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Genre: Nonfiction
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners is the quite possibly the most fun you’ll ever have while reading a history book, mostly because of the snarky voice of Therese Oneill. This book is all about the private side of Victorian life – how it smelled (bad), what women did about their periods (whatever worked), and how to flirt with a fan, pair of gloves, or parasol (awkwardly).
The premise of Unmentionable is that you, the reader, have been watching a lot of period dramas and you want to visit the Victorian Age. You need a guide, and Therese is HERE FOR YOU. This premise allows Therese to snark patiently at you. You will learn how to get dressed, where to pee, what to eat if you are too thin or too fat for fashion, how to court your man, what attitude to take on your wedding night, how to avoid having a dozen babies, and how to behave in a proper and sedate manner in society.
In order to like this book, you must have at least a passing interest in the way people used to smell (terrible, just awful) and an enjoyment of snark. My response is “Yes and yes,” so I loved it. As a bonus, it’s a light history book with a nice font size and you can read it in about a day or two and still learn a lot. In comparison, I just waded through Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. It consisted of 750 pages of tiny, tiny print. Reading Unmentionable was like a day at the beach in comparison, and yet I did still learn stuff.
Here’s a sample from the book from a chapter about how to flirt – don’t do it, says Oneill! The experts from the age itself are unanimous in concluding that flirting can lead only to disaster:
Men don’t find an outward display of joy appealing! “Joy” doesn’t get the roast on the table at 6PM sharp! Chitchat doesn’t help a woman survive having nine babies! Flirtation leads to familiarity, a state of being that has wretched consequences, as explained in Melville C. Keith’s 1890 The Young Lady’s Private Counselor: The Care of Mind and Body; A Book Designed for Young Ladies, to Aid Them in Acquiring a Life of Purity, Intellectual Culture, Bodily Strength and Freedom from Many of the Ills and Annoyances of Life That Custom Has Placed on the Sex (yes, that is the title- TYLPCTCMBBDYLATALPICBSFMIALCHPS for short):
“Undue familiarity cheapens a girl even in her lover’s eyes and lays the foundation of future jealousy and possible murder. There is plenty of time for familiarity after marriage.”
Our author does not diagram the transition from flirting to homicide. But does he really need to? I mean, who doesn’t look at a teenager fluttering here eyelashes at some boy and think, “That’s going to end with three corpses in a filthy, blood-soaked basement?”
Underlying the snark is some real high quality female rage, because men had an awful lot to say about how women ought to behave in the Victorian Age. Did you know that if you try to hold your menstrual blood in it will come up into your lungs and give you consumption? It’s Science! A dude said so, so it must be true! Having babies is good for you! The more the better! Don’t masturbate or you’ll turn into a “vampire harpy!” In related news, I now feel a deep need for a t-shirt that reads “Vampire Harpy.” I would wear it daily.
One interesting observation – the book contains photos and cartoons from the era, and happily, includes photos of Black women, both wealthy (or at least, appearing so in the photos) and otherwise. While she does not deal with race in detail, she does point out medical beliefs about Black women and Indian women in contrast to beliefs about White women, and she touches ever so briefly on the issue of slavery. Oneill does refuse to place a time-traveling reader in the antebellum South: “The slave-holding South is one place you don’t want to visit. We will leave it in history, where it belongs.”
Oneill points out in her conclusion (titled “I Miss Pants”) not everyone acted in exactly the same way:
I will confide in you something I’m sure you’ve already guessed. It wasn’t quite as bad as all this. What I’ve shown you is all true but it did not apply to everyone, always. Just as today not every woman undergoes radical plastic surgery so she can join Hugh Hefner’s harem, not every woman ate arsenic, crushed her bones with a corset, or woke up in a cold sweat fearing she’s put her soup spoon on the wrong side of her cheese fork at dinner the night before.
But neither was it as you’ve been told by books and movies. The beautiful dresses were smudged with soot and sweat. The succulent feasts were made from questionably preserved plants and unrefrigerated animal products, and then prepared by unwashed hands. And though you might have been treated like a lady, it would come at the expense of being treated like a woman.
As you might imagine, the truth within the humor and sarcasm resonated with me on several levels. I recommend this book most vigorously, but not too vigorously, as that might cause consumption, malaria, overexcitement, or gout.
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Am awaiting this from my library.
I normally avoid books like this because reading about oppression makes me super ragey and the fact that some would send us back there in a blink if they had their way….grrrrr! But this sounds like it would be right up my alley. Great review!
I am not sure if I’d like the snarky tone throughout, it reads a bit condescending. I mean who doesn’t know at least a little about history vs. TV? I prefer my social history straight up, e.g Judith Flanders’s Victorian Home. As for not visiting the South: I feel anyone who romanticizes it should go back in time and see with their own eyes that slavery was awful indeed and that it did happen and not in a “slaves were treated so well by loving masters” way. Not that people outside of slave owning areas didn’t profit from it in some way.
You had me at snark.
I wasn’t super-impressed with the book. Although enjoyable, I found several parts rather repetitive. It has been making the round among my fellow library staff members, so someone’s talking it up. I’d give it more a B-minus: still passing, not stellar.
http://blustocking.blogspot.com/2017/01/unmentionable-not-mentioned.html
DANG!! Not in my library and much too expensive on Amazon. Sounds like a fun read.
Now, someone needs to write one about the Regency period. What was it really like? I ask because there is such a contrast between the way Georgette Heyer writes about it, she was my first introduction to the period, and other authors.
This sounds right up my alley. Snark, vampire harpies, questionably preserved vegetable products . . . I’m there. Thank you for this awesome recommendation.
@Gloriamarie Have you read What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew? Not strictly Regency, and if I recall it doesn’t really talk about, say, hygiene so much, but it does explain points of etiquette, customs, business, and so forth mentioned in books by Austen, Dickens, and so forth. Fun read, too.
@garlicknitter, no I’ never heard of it. There are 2 copies in the library system and I’ve placed a hold. Thank you.
Please advise: how do you knit with garlic? I love garlic and am always looking for something new to do with it.
Thanks for this review! Victorian/Edwardian is one of my focus periods, so this is definitely something to find for research, as well as for (apparently tremendous) entertainment.
@ EC Spurlock I had previously read ‘How to be a Victorian’ by Ruth Goodman. Stellar research plus insights gained as a historical re-creator of the period makes this a great resource. It reads well, is generously illustrated. It does try to give a fairly balanced look at all the classes, not just the upper-crust. However, it is not short, nor is it snarky. It is fascinating.
I have to second Ruth Goodman – her dedication to trying things like keeping herself clean without water really helps (removing dead skin with a rough rag or brush and plenty of changes of clothes). Also, completely undermines the idea Victorians would have smelt bad, so I’m curious as to O’Neill’s sources for that.
I listened to this on audio and that may have affected my opinion. I enjoyed the info and definitely the anger but very little of the info was wholly new to me. It felt very middle of the road in that way.
I think I would have enjoyed this more in print, especially if there are cool photos and sketches!
Goodman does living history for TV documentaries, so she’s actually trying things instead of just snarking. Sometimes conclusions are a bit different…. Noteable contrast between her ‘nobody noticed when I didn’t bathe for a year’ and Oneill’s ‘everybody was a reeking pile of feculence’.
I have a tolerance for snark, so I got through the book just fine, but reviews make it clear YMMV–some find it increasingly grating.
In the field of ‘life back then’ books, I’ve enjoyed Liza Picard’s work.
I listen to The Allusionist (I’m a logophile), and Zaltzman just did a podcast about The Ripped Bodice in LA, and the romance genre.
http://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/covers-i
Really enjoyed this. One of those books where you keep cackling quietly to yourself, and your loved ones keep looking at you weirdly…
Hey Gloriamarie and all, if your public library doesn’t own this book give them a call and ask them to place an interlibrary loan for you. They can borrow the book for you from another library. It might take a couple of weeks depending on which library across the country would be willing to loan it.
The Goodman and Picard books are much better if you want to actually know about life in the Victorian period. Unmentionable is fine if you just want to laugh at oddball notions, but oddball notions are always with us. How about kale is a superfood that will cure all our ills and you mustn’t get your kids vaccinated because vaccination causes autism.
I just read this one last month — it’s pretty light, as history books go, but it’s a fun, quick read. I’d recommend it, too.
Just read this recently–it was super cute, and made for fun, “read this aloud to your boyfriend to horrify him” times. I could definitely see how the snark could be hit-or-miss, but it held my attention for a full day of tea and couch reading. I definitely wouldn’t mind reading a more serious treatment of the topic, though–sounds like “How To Be A Victorian” might be a good follow up?
I enjoyed this book well enough – I love humor – but at times it was just too dismissive. I mean, everybody likes making fun of Victorians and their ideas, but they were just doing the best with what they had like we all do. I would not rely on it for historical accuracy as it was all based on advice books (it would be like writing about contemporary American women using magazines like Cosmopolitan as your source.) It was also hard to know what was based on fact and what was embellished for comedic effect. My thoughts on this book are here: http://blog.threegoodrats.com/2016/12/unmentionable.html
I do highly recommend How To Be Victorian, which was way more informative. Ruth Goodman really does her research, as others have mentioned above, and she has actually tried out a lot of what she writes about so it’s not just speculation. I wrote about How To Be a Victorian here: http://blog.threegoodrats.com/2015/12/how-to-be-victorian.html