In The Wonder, the latest film by Sebastián Lelio (director of the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman), Florence Pugh plays Lib Wright, a 19th-century English nurse sent to the Irish Midlands by local authorities to observe Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy), an 11-year-old girl who claims she hasn’t eaten in four months and subsists solely on “manna from heaven.” According to Anna — and the mythology that quickly grows around her — she doesn’t even take bread or water; her faith-bound parents agree not to intercede with any nourishment for their daughter beyond what they collectively claim God is providing.
For a narrative set in such a distinctive time and place that’s so specific in its recreation of the era and its people, it’s easy to question its provenance. But is The Wonder based on a true story? The short answer is no. But the more interesting answer is... kind of. Lelio’s film is based on the celebrated 2016 novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue (Room), which New York Times Book Review columnist Stephen King — yes, he’s also an author — called “a fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner (I use the phrase without shame)... [that gives] grave consideration of the damage religion can do when it crosses the line into superstition.”
In the past young women who starve themselves have been heralded as mystics and praised for their faith, not unlike those claiming to be marked with stigmata. “Fasting girls” like The Wonder’s Anna, who claimed to live without eating, became a subject of popular concern in the nineteenth century. Some attracted curious and devoted visitors, and some were exposed as fakes. In some cases, these girls died, including one whose parents were convicted of manslaughter.
In a note on her website, Donoghue says that in her research she came across almost 50 instances of “fasting girls” between the 16th and 20th centuries who became local celebrities: “I was instantly intrigued by these cases, which seemed to echo medieval saints starving as an act of penance, and also modern anorexics, but weren’t exactly the same as either. It seemed to say a lot about what it’s meant to be a girl in many Western countries.”
But make no mistake: Neither Donoghue’s novel nor Lelio’s film is an investigation into the veracity of these women’s claims or an attempt to unearth the science behind long-term fasting — or the utter lack of science behind divine nourishment. The Wonder is, however, very interested in exploring why young women of this era — whipped up by religious zeal — found agency in the act of starvation during a time when little self-determination could be found for women elsewhere.
While she says that she learned about the “fasting girls” phenomenon in the mid-’90s and couldn’t get the idea out of her head for 20 years, Donoghue — who has written several works of historical fiction — struggled to find a figure to hang her story on. “It occurred to me that if I was still so fascinated by the fasting girls, two decades on, I should drop my usual method of writing a historical novel based on a real case, and let myself invent a story,” she says. “I’d set it in Ireland, of course — not just because that’s my homeland, but because ever since the Great Famine of the 1840s, we’ve defined ourselves as a people intimate with hunger.”
The Wonder is now streaming on Netflix.
