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The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery
A modern investigation of the case of a young Victorian woman who claimed to have survived for twelve years without food.
In 1865, eighteen-year-old Mollie Fancher began suffering a myriad of ailments that included paralysis, spasms, blindness, and trances. Treated with electric shocks, rolled in wet sheets, and fitted with an "ice jacket," Mollie took to her bed in Brook...more
In 1865, eighteen-year-old Mollie Fancher began suffering a myriad of ailments that included paralysis, spasms, blindness, and trances. Treated with electric shocks, rolled in wet sheets, and fitted with an "ice jacket," Mollie took to her bed in Brook...more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
April 1st 2002
by Tarcher
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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 necessarily cursory...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 sha...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 author mentions...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 author mentions...more
A really interesting case study. A little dry at times, but considering the fact that the author was trying to keep the research credible, I guess that's understandable.
I'm really interested in the wild claims made by (presumably) bored people (often women) in the Victorian era. Fairies, mysterious illness, giving birth to rabbits, etc. It leads me to wonder what sort of medical and scientific claims of our times are going to be categorized as absolutely bonkers in the future.
The book itself was...more
I'm really interested in the wild claims made by (presumably) bored people (often women) in the Victorian era. Fairies, mysterious illness, giving birth to rabbits, etc. It leads me to wonder what sort of medical and scientific claims of our times are going to be categorized as absolutely bonkers in the future.
The book itself was...more
As for history books...this one was very well written. Easy to understand. Not only did it talk about its main topic; fasting and anorexia-- it also described what was going on in the years talked about. Very informative. The Victorian Era with their medical marvels and thoughts are so intriguing to me. We have truly come a long way in medical practice.
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 overwhelming pressure- a clever wa...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.
Honestly one of my all time favorites. I have read this one several times. It goes into the history and psychology of eating disorders and also developments in both the medical and psychological fields. Very, very interesting.
A fascinating look at the psychological aspects behind the "fasting girls" of the medieval, Victorian, Flapper, Twiggy and modern periods.
The intertwining of hysteria, anorexia and psychosomatic illness is well written, and provides an interesting read.
The intertwining of hysteria, anorexia and psychosomatic illness is well written, and provides an interesting read.
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.
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 girl to take...more
Took turns between being fascinating and boring. I had high expectations going in. I was ultimately disappointed.
Jul 30, 2011
Sadezi
added it
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.
Not really a bad book, just, for me, too much on the backgrounds of people that came and went in the story line, doctors and whatnot. The parts about Victorian life and being a young girl were interesting. But it didn't keep my interest, plus I think the main character was a scam anyway and it was all a joke, so I sort of lost interest pretty fast.
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.
May 18, 2013
Danni
marked it as to-read
May 12, 2013
Ðɑηηɑ
marked it as li_unfiltered
May 06, 2013
Tina Denson
marked it as to-read
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“How could one help being nervous in this mind-expanding universe, in which the emerging universe would threaten to change unrecognizably in the course of a generation? How could one avoid the ambient fear of all the noise and speed and light and steam? Humans had never been exposed to such phenomona; they had not learned yet to tolerate them.”
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