How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life
by Ruth Goodman
Series: How to Be
Genres: History, Non Fiction, Victorian, English History
Release Date: October 6, 2014
Pages: 473
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google Books | Kobo
My Rating: ★★★★☆
☆☆☆☆☆ – Did not finish
★☆☆☆☆ – Hated it
★★☆☆☆ – Disliked it
★★★☆☆ – Okay
★★★★☆ – Liked it
★★★★★ – Loved it
Read the full explanation of my book rating system.
Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious, the “the cheapest time-travel machine you’ll find” (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an historian who believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own firsthand adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work “imagines the Victorians as intrepid survivors” (New Republic) of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics to slipping opium to the little ones, Goodman’s account of Victorian life “makes you feel as if you could pass as a native” (The New Yorker).
Review
I fell in love with Ruth Goodman’s style from the very first page. Perhaps because I’ve watched many of the video series she has been part of, I was able to sense her personality in the writing; her curiosity and enthusiasm shine through in a way I don’t typically notice with other authors.
How to be a Victorian (HtbaV) walks you through what could be a typical day, from first waking to going to sleep, with detours along the way. These detours explore how different classes would experience various activities, how activities and beliefs evolved throughout the nearly 64 years of the Victorian era, ways that certain ideas or activities inspired changes further into the future, etc.
Ms. Goodman doesn’t shy away from the many unsavory aspects of Victorian England. Everything from the myriad of inequalities to disease is covered, not necessarily in detail, but with enough information for you to be happy you weren’t a Victorian. But, she also includes interesting, innocuous tidbits that often provide an even deeper look into Victorian society. Some of my favorites include:
- “If a young woman worked in service, she would often be given clothes by her mistress… such movement of clothes was so common that people were accustomed to seeing poorer members of society dressed in slightly worn clothes and in fashions that were a few years out of date… if you failed to keep up with [fashion], you were in danger of looking like a servant.”
- “A beggar who looked like a working person with worn but ‘decent’ clothes generally took far more money than one who was dressed in tatters. People understood and sympathized with someone temporarily down on their luck, but for a beggar without respectable clothing there was no respect.”
- “Mascara was the other name given to these colored moustache waxes. Mascara is still widely available, of course, even though it is not used by women for their eyelashes, rather than by men.”
- “For many people, their first encounter with both the electric light and the WC was at their local railway station…”
- “Boys were some of the first people to be clothed by the ready-to-wear market.”
- “To be unable to sew was unthinkable — comparable to being unable to use a phone in the twenty-first century… The level of skill considered ‘normal’ and wholly unremarkable was higher than that of many twenty-first-century textile professionals.”
- “One pub for every thirty houses was not unusual in working-class districts.”
- “The earliest public-bath buildings were often connected to a laundry room…”
- “Impotence was generally understood as the result of previous overindulgence in sex.”
While I don’t agree with The New Yorker‘s comment that this book “makes you feel as if you could pass as a native,” it does provide a lot of interesting details I didn’t know before reading it. If you have any interest in history at all, I highly suggest HtbaV.
About the Author
Ruth Goodman is a historian of British social and domestic life. She has advised the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Globe Theatre and presented a number of BBC television series, including Victorian Farm. She lives in England.
Author links: Website |Goodreads | Amazon Author Page
NOTE: This review is based on an eBook I purchased from Amazon on January 10, 2025.
