On reading the book: Two things I have learned so far: firstly that knickers (panties to Americans) are called drawers because they were drawn up and down the legs, well still are. Can you imagine wearing one of those crinoline skirts perhaps on hoops and having to pull your knickers down to have a pee? Much easier to pass a pot under the skirt and squat, your undie legs naturally separating.īasically, the book says if a woman wants to do it and it impinges on a man's view of how a woman should behave then she shouldn't and what men like best is a pretty doll, not too bright, not too talkative, who just sits in a room quietly waiting for His Presence to activate them. The book was far more about that than crotchless panties. (Working class women had to go out to work which is the first step towards independence).

I wasn't keen on the chatty style and the author addressing me directly and thinking I must be some wilting flower who wouldn't be able to stand the utter repression of middle class women in the Victorian age. (And it just might leave you feeling ecstatically grateful to live in an age of pants, super absorbency tampons, epidurals, anti-depressants, and not-dying-of-the-syphilis-your-husband-brought-home.) Irresistibly charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and featuring nearly 200 images from Victorian publications, UNMENTIONABLE will inspire a whole new level of respect for Elizabeth Bennett, Scarlet O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and all of our great, great grandmothers.

~ How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating UNMENTIONABLE is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on: Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era?

Unmentionable by Therese Oneill