Good Vibrations: Hysteria, Female Orgasm, and Medical Humour in Neo-Victorianism
- Autor(en)
- Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Eckart Voigts
- Abstrakt
Victorian medicine's attitudes towards hysteria and female eroticism were emblematic of how nineteenth-century patriarchy treated women. In contemporary neo-Victorian comedy, however, Victorian medical discourses and practices can even inspire a satiric web comic, such as Emi Gennis's A History of Vibrators (2014), a Tony and Pulitzer nominated Broadway play, such as Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2010), or a light-hearted period comedy on masturbation, as in Hysteria (2011), directed by Tanya Wexler. Wexler's film links the treatment of hysteria to the invention of the vibrator, illustrating both that the trope of patriarchal Victorian medicine has become conventional and that feminist critique has merged with popular entertainment. Positioning the texts on the postfeminist spectrum, we conclude that they differ with respect to the complexities of female empowerment they invoke and the degrees to which they cater to a consumerist female hedonism that eulogises consumption as the foremost path towards (female) identity formation.
- Organisation(en)
- Externe Organisation(en)
- Universität Hamburg, Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig
- Band
- 5
- Seiten
- 192-212
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004336612_009
- Publikationsdatum
- 05-2017
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 602008 Anglistik, 605004 Kulturwissenschaft
- Schlagwörter
- ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
- Cultural Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Literature and Literary Theory
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f52caee6-81fe-46e7-8ba9-4e7ca4751b95