Unbecoming a Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America by Therese Oneill

Book Review 

Title: Unbecoming a Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America by Therese Oneill 

Genre: Non-Fiction, Society, History 

Rating: 3.5 Stars 

Therese Oneill’s Unbecoming a Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America is an irreverent, entertaining, and often fascinating collection of stories about women who refused to behave in the ways society expected of them. Rather than focusing on the traditionally celebrated women of American history, Oneill deliberately turns her attention towards the outsiders, troublemakers, rebels, performers, activists, inventors, journalists, religious leaders, and unapologetically unconventional women who were frequently dismissed or condemned because they refused to conform. Covering eighteen women from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book makes a compelling argument that many of the women dismissed as difficult, scandalous, unfeminine, or simply “unbecoming” were precisely the women who helped expand what women could accomplish.  

---

Ultimately, I would give Unbecoming a Lady 3.5 out of 5 stars. There is an enormous amount to enjoy here: the subjects are fascinating, the book is beautifully illustrated, the historical information is accessible, and Oneill’s sarcastic, modern voice makes what could otherwise be a dry collection of biographies remarkably entertaining. However, the biggest weakness is also fairly significant: the women themselves are often far more interesting than the amount of space Oneill gives them allows. The book introduces a fascinating collection of historical figures, but too frequently leaves me wanting substantially more detail about their lives, achievements, struggles, and historical significance. 

Oneill’s central premise is immediately appealing. The women featured in the book were not necessarily the sort of figures traditionally presented as ideal examples of femininity. They were women who were loud when they were expected to be quiet, ambitious when they were expected to be submissive, unconventional when they were expected to conform, and sometimes downright scandalous when respectable society demanded propriety. The publisher describes the book as a collection of women who were not sufficiently attractive, demure, well-spoken, or “sinless” to receive the place in history they deserved, and that idea provides the foundation for the entire book.  

What makes the premise particularly effective is that Oneill does not simply argue that these women were unfairly forgotten. She explores the reasons they were considered unacceptable in the first place. The insults embedded in the title, “sluts” and “shrews” represent the kinds of labels historically used to discipline women who stepped outside socially acceptable boundaries. By reclaiming those words, Oneill turns them into a badge of honour. The women were supposedly too loud, too sexual, too ambitious, too masculine, too opinionated, too strange, or simply too unwilling to behave themselves. Yet many of precisely those characteristics enabled them to challenge existing structures and accomplish things that more conventionally “ladylike” women could not. 

This is where the book’s underlying feminist argument is strongest. Oneill demonstrates that historical progress is rarely achieved exclusively by people who politely follow the rules. Sometimes progress comes from people who irritate everyone around them, refuse to accept “no,” embarrass respectable society, or simply ignore the expectations placed upon them. Kirkus similarly praised the book for bringing together women who refused to conform and for highlighting how small acts of courage can contribute to much broader social change.  

The selection of women is particularly strong. Oneill includes figures such as Mary Edwards Walker, the physician and reformer who famously refused to stop wearing trousers; Elizabeth Packard, whose husband’s attempt to have her confined to an asylum ultimately contributed to her becoming an advocate for married women’s legal rights; Lillian Gilbreth, whose engineering work helped transform domestic spaces; Aida Overton Walker, a pioneering Black entertainer; and Poker Alice, the card-playing woman of the American West.  

These women could hardly be more different from one another, and that variety prevents the book from becoming repetitive. Oneill demonstrates that being “unbecoming” could take many forms. For one woman, it might mean refusing to dress according to conventional expectations. For another, it might mean challenging the medical or legal establishment. For another, it might mean using performance, journalism, business, religion, or political activism to create an independent life. 

Mary Edwards Walker is an especially memorable example. Her refusal to conform to Victorian expectations of women’s clothing is presented not as a trivial eccentricity but as part of her much broader refusal to accept limitations placed upon women. The fact that she became the only woman ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor makes her subsequent obscurity particularly striking. Her story encapsulates one of the book’s most interesting arguments: sometimes history remembers the unconventional behaviour while forgetting the extraordinary achievements that accompanied it. 

Elizabeth Packard’s story is similarly compelling. Her husband had her committed to an asylum after she challenged religious ideas, yet Packard eventually fought back through the legal system and became an advocate for the rights of married women and people subjected to unjust confinement. Her story is particularly effective because it demonstrates how little legal independence women could possess and how easily disagreement with a husband could be interpreted as evidence of mental instability. Packard’s refusal to accept that situation transformed a deeply personal injustice into a broader campaign for reform. 

Lillian Gilbreth is another fascinating inclusion. She is perhaps best remembered by some readers through Cheaper by the Dozen, but Oneill draws attention to her far more significant contributions as an engineer and educator. Her work included efforts to make domestic labour more efficient and to design kitchens around the needs of the people actually using them. Her story is an excellent example of the book’s broader purpose: taking women whose contributions have been reduced to footnotes or family associations and putting their own achievements back at the centre.

Oneill’s writing style is perhaps the most immediately distinctive aspect of the book. She writes history with an aggressively modern, sarcastic, and conversational voice. There is very little sense of the dry academic prose that can make historical biography inaccessible to casual readers. Instead, Oneill approaches these women with obvious enthusiasm, humour, and a willingness to poke fun at the ridiculous expectations placed upon them. 

For the most part, this works extremely well. 

The humour gives the book tremendous energy. It is difficult to read certain stories without laughing at the absurdity of the social rules imposed upon women, particularly when those rules are contrasted with the extraordinary achievements of the women who broke them. The result is history that feels alive rather than remote. 

This is also something reflected in reader reactions. Discussions of the book frequently praise the humour and sarcasm for making the historical material engaging, while readers have particularly appreciated the combination of irreverence and serious commentary on misogyny.

However, the humour is also where the book occasionally loses me. 

Oneill’s voice is so deliberately contemporary that it can sometimes feel as though the historical subjects are being translated into twenty-first-century personalities rather than allowed to exist fully within their own historical contexts. Some readers have found the tone forced or overly modern, particularly because the jokes and conversational asides occur so frequently. I did not dislike the style, in fact, it is one of the reasons I found the book so readable, but I occasionally wished Oneill would step back and allow the historical material to speak for itself. 

The biggest problem, however, is depth. 

The book is relatively short and covers eighteen women, which means that each biography has limited space. The official description emphasises the eighteen remarkable women featured, while the book’s structure divides them into thematic chapters rather than providing extensive individual biographies. This makes Unbecoming a Lady extremely easy to read, but it also means that many of the women feel like introductions rather than fully developed subjects. 

This was probably my greatest frustration with the book. 

Again and again, I would encounter a woman whose life was absolutely fascinating and find myself thinking, I want to know more about her. Oneill gives us enough information to understand why the woman matters, but not always enough to become deeply immersed in her life. There are fascinating legal battles, scandals, inventions, careers, political campaigns, personal tragedies, and social controversies that could easily have filled entire biographies. 

Several reader reactions make a similar observation: the book is funny, informative, and fast-paced, but some readers felt that the individual profiles were too short or shallow. I found myself agreeing with that criticism. 

In some respects, Unbecoming a Lady therefore works better as a gateway to women’s history than as a comprehensive historical study. Oneill introduces readers to women they may never have encountered before and gives them enough information to spark curiosity. The natural response after finishing certain chapters is to search for a biography, documentary, or more extensive historical account of the woman in question. 

That is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it may be one of the book’s greatest accomplishments. A history book that makes readers want to research its subjects further has achieved something valuable. Nevertheless, I would have preferred fewer women and significantly more depth. 

The illustrations and photographs are another particularly enjoyable feature. Lisa Jonté’s illustrations complement the text, while historical photographs help put faces to the names. The visual presentation is not merely decorative; it makes the book feel more like a curated collection of historical personalities than a conventional academic history. Seeing photographs of some of these women is particularly valuable because it makes them feel less like distant historical figures and more like real people who existed, worked, argued, embarrassed themselves, challenged others, and changed their communities. 

The book’s organisation also helps maintain its momentum. Rather than simply presenting eighteen unrelated biographies, Oneill groups her subjects thematically. The chapters include titles such as “Making a Spectacle of Oneself,” “Ballbusters,” “That’s Sissy Stuff,” “The Righteous Sisters,” “Running Her Mouth,” and “Too Far, Too Soon.” These deliberately provocative titles reinforce the book’s central argument while allowing Oneill to demonstrate the different ways women challenged gender expectations. 

The thematic structure is effective because it repeatedly reinforces the idea that there was no single way to be “unbecoming.” Women could break rules through their appearance, careers, sexuality, politics, religion, speech, or sheer refusal to cooperate. The book therefore becomes less about a particular group of women and more about the broader mechanisms society has historically used to police women’s behaviour. 

One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the book is how recognisable some of these expectations remain. Although the historical circumstances are dramatically different, the contradictory expectations placed upon women often feel surprisingly familiar. Women are expected to be confident but not intimidating, attractive but not vain, sexual but not promiscuous, ambitious but not aggressive, outspoken but not difficult. Oneill’s introduction plays with these contradictions, and contemporary readers have noted how recognisable the list of impossible expectations feels.  

That connection between past and present gives the book greater relevance than it might initially appear to have. These are not simply stories about women who lived one hundred years ago. They also provide an opportunity to consider how much or how little, has changed. 

At the same time, I would have liked Oneill to explore this connection more deeply. The book sometimes identifies an obvious parallel between historical misogyny and contemporary expectations and then moves on before fully examining it. A more sustained discussion of how these historical examples relate to present-day feminism could have added considerable intellectual depth. 

This is ultimately the recurring tension throughout Unbecoming a Lady. It is extremely enjoyable, but I wanted more substance beneath the entertainment. 

Oneill clearly knows how to tell a story. She knows how to make historical figures memorable, how to turn obscure facts into entertaining anecdotes, and how to maintain a lively narrative voice. What the book does not always do is spend enough time asking the difficult historical questions raised by those stories. 

There are moments when I wanted more discussion of primary sources, historical disagreement, social context, and the ways these women were represented by their contemporaries. The book does include further reading and works consulted, demonstrating that considerable research underpins it, but the main text itself prioritises accessibility and entertainment over academic depth.  

For some readers, that will be exactly what they want. For others, particularly those who already read a lot of women’s history, it may feel somewhat superficial. 

Nevertheless, the book’s central message is an important one. History has frequently rewarded women who could be made into respectable heroines while marginalising those who were difficult to categorise. A woman who challenged the system might be remembered as troublesome rather than revolutionary. A woman who refused conventional femininity might be remembered for her clothes rather than her achievements. A woman who demanded legal rights might be described as hysterical rather than courageous. 

Oneill’s greatest achievement is making those women impossible to overlook. 

She does not attempt to sanitise them into perfect feminist icons either. The women in these pages are flawed, complicated, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes controversial, and occasionally deeply strange. That makes the book more enjoyable because they feel like actual human beings rather than carefully constructed historical role models. 

Ultimately, Unbecoming a Lady is a lively, funny, and genuinely fascinating collection of women’s stories. Therese Oneill has chosen an excellent group of subjects and presents them in a way that makes history approachable without stripping away its importance. Her irreverent humour gives the book a distinctive personality, while the photographs and illustrations make it particularly enjoyable as a physical reading experience. 

Its greatest weakness is that there simply isn’t enough of it. So many of these women have extraordinary stories that the relatively brief profiles can feel frustratingly incomplete. The same fast-paced, humorous style that makes the book so readable occasionally prevents Oneill from exploring the historical complexity of her subjects as deeply as I would have liked. The contemporary tone will also not work for everyone, particularly readers who prefer a more traditional historical narrative. 

Nevertheless, I finished the book feeling that Oneill had achieved something worthwhile. She has taken women who were dismissed as too loud, too difficult, too unconventional, too sexual, too ambitious, or simply too unwilling to behave, and demonstrated that those supposedly undesirable qualities were often inseparable from the courage that made them historically significant. 

Overall, I would give Unbecoming a Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America 3.5 out of 5 stars. It is funny, accessible, beautifully presented, and packed with fascinating women who deserve far greater recognition. I only wish Oneill had given them more room to breathe. The book succeeds brilliantly as an introduction to forgotten women’s history and as a celebration of women who refused to conform, but its brevity and occasionally over-modernised humour prevent it from becoming the definitive exploration of these remarkable lives. Even so, it left me with a long list of women I now want to learn much more about—and perhaps that is the best compliment I can give it.

Buy it here: 

Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk                            amazon.com  

Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk                               amazon.com