"Hysteria' and female sex drive

Hysteria, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy, is a new film about the invention of the electrical appliance that beat the vacuum cleaner and the electric iron to the home market (only the fan, tea kettle, toaster and sewing machine made it into housewives' hands before the vibrator did).

I'm drawn to the story of the vibrator because it confirms everything I know about sex. Women have a powerful sex drive according to the dictates of their own minds and bodies. And men of authority will always be on hand to declare that the women feel nothing.

Growing up in a conservative Christian church, I learned that it was dangerous and unnatural for women to experience sexual desire before marriage. And even with the altar behind them, sexual matters are not of interest to good women.

Rules for masturbation

"Women do not by nature become physically aroused in the same way that men do, or as easily," wrote Erik Buss, a pastor of my family's church, in One Heart, his 2006 book on marriage. He adds that sex education should be withheld from girls, except for "a basic knowledge of what to expect on their wedding night."

He also recommends that any married man who is tempted to masturbate should seek treatment for sex addiction. He doesn't mention female masturbation at all.

This pastor won't be sponsoring any screenings of Hysteria. But at least one element of the movie hews surprisingly close to his worldview.

Germs yes, sex no

In the film, it's a good thing the character of Mortimer Granville (Dancy), based on the real-life 19th-Century doctor and inventor, is a man. Otherwise he would probably have been fired for hysteria (instead of for sheer wrong-headedness) when, in the film's opening, he insists on hand-washing and clean bandages in a London hospital of the 1880s.

"Germ theory is poppycock," barks the supervising physician. (Not surprisingly, the local morgue is right next door.)

Dr. Granville retreats to the luxurious lair of his benefactor, Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett, in his usual opulently droll drawl), an early electrical enthusiast.

But Dr. Granville is in luck. A Dr. Dalrymple is hiring a physician to help treat "the plague of our time", though he says it's "tedious and tiring" work. Dalrymple has two lovely daughters: Emily, the white-clad "angel of the house" (Felicity Jones), and the lean, tempestuous Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

According to her father, Charlotte suffers from a "very difficult case" of hysteria, a diagnosis that persisted in the medical lexicon until the 1950s, for sleepless, irritable or otherwise distracted women. Dr. Dalrymple's practice alleviates these symptoms with what was known as "pelvic massage" or "medicinal massage""“ a time-honored treatment for fluttery females. This hands-on method produced a "physician-assisted paroxysm," after which the "hysterical" women showed marked improvement.

As the opening of the film reminds us, the story is based on true events.

Irrelevance of pleasure

There is much to enjoy in director Tanya Wexler's frothy take on the invention of the electric vibrator, written for the screen by Stephen and Jonah Lisa Dyer. In Dr. Dalrymple's plush office, elegantly dressed women, hats and all, recline on a table with their pelvises framed by a portable red velvet proscenium. Dr. Granville's chief difficulty in the film is the manual exhaustion he experiences from inducing paroxysms in so many women.

"Pleasure has nothing to do with it," the doctor insists— clinging, like their historical counterparts, to the notion of the "paroxysm" as a non-sexual neurological phenomenon. After all, as Dr. Dalrymple says, "Women are incapable of experiencing pleasure without the penetration of the male organ."

(If Dr. Dalrymple truly believes this, you wonder, why doesn't he recommend his treatment for his own troublesome daughter?)

Dancy's performance brings out the maddening irony: a scientifically minded physician who warns against invisible germs cannot see that the women writhing on his table are in the grip of sexual climax. But given the abject cluelessness of some of today's clergymen when it comes to human sexuality, I'm not surprised to learn that 19th-Century doctors didn't get the memo either.

Visual clichés

In the film, Dr. Granville's exhaustion leads to the invention and testing of the world's first electric vibrator. During the second clinical trial of the device (upon a truculent opera singer) three men don outsized goggles and brace themselves as if for an explosion.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is riding about London on her bicycle, causing the kind of mayhem only an entrepreneurial woman can. She dreams of operating a school and clinic for the poor. She even knows about germ theory. But from there, the script's feisty promise devolves into familiar territory, complete with the obligatory missionary-position trip-and-fall and the camera swooning upward for the final shot as the happy couple lock lips in the snow.

For all its charm, the script rarely manages to raise the stakes: Granville need only slouch back to his benefactor when his career falters, and an ill-conceived engagement is easily dissolved with grateful chuckles.

Things are momentarily heightened when Charlotte stands trial for slapping a policeman, only to learn that the real question before the judge is whether, as an obviously incurable hysteric, she should be given a forcible hysterectomy and imprisoned in the sanatorium.

Actress's fate

A certain doctor comes to her rescue, having experienced a mysterious change of heart. As he becomes the instrument of all Charlotte's dreams come true, Gyllenhaal's spirited performance makes you wish that, despite the strictures of her time, Charlotte had taken a more active role in her own fate.

It's unfortunate that after wading so boldly into the rarely explored realm of female sexuality, the film fails to transcend the clichés of a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

My old pastor (unless he knows more than he's letting on) certainly would be shocked by the scenes of women in the throes of keen sexual pleasure, with nary a husband in sight. But given his determination to define female sexuality by the presence of a husband, something tells me that my old pastor might approve of the way the film makes a revolution in the sexual agency of women into a story about a man.