Tanya Wexler's Hysteria

This charming, feel good movie brings us a surprisingly historically accurate story of a women's disease hysteria and the methods that were used to cure it. Interestingly enough, this disease seemed to affect mostly rich, idle women. Some of the symptoms are depression, nervousness, sexual frustration, melancholia, anxiety and exhaustion. The generally accepted treatment for hysteria is genital massage that induces paroxysmal convulsions. What the doctor seems to be unaware of is that paroxysmal convulsions are, in fact, orgasms.     

There is nothing vulgar or inappropriate in this movie, but id appears that it ridicules the doctors who treat hysteria and women who claim to suffer from it. A modern day person can't avoid chuckling at some parts. Like when doctor Darlymple says that women aren't capable of pleasure if there isn't a man, when we hear his daughter talk about women's rights or when poor doctor Granville starts suffering from muscle cramps. We can't help but think to ourselves: Weren't these people so charmingly ignorant. 

Charlotte Darlymple is the doctor's older daughter. She is a feminist and believes she should be charitable, believes that a marriage is a union of equals. And doesn't think hysteria is a disease. She's practically a woman fro the twenty first century brought back to the Victorian era. I tried to google her a bit, to see whether or not she was even a real person, but I couldn't find much. In the end, it doesn't even matter. But she proves to be a bit more insightful than her father and his new, young colleague. She realizes that hysteria has nothing to do with being ill and that it's a weir coincidence the the majority of women suffering from it are bored out of their minds. The poor women who she works with aren't ill because, as she states it, they're too busy trying to feed their families. Her father thinks that she suffers from it and that she's a particularly difficult case. She knows what she wants, fights for it, rebels against her father, is opinionated, loud and has a strong sense for social injustice. Why wouldn't she be hysteric? There's obviously something wrong with her if she doesn't want to fit in the usual pattern of a housewife and a mother. 

It seems weird that anyone could confuse sexual frustration with a disease, but imagine how weirded out those women must have been. Even though, all these things about hysteria seem a bit crazy and hard to believe in. What freaks me out the most about this supposed disease is how arbitrary the treatment was. Now, let's be honest, not every woman in history suffering from hysteria had to be sexually frustrated. There's a whole range of symptoms that could be practically anything. Can you imagine how many other psychological conditions have had to go untreated just because the symptoms were attributed to women's hysteria? It shouldn't come as so surprising, seeing as bacteria and germs are still a bit controversial in the medical circles. Why wouldn't there be a hysteria. 

Mortimer Granville is the doctor that absolutely revolutionizes the treatment. He becomes so popular that he can't possibly treat all the women. His condition becomes serious that it threatens to destroy his entire life. Luckily, his rich friend Edmund St. John-Smythe likes to experiment with electricity and Mortimer stumbles upon an electrical fan which helps him ease some cramps in his muscles. And thus, history is born. He produces the world's first vibrator. Of course, here we come again as people from the twenty first century and chuckle at the idea that vibrators were used to spare the doctor's joints. The entire time i was watching it I had to suppress a chuckle of: I know something you don't know. 

This movie has it all, a cast of well known actors, an interesting and provocative plot, is funny and clever.