The movie Diary of a Nymphomaniac isn’t at all what I expected it to be. I expected something more documentary –like, more definitions, more labels. What I saw was a story about a woman who, at the age of 29, found herself. Valerie is an average French woman, trying to live her life to its fullest. She battles herself and by the end of the movie, learns to accept herself.
Her grandmother sees that Valerie is upset about something; she just doesn’t know everything. She suggests that Valerie “jot down [her] thoughts, ideas, problems, on a sheet of paper, but interrogatively so [she] can see them from outside and understand them.” Excellent advice to anyone – writing is definitely a good way to vent and work through problems; but what Valerie’s grandma is suggesting is more psychological.
When Valerie opens up to her grandmother and tells her that she is a nymphomaniac, her grandma responds with: “Nymphomania, a man’s invention to make women feel guilty if they break the rules.” Valerie’s grandmother accepts Valerie for who she is, but Valerie must learn to accept herself before she can fully enjoy her life.
The movie is ended with a statement from Valerie:
“I’m a promiscuous woman, yes, because I want to use sex as a means to find what everyone is looking for. Recognition, pleasure, self-esteem, and, in short, love and affection. What’s pathological about that? If you want to give me a name, go on. I don’t mind. But you must know I’m really a mermaid, a dryad, simply a nymph.”
As an English major, I have to love how she used a play on words. I can't be completely sure, but I'm going to guess that the word Nymphomania comes from the Greek Nymph. Nymphs are mythological creatures known for their "amorous freedom." When Valerie says the words "mermaid" and "dryad" she is putting herself in the same group as those mythological creatures who enjoy their freedom and are happy with their lives. She says it proudly, where as in the beginning of the movie, when she first tells her grandmother that she is a nymphomaniac, she is embarrassed, she feels guilty, and she doesn’t want to accept it.
Since this movie isn't at all what I expected, and instead of learning about nymphomania as a psychology, I learned something completely different, I don't know where to go next with my research. I don't quite know either what I'm getting at with this whole research project. I wanted to incorporate the women of the victorian era into this because at the time there were so many taboo things. People had (and still do have) a hard time with identity. In Charles Dicken's Hard Times, the main characters undergo the same type of transformation. They realize that life needs to be celebrated, and sometimes logic needs to be thrown out the window, also the realiziation of understanding of identity comes into play. Emily Dickinson's Wuthering Heights portrays the same idea; very much more so with identity. Alot of Victorian paintings show women being in great distress, being locked away, so on and such forth. Women had no identity and there was a lot of effort to portray such problems.
My next step will be to explore Booth Library databases and see what I can find on Victorian Identity, and I bet I'll be able to tie it in with nymphomania rather quickly.
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