The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery

by Michelle Stacey

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585421359
• ISBN13: 9781585421350
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Tarcher
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Very Interesting, Keeps You Thinking and Wondering

the whole time you read this book you'll be trying to figure out if she was a fake or not. you'll be wondering how she did it, how did she survive? it couldn't possibly be true, or could it? she must've been sneaking or faking it... it'll drive you nuts, but in a good way. you won't' be able to put it down.

An ample dose of Victorian America...

This was a very different book...with different meaning in a good way. Stacey did a tremendous amount of research into both the family of Mollie Fancher, and the times in which she lived. Just as in a hundred years when people read about the predominance of anorexia nervosa, they will not totally understand the mechanisms and stressors behind girls of our time literally starving themselves to death...we cannot possibly understand the workings of Mollie Fancher's decisions to alter the controls of her own life without understanding the immense pressures she was under. There is this prevailing concept now that things were 'easier in the good old days' because our own world is so complex and often so violent. Yet, we too quickly forget that the 'old days' including frequent deaths by bear children, terrible diseases that took the lives of children who lived past the first year and adults, crowded and polluted conditions in cities, and total lack of respect for women as shown in how little say they had in their own lives. Mollie had experienced almost all of these things by the time she reached sixteen. From a middle class family, she lost her mother early to childbirth, she had lost brothers/sisters to disease, her father remarried and abandoned the original family (which seemed to happen a lot according to my eugenics research), Mollie was fast approaching the age where she would be required to leave school, and marry and have children. The final straw was getting her long skirts entangled in a street car upon leaving it, and getting dragged for a long period of time.Stacey makes it clear that the decisions Mollie made to remain bedridden were probably not consciously overt decisions. Mollie must have retained a phobia concerning childbirth after seeing what it did to her beloved mother, and she was given a pretty good education only to be expected to submerge that education and her independence upon marriage. By choosing to invalid herself, she managed to retain some control over her own life...but at costs not only to others like her family who had to take care of her, but also to herself. Mollie was not a traditional anorexic as we are familiar with all too well these days. She may have gone through an early stage of fasting and food avoidance, but her invalidism did not have a significant effect on her length of life. Her photos look like she was fairly well-fed and at middle life, was heavy as so many of us women get. The mystery in this book is not concerned as much with the claim by others mainly that she lived on relatively little food. She may have not eaten a lot, but being bed-ridden with no exercise would certainly not have demanded that she eat a lot to retain a decent figure of health. The real mystery has to do with the reaction of society towards Mollie, the scientists who fought to prove she was a 'fake' though she was relatively uninterested in celebrity, and the absolute fascination that the press and society with Mollie's abilit

Interesting topic, yet unfocused

This book has a ton of interesting information regarding Victorian America, and the stressors that came with the fast-changing times. The author obviously did extensive and in depth research regarding this book, which contributes to the vast amount of fact and well-drawn conclusions included in the book. However, it seems that the text does not flow well because there is too much information. In reading this book, I felt that the author included all the research she found, without recognizing that some could have been saved for another project. Initially, I expected the focus of the book to be about Mollie Fancher, but she is just a starting place for a dissertation on the origin of modern diagnoses of neuroses. The book is very interesting, yet did not hold my attention as I had hoped.

Fascinating Stuff

Michelle Stacey's book, THE FASTING GIRL, is a lucid and compelling examination of the life of Mollie Fancher, a young Victorian woman who, after a streetcar accident in 1865, manifested bizarre physical symptoms including weakness, various paralyses, and apparent blindness and claimed to live twelve years without food. Because newspaper and other reporters picked up Mollie's story, celebrated her, and made her famous, Ms Stacey has been able to document the bizarre occurances in Molly's life which might seem too improbable to consider from a less diligent researcher. Ms Stacey's research is unimpeachable.She describes Mollie's life in transfixing detail and presents alternative possible realities of Mollie's claims for twenty-first-century readers. I think anyone would like this book, but especially readers interested in the psychology of Victorian "hysteria," which today would probably be the companion of philosophers' "mind-body connection," physicians' "psycosomatics," and neuroscientists' relatively new field of "psychoneuroimmunology;" in other words, what your mind can, however improbably, make your body do without your knowledge or consent.I love this book. Fascinating stuff and a romping good read!

Surprisingly Interesting Story about an Invalid

Michelle Stacey's The Fasting Girl (A True Victorian Medical Mystery) tells the fascinating story of Mollie Fancher of Brooklyn who, after a fall from a streetcar, becomes a bed-ridden invalid until the end of her life. The facts that make this case so very interesting are that this particular invalid claimed not to have eaten for at least twelve years, have clairavoyant powers, and been able to read despite being (hysterically) blind. These attributes connect her with a larger history outside her bedroom. The author takes the story back into the past with the medieval fasting saints and into the present with anorexia nervosa girls. The story, at its most interestng, winds its way through many aspects of the nineteenth century, including science, relgion, philosophy, and spirtuality. The author often tackles the subject more as a journalist than a historian, skimming the surface. It is still a fun and enjoyable ride through the nineteenth century as seen through the life of one very celebrated invalid.