In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)

“Look baby, it’s light! No candle, no rusty tool to snuff it out, but light, pure light, straight from man’s imagination into our living room.”

Catherine shows her baby the electric lamp and extols the virtues of electricity as clean, efficient, and the invention of a great man. However, as the play progresses, Catherine tells her husband that she finds his talk of electricity uninteresting. This comment suggests that Catherine is merely repeating what she has been told at the beginning of the first act. Over the course of the play, Catherine begins to learn more about herself and to consider herself an entity separate from her husband with her own ideas and opinions.

“Thank you Dr. Givings. You have no idea what a source of anguish my wife’s illness has been to me. And to her, of course.”

Mr. Daldry brings his wife for a treatment that she will find personally intrusive and a breach of her privacy. When he first appears in the play, he makes it clear that he does not see his wife as a person who is suffering. He simply finds her emotional pain to be inconvenient and embarrassing. Mr. Daldry gaslights his wife and makes her feel insane instead of attempting to understand her pain and offering compassion.

“It is a kind of religious ecstasy to feel half blind, do you not think?”

To Sabrina, electricity is still a bit mysterious and frightening. She worries that the vibrator might electrocute her. When she stares into an electric lamp, it affects her vision for a few moments in a disorienting way.