The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery

by Michelle Stacey

The riveting true account of Mollie Fancher, who, in 1865, was plagued with a vast array of ailments including paralysis and trances, all of which caused her to "live on air" for the rest of her life, examines such intriguing phemonena as fasting saints and the dawn of the Age of Neurosis, detailing the social and technoligical turmoil of the time. 20,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Psychology, Science, Womens, 19th Century

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2002

Reviews

[Orsolya · Rating 1 out of 5]

The end of the 19th century was a time of great inventions, medical discoveries, religious movements in the form of spiritualism, and large frauds/scams. During this exciting period, Molly Fancher, a young woman in Brooklyn, NY; was severely injured and then took to her bed for over a decade. Fancher and her advocates claimed that she subsisted on no food, lived in-and-out of trances, and developed clairvoyant abilities. Rocking the media, Fancher’s case sprouted a medical and spiritual debate. Michelle Stacey covers Fancher’s story in, “The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery”.

Even readers unfamiliar with Molly Fancher can’t deny being aroused by the book’s topic. Sadly though, Stacey doesn’t satisfy this curiosity. “The Fasting Girl” is poorly executed with a mish-mash of jumbled tangents. Stacey is a seasoned journalist which means “The Fasting Girl” reads like a journalistic report or article instead of having a smooth narrative. The authors feels inclined to venture down every road (for example: mentioning a doctor results in pages of his career bio or a tidbit on Fancher’s childhood home is followed by half a chapter on Brooklyn history); which therefore causes the book to lose its main focus of the text. “The Fasting Girl” would be remarkably shorter were these tangents eliminated.

Throughout the book, these various strands even out slightly (I emphasize: slightly), as more information became available to Stacey allowing her to spotlight Fancher’s case. Again, this is a coverage view so Fancher doesn’t truly come alive or breathe and there are no primary sources such as Fancher’s diary entries or personal letters. “The Fasting Girl” is based wholly on summarizing existing newspapers and journal articles.

It should also be noted that the chapters are long, not allowing for the space that some readers desire and thus, giving “The Fasting Girl” a run-on feel.

A positive trait of Stacey’s writing is her ability to remain neutral without including any biases or personal thoughts involving the case. This encourages the reader to formulate his or her own thoughts and opinions without the author nudging.

“The Fasting Girl” takes another HUGE detour and essentially becomes a book on the history of anorexia and the biological effects of starvation on the human body. Although some readers may find these chapters to be interesting; Molly Fancher is barely even mentioned on these pages with Stacey going as far as describing starvation in concentration camps during World War II. Stacey is simply “all over the place” with “The Fasting Girl”. The text does eventually revert back to the Fancher case but with less enthrallment and once again strikes off on more tangents.

The final chapters of “The Fasting Girl” are interesting in that they explore Fancher’s psychosis in modern terms and also describe her death which results in a strong conclusion (although it would have made better sense to reverse the order of these two chapters).

Stacey includes a very brief notes section (which won’t satisfy staunch fact seekers), a bibliography, and also some black-and-white images throughout the text (color plates would have been more pleasing). It is also worth revealing that the editor was lax in terms of execution and by also allowing a few spelling and grammar errors.

“The Fasting Girl” is attractive in its topic but is sadly disjointed, repetitive, flimsy in research, and somewhat dry. Although it is an introduction to Molly Fancher; “The Fasting Girl” is not wholeheartedly recommended.

[melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Bookish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of history, with quite a fragmented narrative and lots of jumping back and forth in time. The history of Brooklyn (not exciting), medicine versus science (covered and recovered, then revisited), history of anorexia nervosa as a diagnosis (more interesting) and very little about Mollie Fancher herself (sadly).

This book was researched by a historian and this really shows in the understanding of modern science and psychology presented at the end. The author attempts to press the opinion that DID (multiple personality disorder) is somehow caused by others' influence, which is bizarre in a book based on a clear case from the 1800s when the condition was not "in the news, in self help books" etc. To support this blinkered view she quotes a previous case which was reported in a newspaper report in a different state - at a time before fast news transmission and electric light existed. She offers no explanation for Mollie's frequently witnesses spasms and trances, including a 9 year trance after which she did not recognise her brother.

Author Stacey makes a number of very disparaging and rather cruel statements about mental health and it's clear she is not objective here: to be anorexic is to be "manipulative", to have multiple personality disorder is for "secondary gain", chronic fatigue syndrome may not exist at all, etc, etc. Oddly argues against secondary gain in Mollie's case. A better book could have been written which was half the size and referred to experts in anorexia nervosa and MPD - instead it feels like this has been rushed and inaccurate medical historians used to represent *current* understanding. She does however briefly mention Charcot and Pierre Janet who were leaders in this field in Victorian times.

[Melinda Borie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected this book to be primarily about the specifics of Mollie Fancher's case, but it was more of a mish-mash between that and a cultural examination of illness among young women, particularly what was then referred to as hysteria and of the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa. I wish there had been more about conversion disorder (or what we might now say was a functional disorder), which was really only touched on at the end, since Mollie's illness is less clearly an eating disorder than a traumatic response to either or both the circumstances of her horsecar accident (very troubling, I can see why a person would stay in bed fifty years about it) or the cultural context of being a woman in the 1860s (honestly... same).

[☕Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot that was interesting about this book; specifically the parallels between Victorian "hysteria" or "neurasthenia" cases and our current understanding of disorders such as anorexia nervosa and conversion disorder, but the description of the central case of the book felt somewhat superficial. This may be the necessary result of a scarce historical record, but still left me feeling unsatisfied. I was also somewhat put off by the author's discussion of the current use of psychotropic medications such as prozac, suggesting that they are used as a substitute for simply building stronger character. This minimizes the reality of living with severe depression, anxiety or OCD, and serves to perpetuate the stigma of mental illness and its treatment.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

After finishing Kate Zambreno’s Heroines, wanting more of her kind of topics, I remembered I owned this book. If Mollie Fancher, the intelligent, educated “girl” of the title, was not a writer like Zambreno’s suppressed “heroines,” she was creative in other ways. The projects she undertook while in her “trances” and the attention she received would likely have been nonexistent if she’d become a wife and mother. Instead, shortly before she was to be married, injuries from a horsecar accident confined her to her bed and she became dis-engaged. Being taken care of and pampered by her unmarried aunt may have given her more autonomy than a nineteenth-century marriage would have. She also had the cautionary example of her beloved mother dying in childbirth, her father remarrying and moving on from his first children. None of this was likely conscious on her part, but I find it a fascinating phenomenon.

It can’t be overstated how famous Mollie was in her lifetime because of her supposedly “living on air.” The author Michelle Stacey traces a throughline from medieval “holy anorexics” to twentieth-century anorexia nervosa with Mollie’s case as transitional, culturally and medically viewed as neither, though with aspects of both and not at all with our time’s psychiatric definition. Stacey argues for a word that is no longer used medically, a word loaded with cultural changes, but a word that would have pointed to the same origin then as now for such cases: hysteria. (I went to look up the word in the index, but there isn’t an index. I miss not having an index in these types of books.)

Because this is a book and not an essay, there’s more explanatory information—the background of doctors who weighed in on Fancher’s case; a lengthy description of New Year’s celebrations in her Brooklyn neighborhood—than I personally needed, though I understand why some of it is there: social history; cultural history; medical history. Thought-provoking and mentioned almost as an aside is a gender difference. For men of that time period who starved themselves, Stacey provides the examples of Kafka and his story, “The Hunger Artist,” along with the male so-called hunger artists of circuses and sideshows: Different reasoning and consequences, culturally speaking, for males and females.

[Jrobertus · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 shackles of material needs. Even some doctors and "intellectuals" bought into this. (Of course, over 70% of Americans today believe in angels and intelligent design so I guess the Victorians were no worse than we.) Despite this inherently interesting subject, the book is hard to read because the author makes many, many, long, long discursions into tangentially related events. It was a real slog to find the good stuff.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Jenine Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Abigail Westbrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well researched look at how and why fasting was rather popular in the late 1800s. It was fascinating to see how the cultural trends of the time influenced various “health problems” like hysteria. The author also addressed the connections between physical, mental, and spiritual illnesses and how views on that have shifted. It is written from a clearly secular viewpoint which almost mocks religion in a few places. I think it could have been edited tighter in places - did we really need to know the life story of various doctors who really didn’t end up having that much relevance? But otherwise a very interesting slice of history.

[Anna Engel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. It's all the things I love: history, medical mystery, mental illness among women in the 19th century. Basically, it's my undergrad thesis from another angle. The book suffers from several problems, however.
The first is organizational. It's hard to follow the story of Ms. Fancher because the timeline jumps around so much. The author tries to condense decades of information and then expand upon specifc events, but without providing enough context.
Second, it's long on descriptoin, but short on explanation. Without even touching on the tangents, what I wanted was more on the "why" of what Mollie and her fellow hysterics were going through, not just an exhaustive enumeration of the crazy, improbabl, and contradictory symptoms they experienced. It leans into the sensationalism.
Third, and related to #2, the author seems to have lost her objectivity at some point along the way. She almost seems to buy into the hoax or the craze, and takes the reports of Ms. Fancher's symptoms as fact. She frequently mentions the existence of Mollie's aunt's diary, but doesn't seem to have had it available.

[Vygis · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 way of "sticking it to the man" by necessitating her constant care and gaining fame in the process. Of course, whether or not the prolonged fasting of women such as Mollie was genuine or an elaborate hoax is the main focus in this fascinating window into a late 19th century phenomenon.

[Astrid Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will say that in this case you can't judge a book by its cover. The cover looks pretty dull and uninteresting, despite being published in 2002.
This was such a fascinating read that I ended up taking notes to further investigate some of the other notable stories mentioned in the book that were happening at that time. It's amazing how much the world has changed since the 1800's, but yet stayed the same in so many aspects. It seems everyone wanted to know about or be a part of the Mollie Fancher phenomenon. Doctors were publicly putting in their two cents (even having never actually putting their eyes on her) and their opinions were in every major newspaper, it seems.
Believe me, is not a boring read.

[Valerie Meachum · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 depth; other reviewers have pegged this as a weakness, but I like the overview approach and was certainly never bored.

[Frrobins · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2002, before the advent of social media and Tiktok, Michelle Stacey wrote, "These new hysterics strenuously reject psychological explanations for their symptoms, feeling that their pain is trivialized unless both cause and cure are place outside the self. The central idea of the new hysteria is victimhood. Hysteria now is also now more contagious...because of our vast and instantaneous communication systems. News about the latest psychogenic illness can be spread by self-help books, television shows, the Internet, and a newspaper and magazine industry that dwarfs that of a hundred years ago. Showalter and others believe that modern hysteria is reaching a high-water mark, that the United States is becoming a 'hot zone of psychogenic diseases."

I am a therapist, and I can attest to how prescient that paragraph is. Like many therapists I have been flummoxed by the influx of teens, mostly girls, who spend a lot of time on Tiktok and Youtube coming into therapy with self diagnosed tic disorders, Multiple Personality Disorder (or Plurals as they call them), anorexia, and are trans identifying with perhaps recovered memories, a compendium of disorders known to be socially contagious and they have all of them. And perhaps the most frustrating thing, like the hysterics of the late 19th century, they are treatment resistant. They do not get better with treatment, they tend to fight it, and while they may express relief at obtaining certain treatments, objective measures of their mental health shows no change or a worsening of symptoms.

Like Mollie Fancher and other hysterics, these modern girls tend to be adolescents who have experienced some sort of trauma (and it does not have to be sexual, a best friend moving away can precipitate it) and appear to unconsciously express that distress through culturally validated and approved ways of expressing distress. Both groups seem to have a fear of growing up and assuming adult responsibilities. In Mollie Fancher's days these girls took to their beds and never left. Now they become incapacitated with anxiety and a fear of persecution and, despite being bright, flunk out of school and turn to medications and surgeries.

Basically, I got what I wanted from this book, an account of hysteria written before the modern social media age as a way to check against biases of people writing about it in light of our current cultural moment. And I have come out more convinced that what we now call conversion or somatoform disorders but then called hysteria is a bit like radiation poisoning. It took awhile for people to become aware of the dangers of radiation poisoning because the symptoms varied greatly from individual to individual. In the case of hysteria, the symptoms vary greatly from culture to culture. In Salem in 1692 it was a group of girls accusing others of witchcraft. In the late 19th century it was becoming fragile and bedbound. In modern Sweden it is migrants developing resignation syndrome. In the 1980s it was developing Multiple Personality Disorder and recovering repressed memories of Satanic ritual abuse. And I am now realizing that a great gap in my education as a therapist was not learning anything about this especially as the counseling professional is culpable for the creation and spread of many of these hysterias, though I am grateful to see movement in some therapeutic organizations to change this.

If y0u, like me, are flummoxed about our current cultural moment, this book about a fasting Victorian woman who supposedly lived without eating is surprisingly relevant. Unfortunately there are some flaws in this book. Namely the author loves to go on tangents. I have to respect the amount of effort Michelle Stacey put into researching everything about this book but all the same she needed a good editor to tell her to cut a lot of it because much of it was rather dry and boring.

The second flaw is that while there is a lot of information on how hysteria presented in Victorian times and current thought around conversion disorders, Mollie Fancher herself seems to get lost in her own biography. Stacey does state that there is not a lot of information about her yet also mentions that her aunt and caretaker kept a detailed diary (that did not include incriminating information on how Mollie was sneaking food). It did make me wonder what her aunt Susan was spending so much time detailing in her diary that did not include the care of her invalid niece.

This is a very important historical work, granted, I would recommend Suzanne O'Sullivan's Sleeping Beauties or "Crazy Like Us" before this due to the flaws, but I am glad I read it. On a final note, I was frustrated with Stacey's attitude towards Mollie Fancher's skeptics. While someone like Mollie Fancher is suffering and deserves compassion and is likely not deliberately faking (our minds can be great agents of self deception), no one is helped by having their delusions fed. It may seem kind to say nothing but it's allowing their suffering to continue at best and at worst, other people are harmed in the witch hunt just as they were in Salem and during the Satanic Panic and now. While some cultures have ways of responding to culture bound hysteria symptoms in a way that solve and abate them, like the Miskito culture with grisi sikness, most cultures have ways of responding that they think helps but ends up causing great harm. It is my hope that now that we are finally figuring that distress can manifest in ways that are highly influenced by culture and can change drastically from culture to culture that we can start seeing the underlying pattern behind the differing manifestations and work on solutions that heal rather than harm.

[Leia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really not what I expected, but it turned out to be better than I thought it would be. This book isn't so much about Mollie Fancher herself, but about the phenomenon of 'the fasting girls'. This book had lots of new interesting facts I didn't know about before reading; The origins of different medical ideas, victorian attitudes on women, spiritualism, eating disorders and psychology. I would have definitely given this 5 stars if it didn't have a fragmented narrative in parts.

This is definitely a good book to read for anyone who is interested in Victorian era society.

[Katie Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[msleighm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much, Jackie, for passing this along to me. It really is a must read for lovers of Victorian Era history. It also covers the beginning of modern sciences, phych studies, and anorexia. A well written and we'll laid out book covering a huge scope. Don't forget the clairvoyants as well! 

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more than just the story of a young woman! This book covered the birth of modern psychology, the history of anorexia, the split between religion and science in the 19th century, and the changing roles of women in the Victorian era.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

very digestible.
pun intended.

[Amy Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

.

[Alie · Rating 3 out of 5]

She didn't eat for eight years and yet still remained pleasingly plump. You be the judge.

[Sarah Coller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reread this this past week for the third or fourth time. I'd forgotten how much of the story wasn't actually about Mollie and found myself regretting the choice not a long ways in. But, I chose this for Nonfiction November and felt like I wanted to finish.

The story is fun at first but gets a little dry in the middle. Like the author states at the almost end --- there's not a lot on record about this story. Maybe not the best choice for a full length book as it contains lots of of filler: biographical details about minor players, lots of repetition, tons of historical bits that, while interesting, have nothing to do with Mollie.

Still I'm glad I read it and I will keep it for my permanent collection as reference.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhhh. This book used Mollie Fancher’s story as a reason to talk about a handful of doctors’ personal histories, anorexia, Victorian hysteria, and a lot of other tangents. With so much attention paid to every single side mention, there almost ISN’T a story of Mollie Fancher here, except at the very beginning and end of the book.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite kind of book: a historical story, zoomed in on for piquant personal details, and zoomed out to capture trends, culture, politics, and philosophy that surround and affect that story. Brilliant observations on the physical-psychological pendulum swing happening in medical theory and treatment, from the nineteenth century till now.

[Bev Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment. While I was looking forward to an account of Mollie’s experience, I didn’t experience this. Historical context is important but the author spent so much time on historical context that the story of Mollie seemed secondary.

[Karen C · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF- lost interest

[Adrienne Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild mix of science and spiritualism this book is! If you’re ever looking for ways to avoid growing up or getting married Mollie Fancher’s story will give you age-old ideas that work! Here’s what you do: Trip over something and begin to develop odd symptoms.

Weird muscle spasms, paralysis, loss of appetite and clairvoyance. Live on air, not food and go blind–but read through your finger tips.

This book is a serious look into Victorian medicine and the fasting girls of the 19th century. Once you get past feeling mildly superior to the cast of doctors and the patient Mollie it hits you that this is a very sad and strangely modern story. A girl with perfectionist tendencies makes herself sick and gets attention (her childhood was a horrible series of tragic events). Society at the time put a premium on eating etiquette (a lady with an appetite was considered crass). A life in bed begins to seem a great escape from the mind-boggling responsibilities and changing roles women were coming up against.

Was her illness fake? Was her fast anorexic? Was she delusional? Michelle Stacey shows how medicine has come strangely full circle. The doctors originally thought the epidemic of fasting girls had something to do with body chemistry. Freud and others were just beginning to steer towards environmental factors being the culprits in issues of the mind and here we are today with many doctors not so sure that multiple personality disorders aren’t just suggestible ailments with an undercurrent of chemical deficiencies.

All I know is there is a character in book five who’s feeling much like Mollie. I can’t wait to see how far she’ll take it.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 fairly well paced, even when it got slow it was never dull enough for me to give up. There was a feeling that it would pick up again and for me it always did. In some ways the book imitated the girl's actions; as soon as interest starts to wane, introduce another nutty aspect or weirdo claim to reel the audience back in.

[Lynne · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 that not a lot is known about her, but...yeah. It just seemed odd and pointless to me.

If you're interested in women's health in the 19th century and things related to "incredible" diagnoses, I highly recommend Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Asti Hustvedt. If you want more of a historical look at anorexia, Holy Anorexia by Rudolph M. Bell was decent.