Hysteria is a very charming romantic comedy, yes, but it’s also a surprisingly compelling depiction of a world in transition, with advancing tradition challenging behavior and technology. The time is the 1880s. It is a Victorian place in England. Electrical inventions were barely beginning to make their way into the lives of everyday people. In medical terms, the seeds were still largely considered theoretical, and in London alone nearly a quarter of the female population was diagnosed with hysteria, a catchall diagnosis advocated by male scientists, describing a vast and arbitrary list of mental disorders. If a woman is unhappy, restless, disobedient, hostile, fierce, too studious or not sufficiently developed in love, sleepless or insatiable enough to want education, fair pay, and the right to decide her own life course. their use is often at fault.
Apart from the occasional court-ordered hysterectomy, the history of hysterical symptom treatment can basically be boiled down to various methods of masturbation. Techniques such as pelvic massage, digital manipulation, horseback riding, and even hydrotherapy are all applied to the lower female parts; as they were believed to provide relief for nervous hysterical patients and to get the reproductive organs back into order. In the 19th century, it was a common medical practice to provide pessaries to the point of “paroxysm”, which today we call joy. Then the doctors did not realize that he was performing a sexually romantic role, which was indeed very pleasurable. Around 1880, a respectable English doctor named Joseph Mortimer Granville discovered the first electromechanical vibrator, initially for muscle aches but soon the officer faster, less manually exhausted history treatment.
In the film, Granville is portrayed as Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), a handsome young doctor who, due to his radical beliefs about the existence of seeds and the use of sanitary hand washing, has a very difficult time establishing his career. After a string of failed conversations with doctors who still wield leeches and hacksaws, she aims to secure a job as an assistant to the famous Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who specializes in women’s medicine and he ran away from his home at a private clinic. Granville will be taught all the proven techniques of massage, which are then used on a list of regular and munificent patients abundant in Dalrymple, including. an old woman who, although she had lost her husband some years before, was still afflicted
As this is established, Granville meets one of Dalrymple’s daughters, the fair Emily (Felicity Jones), who is not only lovely but also a skilled musician and expert in the science of phrenology. In Dalrymple’s eyes, Granville would make a fine suitor for his daughter, and indeed the two begin a cordial, if restrained, courtship. But then Granville is introduced to his older sister Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal); free and confrontational, she is a socialist and suffragette who runs a home for poor women and children in the east end of London. Needless to say, her father disapproves of her progressive beliefs and association with the lower class. He also disapproves of his father’s medical practice, which benefits from the treatment of women with bipolar disorder.
In a related subplot, Granville’s medical services quickly result in crippling hand cramps. Here enters his rich and eccentric best friend, the charmingly charming Edmund St. John Smyth (Rupert Everett), who avidly tinkers with modern electrical devices, including the telephone. Quite by accident, Granville discovered that the vibrations produced by Smythe’s electric pen were wonderful because of the gnawing on his right hand. Putting two and two together, he and Smyth are creating the world’s first personal pulse massager. Dalrymple convinces his patients to try it, and of course it’s a resounding success. Granville’s stature as Dalrymple’s heir and Emily’s fiancé will eventually be challenged by Charlotte, whose bullying nature awakens her passion for progressive medicine.
While the plot is certainly conventional as far as romantic comedies are concerned, and although the ending is perhaps too bright. for his own sake, I cannot sit here and deny that I had hysteria from the very beginning of my body to the end of my smiling face. It’s a bright, funny, hopelessly beloved film that benefits mostly from actors of sheer probity. That her story is just as embarrassing today as it was in Victorian times only adds to its charm. We live in this day and age when sexuality is still freely debated and religion is highly valued, which is a shame because sex is an inescapable part of who we are. On a similar note, the film is also surprisingly timely, boldly asserting that we all deserve equal treatment, about the quality of education, and access to medical treatment. Many have labeled these ideals under the title of socialism, reinforcing the notion that we have come a long way but still have a long way to go.
(www.atatheaternearyou.net)
