate history? Accurate history that's funny. Therese Oneill takes you back in time and she writes this book as if she is speaking directly to you. First she helps you understand what you need to wear before you start your day because you can't just walk around naked and your 21st century clothes just won't do in the mid-1800s.
Then she explains how you use the bathroom. I bet a lot of you wondered how to use the potty when you're wearing all those petticoats and pantaloons and cages.
She also warns you that in spite of watching all those dreamy Jane Austen movies, that life in the mid-1800s was anything but clean and rosy and smelling divine. And yes, I know Jane Austen takes place before the Victorian period, but not a lot changes during these times.
And that the Industrial Revolution caused havoc with a girls skin, her clothes, and keeping a house clean.
She tells you what to do about that time of the month, how to attract a man (really girls, that's the only way a decent middle to upper class woman survives), Victorian era etiquette and horror of horrors - Victorian medical practices. She doesn't travel much to the lower side, to the peasants, servants, and pioneer women. We all know how tough life was for those women. She has decided to place you, dear reader, in the lap of luxury where you will be expected to marry well, and run a household of servants. And I think that's fair considering how much that era has been romanticized around the well-to-do. I mean, who wouldn't want servants who will throw you a party whenever you want one while you take all the compliments for it. Or bring you a cup of tea with cucumber sandwiches. Or have dinner on the table, the children ready for bed, and the laundry all done.
But life wasn't all romance and roses for these women. Certainly better off than their poorer sisters, they still had to deal with dirt (that's a nice name for it), blood, childbirth, misogyny (without even having a name for it), unfair social punishments and expectations, illness, and stupid men. Yes, I mentioned misogyny before but I think we can have another category called stupid men.
By the end of the book you will be grateful that you are living now and not back then. Because if you were to go back in time and live then, most of you would end up either dead or in a mental hospital.
I'm looking forward to reading her next book sometime. Ungovernable: The Victorian Parents Guide to Raising Flawless Children.
And here's a link to her website.
