As soon as I read the premise, I knew this book was going to be brilliant. As a child, and still often times as an adult I dream of what it would be like growing up in the Victorian era. Being able to wear elaborate dresses daily, none of the jeans or sweatpants of this generation. Sigh. I think as I write this I may be dozing off into dreaming a bit!
Unmentionable takes the reader on a journey through the experience of being a female in the Victorian era. Therese Oneill writes straight to the reader, nothing held back. She touches on hilarious, but alarmingly true theories about menstruation. If a woman’s cycles weren’t up to quality of quantity it was responsible for illnesses….What? How women coped with menstruation during that era…Let’s just say I am thankful to be a millennial with all the luxuries I often neglect.
We often see photos of women from this romantic era and think wow, perfection—the clothing, the makeup—everything. Well, makeup was mostly made from lead until 1950 and woman who enamelled their faces to appear younger were simply spreading arsenic all over themselves and never washing it off. Yep. You read that correctly. Needless to say, these products weren’t FDA approved like we insist on in this age.
This book is utterly horrifying and at the same time hilarious. I cannot even fathom the amount of research Oneill put into making this book come to life. She successfully broke down all of our misconceptions about what life was like for a woman’s intimate and public life in the Victorian age. She addresses her readers in intimate and cheeky tone, nothing is held back. Some fun facts: undergarments were worn crotchless to stay clean, hysterical women were cleaned by means of sex and whilst having a period no products were available to you. Illustrations are sprinkled throughout the book to truly wow us with these sometimes disturbing facts.
This is a must-read for all women. We have come so far (and still have so far to go) but, hopefully reading of how women lived in the past will bring comfort to the way the female gender is viewed, and how we live today.
The tone and hilarity of the delivery of this novel make it an entertaining read, not a run-of-the-mill history book. Very intriguing, I learned many things I didn’t even want to now!
