Hysterical Females

A young, curious but naïve woman in Edwardian times explores a visually inviting but uncomfortable world where there’s a struggle between power and freedom. In this domineering patriarchal society women are treated as victims and represented as automated, unconscious and desired objects. This world is a conflation of the Surrealist’s notion of convulsive beauty with Freud’s the uncanny. Men are the masterful creators and women dismembered, punched and severed art objects. Their owners devour their soul and body, empowering the right of habeas corpus, resulting in the woman becoming an animated inanimate human. The protagonist is a living doll, a fusion between a toy and a young woman (Walter 2010, p2), converted into an uncanny animated lifeless object. She is an effigy ready to be damaged and destroyed. Although the era is based over 100 years ago, thoughts and feelings of women are revealed from both yesteryear and today, posing questions about the similarities of attitudes, identities and desires.