It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the obsolescent English gentleman, a creature whose glorious epoch lasted in reality from the regency period to the turn of the century, has become a sex symbol for modern women across the globe.

There are few actors who so seamlessly shrug on a more gentlemanly, or English, persona than BBC favorite, Hugh Dancy. In ‘Hysteria,’ director Tanya Wexler marries one object of female pleasure with another. To wit, Dancy’s English gentleman and the first, British, vibrator. If the result of this union is a little less than paroxysms of cinematic pleasure, it is also a little more than some over-the-sweater petting in the back of a parked Volvo.

The narrative revolves around Mortimer Granville (Dancy), a young physician who is perennially out of work due to his progressive, and necessarily correct, theories on medicinal science. In his search for a new position, Granville applies to work with a specialist on the female condition of ‘Hysteria.’ Not to put too fine a point on it, but the primary method of relieving the symptoms of this perceived malady was through the manual achievement of orgasm.

Granville takes on the position and becomes embroiled in the lives of the specialist (Jonathon Pryce) and his two daughters, the submissive, English rose Emily (Felicity Jones) and the outspoken, social worker Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Drama ensues, and the vibrator is born.

Let’s be clear– “Hysteria” is not a biting social commentary on the relative virtues of feminism, capitalism or any other of the -isms you might care to poke a stick at. In other words, this is not “North and South” or even “Downton Abbey” at its best. Beyond conforming to those basic anachronistic truths that are now readily acknowledge in a contemporary setting– women are people, charity is an asset, inability to accept change does not prevent change from happening et cetera, et cetera– this film doesn’t really attempt to intellectually explore, well, anything.

The subject of female sexuality, something which one would think was irrevocably attached to the story of a gendered sex toy, is actually left pretty well alone. Similarly, Rupert Everett’s debauched, potentially homosexual, philanthropist is almost entirely superfluous to the film despite the blatantly palpable themes somewhat inexpertly attached to his on-screen persona. If it’s a thinking (wo)man’s movie you’re looking for, this particular cinematic offering is not for you.

Essentially, ‘Hysteria’s’ lack of agenda leaves room for a completely different movie about the first vibrator. Probably one without Hugh Dancy in it. And that would be a pity because Dancy, alongside an effervescent Maggie Gyllenhaal, whose movie presence provides a welcome relief after an endless summer of languishing teen heroins staring dolefully at the camera like stunned deer, is adorable. Dancy is stiff, uncomfortable and resoundingly unromantic. In other words, he is a perfect English gentleman.

Grade: 3/5

Image Courtesy of   Sony Classics

The article “Hysteria”: A Guilty Pleasure appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The handwritten manuscript of the unfinished work The Watsons by Jane Austen was sold at auction house Sotheby’s in London on July 14. The work sold for £993,250 ($1.6M), three times the reserve price to Bodleian Libraries of Oxford.

It is an amazing prize, considering several pages are missing: some were sold during the World War I to raise funds for the Red Cross and are now at the Pierpoint Morgan Library of New York, together with a juvenile Austen’s novel, Lady Susan. Others, after being on deposit at Queen Mary’s library, University of London, were lost in 2005.

One of the few remaining Austen’s manuscripts in circulation, The Watson was furthermore said by Sotheby’s to be the only major by the author still in private hands. Also, thanks to a $894,700 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Libraries of Oxford, which already owned Volume the First, purchased the new item from Austen’s descendant Joan Austen-Leigh.

“We are glad it will stay now in Britain”, said Richard Ovenden, the Bodleian’s deputy librarian. “We will make the manuscript available to the general public, who can come and see it as early as this autumn, when The Watsons will be a star item in our forthcoming exhibition, Treasures of the Bodleian.”

Probably one of her most autobiographical works, The Watsons was started by Jane Austen in Bath in about 1803, after her third novel Northanger Abbey and before the famous Mansfield Park. The heroine of the story in question is Emma Watson, the youngest daughter of a widowed clergyman, not by chance very similar to the reverend George Austen, the father of the author.

Young, beautiful and witty, Emma, after being raised for a long time by a wealthy aunt, at a certain point has no choice but to return home. Her arrival immediately breaks the fragile balance and economy of the family, especially provoking the envy of two husband-hunting sisters, not so strong and independent-minded like her. The manuscript deals with a violent domestic environment masterly depicted by the author, famous for her realism and her sharp observations about her 19^th century polite society.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know how the story ends, since it remains unfinished. Though, as emerged from the correspondence between Jane and her sister Cassandra, at the end of the novel it was planned that Mr. Watson would die, probably at the fault of Emma.

Perhaps the author herself immediately stopped writing her novel after discovering reality could disquietingly follow the fiction: in fact, in 1805 George Austen actually died, leaving his unmarried daughter Jane in a precarious situation.

Was that when the author decided to abandon the story? It remains a mystery: what it is certain is that, different from many other stories revised afterwards, Jane Austen no longer took those pages in her hands again. “It may have been just too close to the bone when her own father died”, commented Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s senior specialist on books.

Although unfinished, the manuscript auctioned on Thursday in New Bond Street remains an item of unutterable value, and not just because related to the world-renown writer of Pride and Prejudice. Manuscripts retain the original pressure of hand, the unrepeatable energy flux of writing as it was in that particular moment of the creative process. You can touch or smell every page, connecting yourself physically with that unique state of mind of the author.

A direct contact which becomes ever impossible in our immaterial digital age. Moreover, philologically, a manuscript is an exceptional witness of the process of correction, of the doubts and afterthoughts of one writer. As it can be noticed with The Watsons, 68 heavily corrected pages, written with a tiny and elegant calligraphy.

When asked by BBC News arts editor Will Gompertz if it was worth purchasing the item at a so high cost, Gabriel Heaton replied: “Very rarely you would have the opportunity to buy something like this on the open market. And of course seeing Jane Austen’s handwriting, this object that she actually touched, is quite different from reading the printed book”.

So, yes, while universities tuition fees are constantly rocketing and humanities studies are increasingly underestimated, Bodleian Libraries thought it was worth spending £993,250 to get 18,000 words directly written by the hand of Jane Austen. Indeed, culture has still a market.

The article $1.6M for Jane Austen’s Unfinished Manuscript appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.