ABSTRACT
In prodigious fasting, sometimes to death, Western women have expressed an extraordinary relationship to food for almost eight centuries. This chapter attempts to explain behavior by weaving together the fine-grained and fascinating historical data presented in the three books under review and viewing them from the cross-cultural and holistic perspectives fundamental to anthropology. It aims to show that Western female fasting differs radically from other kinds of fasting observed by anthropologists across the globe and that it involves a highly symbolic alteration of Women's universal relationship to food. The chapter argues that it is best understood as a multi-determined behavior, an interplay of ideological, economic, political, and social factors. The three books under review provide complementary data and interpretation that together illuminate the puzzle of fasting women. The cross-cultural approach, fundamental to anthropological epistemology, can also contribute to understanding the prodigious fasting of women from the Middle Ages to the present in Europe and North America.
