Fasting Girl: A True Vict...
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Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery
How did Brooklyn, New York's, Mollie Fancher survive for 12 years without eating? Is it possible to exist for six months on only four teaspoons of milk, two teaspoons of wine, one small banana, and a single cracker? The world was riveted by news of this seemingly impossible feat. New Yorker scribe Michelle Stacey presents the amazing story of this medical miracle of the...more
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
July 30th 2002
by Diane Pub Co
(first published April 1st 2002)
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This book was equal parts incredibly interesting and incredibly boring. The good stuff: an interesting 'real life' story and detailed histories of Victorian-era life, medicine, pathology, spiritualism, and pre-psychology studies of hysteria/neuroses. The bad stuff: those detailed histories sometimes become a bit too detailed (re: sleep-inducing). A good and quick read, nonetheless.
Very unusual book about Mollie Fancher, a Brooklyn woman who stayed in her bed for 50 years and who claimed to have eaten nothing for 12 years straight. She was quite famous in her day. The author reconstructed the story from newspaper accounts, diary entries, and other sources, and then she asked several experts for their opinions. It's probably a bad idea to psychoanalyze a dead person, but it was interesting to find out how each expert interpreted her case differently--she had posttraumatic s...more
This book's title isn't precisely misleading, but easily misinterpreted, as "the" Fasting Girl is not so much Mollie Fancher as the phenomenon of which her case is the book's central example. Stacey places an individual anomalous life at the fulcrum point of societal, scientific and religious shifts in thought in the mid-19th century, reaching some fascinating conclusions about where we've been, where we are, and how they're connected. A wide array of ideas are dealt with in necessaril...more
The subject of this non-fiction book is fascinating. It deals with a young woman,Mollie Fancher, who lived in Brooklyn in Victorian times. She had a form of hysteria rather commn at the time where she stayed in her room for, like, 40 years, and claimed to never eat, and to be clairvoyant to boot. What makes this so interesting is that society was split in its opinion of the matter, with many believing the claims were true and represented a case of a purely spiritual person who had broken the shack...more
Meh. This went off on too many tangents, especially about various doctors involved (solely via their vociferousness regarding this case. The author really seemed to spin her wheels a lot, going back over and over again (but not in a way that built up her case) to talk about anorexia (nervosa, mirabilis, etc.) and various other possible psychological diagnoses.
Also, for a book that was supposed to focus on one woman's illness/deceit, it didn't have much on her. Toward the end, the autho...more
Also, for a book that was supposed to focus on one woman's illness/deceit, it didn't have much on her. Toward the end, the autho...more
An interesting slice of a victorian world on the verge of transition between mysticism and science, this book attempts to understand the underlying social causes that helped to create the "fad" of fasting by women. Societal opression, limited choices women had in terms of a career in those relatively recent times, and the "ladylike attributes" associated with fasting are explored in this book. Mollie is an example of what some women allegedly did in response to overwhelmin...more
A fascinating read. While the book ostensibly is about Mollie Fancher, a Victorian women who claimed not to have eaten for twelve years, it details the dawn of psychology, the origins of anorexia, and the changes modernity brought to human psyche.
There were some very fascinating parts to this book- what entailed hysteria in the Victorian Ages, anorexia mirabilis, etc.
There were also some extremely dull parts and ultimately no real resolution to whether she truly lived 12 years- or any period of time- fasting.
There were also some extremely dull parts and ultimately no real resolution to whether she truly lived 12 years- or any period of time- fasting.
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This book was as much about the Victorian society in which it took place as it is about Mollie Fancher, a young woman from Brooklyn who the press adopted as their "it" marvel at the time. After an accident with a horsecart put her in bed for life, she alternated between varying weird symptoms of blindness, not eating, hysteria, and among other things, being able to read unopened letters. It's suggested that her not eating could have been the beginnings of anorexia, a way for a young ...more
Took turns between being fascinating and boring. I had high expectations going in. I was ultimately disappointed.
Intriguing look at the history of "hysterical" diseases in women.
i read this years ago. what a weird book.
I found the story of Mollie Fancher interesting, though frustrating. I wish we could have gotten some real answers as to how she was doing the things she claimed to do. The book was also interesting from a historical standpoint, especially for someone who lives in Brooklyn. Mollie is buried in the cemetery a few blocks from my apartment, I will definitely have to seek out her grave on my next visit.
Great writing but poor structure -- this bounds around time and goes off on wild tangent! But it's fun; you can really imagine yourself in the Victorian era. More interesting, though, is how similar that time feels to now -- all these "pop" diseases attributed to the stresses of modern times.
This book claims to me a Victorian medical mystery, but it is really a review of the intersection of science and psychology. The author takes you from hysteria to Hume and back, throwing in some scenery-chewing characters to keep it fun.
She didn't eat for eight years and yet still remained pleasingly plump. You be the judge.
This book sounded really interesting but I just couldn't get into it.
very digestible.
pun intended.
pun intended.
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