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Pietrzak-Franger, Monika and Eckart Voigts. "Good Vibrations: Hysteria, female orgasm, and medical humour in neo-victorianism." Neo-Victorian Humour. Comic Subversions and Unlaughter in Contemporary Historical Re-Visions. Eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben. Neo-Victorian Series. Amsterdam [etc.]: Rodopi, 2017. 192–212. Added by: joachim (12/08/2020, 17:43) Last edited by: joachim (12/08/2020, 17:44) |
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| Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English DOI: 10.1163/9789004336612_009 BibTeX citation key: PietrzakFranger2017b Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "A History of Vibrators", Gender, Gennis. Emi, History comics, Nonfiction, USA, Webcomics Creators: Gutleben, Kohlke, Pietrzak-Franger, Voigts Publisher: Rodopi (Amsterdam [etc.]) Collection: Neo-Victorian Humour. Comic Subversions and Unlaughter in Contemporary Historical Re-Visions |
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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.
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