Victorian life in intimate detail
Tighten your corset. Slop out your chamber pot. Your life as a Victorian is about to begin. In her delightful and revealing book How to Be a Victorian, British social historian Ruth Goodman guides you through Victorian life from the moment chilled feet touched the rag rug in the morning until the sheep’s gut condom was tied on at night. In exhaustive, but never boring detail, the everyday lives of the British upper and lower classes during the roughly 60 years of the Victorian era unfold as Goodman describes Victorian hygiene, grooming, food, clothing, medicine, and so much more.
What makes this book particularly charming is Goodman’s offhand remarks that she’s worn a corset for months, or that she recommends soot for tooth powder, or that she’s, yes, actually made sheep’s gut condoms. Halfway through the book I started wondering why in the world this woman was wearing a corset and using a smelly early-model Victorian toilet. It turns out that Ruth Goodman hasn’t just studied the subject but truly lived the Victorian life in such BBC shows as Victorian Farm and Victorian Pharmacy. So you can believe her when she confides that wool is actually an excellent fabric for a bathing suit or that doing the laundry Victorian-style was enough to drive any woman to drink. Goodman’s intimate details not only lend credibility to an already fascinating topic but also bring the Victorian world to life for twenty-first century readers.
