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Molly: What do you call that little thing?
Mortimer Granville: I was calling it the feather duster.
Molly: Well I'd think of something quick, so that a girl knows what to ask for.
-
[first lines]
Mrs. Bellamy: I truly don't even know why I'm here, doctor.
[pen scraping]
Mrs. Bellamy: Well, of course it's difficult running a large household by oneself. And raising four children is exacting, but they're wonderful, wonderful children. And my husband, he's a good man. A very hard worker. Um... Ahem. Well, there is just one thing. Sometimes at night, when he comes to me, I imagine myself splitting his fat bald head with a great large ax.
[pen scraping]
-
Mortimer Granville: Sir, I would be enormously grateful for any position that allowed me to offer relief to my patients, with little chance of killing them.
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Edmund St. John-Smythe: [brainstorming] The Rubby-Nubby.
Mortimer Granville: The Vibratorium.
Edmund St. John-Smythe: The Jiggly-Wiggly?
Mortimer Granville: Paroxysmator.
Edmund St. John-Smythe: Oh, the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Mortimer Granville: The Excitetator?
Edmund St. John-Smythe: Mr. Wobbly.
Mortimer Granville: Oh, please.
Edmund St. John-Smythe: What about, The Squealer?
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: For us it's mindless housework and doting on some halfwit.
Mortimer Granville: You can make some halfwit very happy.
Charlotte Dalrymple: It's simply not enough for me, or for most women. Would it be enough for you?
Mortimer Granville: Oh, I'm not most women.
-
[last lines]
Dr. Robert Dalrymple: Well, all's well that ends well. Ah, fresh air and perambulation, the key to mental acuity and long life.
Lady St. John-Smythe: If you say so, doctor.
Dr. Robert Dalrymple: Oh look, ducks...
-
Female Patient: Can't you understand it's an emergency? The situation is desperate.
Nurse Smalley: It's completely impossible, madam.
Female Patient: I'll do anything.
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: I am a woman like any other.
Mortimer Granville: Oh no, you're quite unlike any woman I've ever met.
[pause]
Mortimer Granville: Will you be alright?
Charlotte Dalrymple: Yeah, I'm fine. I've got lots of friends in prison.
-
Dr. Robert Dalrymple: I won't lie to you Granville; its tedious, tiring work. Are you fit?
Mortimer Granville: I have never shrieked from hardwork in the pursuit of helping the most needy among us.
Dr. Robert Dalrymple: Jolly good.
-
Dr. Robert Dalrymple: It's a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time but you just couldn't get the hang of it.
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: It must be difficult pleasuring half the women in the city.
Mortimer Granville: Madam, *pleasure* has nothing to do with it, I can assure you.
Charlotte Dalrymple: Well I suppose that depends on whether you're *over* the table or on it.
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: Something wrong?
Mortimer Granville: No, no. Um... I've just never seen you so... so...
Charlotte Dalrymple: formally attired?
Mortimer Granville: I was going to say... clean.
-
Lady St. John-Smythe: Your hair is most adventurous, Emily.
Emily Dalrymple: Do you think so? It took ever so long to get it up there.
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: Then I won't come here anymore. Not for charity or for company. And you may threaten me with privation, with bankruptcy, with a life that knows only hunger and squalor, but I shall never veer from what I know to be my own true path.
-
Emily Dalrymple: Good night, Doctor.
Mortimer Granville: How is it, Miss Dalrymple, that you are so much the ideal and your sister is so... so volatile?
Emily Dalrymple: Well, I'm hardly ideal, Doctor, and... Charlotte, she just... feels everything so strongly. If you truly knew her, you would see she is terribly clever and wonderfully charitable.
Mortimer Granville: Well, if she's earned such love and admiration from one so kind and gentle as yourself, I shall never speak poorly of her.
Emily Dalrymple: Good night, Doctor.
Mortimer Granville: Good night, Miss Dalrymple.
-
Mortimer Granville: I tell you Edward, the healing arts in England are positively lethal. It's not a coincidence the morgues are placed adjacent to the hospitals.
-
Mortimer Granville: Well, you see, after consulting with my patients and considerable reflection, it is my professional opinion that hysteria is a fiction. It's nothing but a catch-all dignosis for women without opportunity, forced to spend their lives tending to domestic chores and selfish, prudish husbands who are unwilling or... unable to make love to them properly. Or often enough.
-
Mortimer Granville: I grant you, there may not be room in the world for more than one Charlotte Dalrymple. Fortunately for all of us, I think they must have broken the mould.
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Judge: By your reasoning, we should lock up every female in whom whimsy and logic collide, which would suggest to me most of the women in England. My wife included.
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Charlotte Dalrymple: Doctor Granville. I suppose I now owe you my uterus.
Mortimer Granville: That's an interesting offer. Something to meditate on while I consider a new career.
-
Charlotte Dalrymple: You have invented a machine that does harm to no one and makes anyone who comes into contact with it feel better. I should think there are very few doctors in history that could lay claim to such an accomplishment.
Hysteria Quotes
Extended Reading
