unmentionable the victorian lady's guide

The information provided in the book - all completely factual - is supplemented by the hilarious, irreverent musings of the unnamed narrator. books sold out printing after printing after printing.' There were actual legitimate medical doctors doing research and publishing it, but their stuff didn't get bought. 'I cherry-picked the lunatics,' Oneill says. As you'll quickly learn, these 'experts' would more accurately be described as 'quacks' who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. The narrator's advice is peppered with excerpts from the published works of 19th-Century scientists, doctors, etiquette experts, and that special brand of people who seem to have an opinion about everything. The book is narrated by an unnamed woman, a barmaid-esque fairy godmother who guides the reader, a time-traveler from modernity, through adolescence, marriage, and motherhood in Victorian times. 'One thing leads to another.'īefore she knew it, the idea for Unmentionable was born. 'Once you open that door, it spiderwebs,' she says. Questions like, 'Why the hell doesn't Demi Moore have hair on her armpits? How did women shave? Did women shave?' She started doing some research. Then, after watching the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter, she began asking questions about the time period. She began researching 'rare history' in college, combing through old sexual health manuals as an undergrad. You don't come for that.' But Oneill wanted the gross stuff. 'The job of most books is not to show you the real gross stuff,' author Therese Oneill tells Bustle. In Unmentionable: A Victorian Lady's Guide To Sex, Marriage, and Manners, Therese Oneill lifts the veil on romantic notions about olden times to unearth some pretty horrifying truths about hygiene, sex, menstruation, and beauty in the 19th Century.

Have you ever read a love scene in a historical romance novel and wondered, 'But what about the smell? What do they do when they're on their periods?' Of course you have, because let's be real - in Victorian times, women did not bathe terribly often, and their undergarments were completely crotchless.

Unmentionable the victorian lady's guide