Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners

In this chatty, funny, and slightly startling narrative, Therese Oneill takes us through the daily life experiences of an upper middle-class American woman in the Victorian era. It wasn’t all fancy hats and tea parties, that’s for sure. Bundled in layers of restrictive clothing, her face made up with beauty aids that were often toxic, breathing smoke from countless coal-burning stoves, and wading through horse manure on the frequently unpaved streets, even a privileged Victorian woman had a tough life. And not just physically - a ‘proper’ lady also had to contend with a mind-numbing list of laws and social expectations that forbade her from seeking fulfillment outside the rigid triangle of home, church, and her husband’s career, and even dictated such minutia as how she should hold her head when conversing, or how she ought to arrange her skirts when seated. (As you might expect, things get really weird in the bedroom.)

 

This isn’t intended to be a balanced work of history, and the author’s narrow focus (female, white, Protestant, American, heterosexual, and upper middle-class) makes for a short and breezy read. Still, Oneill relies on a wide range of primary sources to talk back to. And talk back she does, in a gossipy and blatantly judgy style that adds to the fun.  

 

If you do want to read something that’s more scholarly and covers similar ground, try Inside the Victorian Home: a Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders.