WEIRDLAND: Maggie Gyllenhaal Discovers A Vibrator In “Hysteria”

Friday, August 19, 2011

Maggie Gyllenhaal Discovers A Vibrator In “Hysteria”

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy in "Hysteria" directed by Tanya Wexler (a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator)


The time before the invention of the vibrator is a dark period of world history which I prefer not to think about. But imagine, ladies, if you will, a period when all of a woman’s problems were attributed to “hysteria,” a vague pathological affliction which doctors found could best be cured by applying pressure to a woman’s most delicate regions. A suffering woman could be relieved of her hysteria by hand, of course, but the world needed a device to get the job done more quickly.

Still of Maggie Gyllenhaal in Curiosity: The Questions of Life, photo by Todd Plitt © Discovery Channel

“Hysteria” premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival next month and stars Hugh Dancy as a young doctor in Victorian England and Maggie Gyllenhaal as his boss’s daughter, who knows at the root of all these hysterics is a need for pleasure. God bless electricity, that’s all I have to say. Source: tiff.net

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