SOURCE: Furst, Lilian R. “The Power of the Powerless: A Trio of Nineteenth-Century French Disorderly Eaters.” In Disorderly Eaters: Texts in Self-Empowerment, edited by Lilian R. Furst and Peter W. Graham, pp. 153-66. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Furst examines female characters in works by Zola, Balzac, and Flaubert, finding that despite their different situations and backgrounds, all three deal with their frustrations and inner rage by developing eating disorders.

Eating and its corollary, noneating, are, as every infant quickly discovers, potent means to control one's life, to negotiate disagreeable situations, and to manipulate others. Eating may provide comfort and pleasure as well as satisfying or placating others, while noneating can be an assertion of will, an expression of one's own preferences in defiance of those imposed from outside. Such tactics are not confined to small children; the hunger strike too is...