Is The Wonder based in a true story? Inspiration explained

With a star-studded cast and a captivating story, there has been plenty of buzz surrounding Netflix’s newest film, The Wonder, ahead of its highly anticipated arrival.

The film tells the story of a nurse who is tasked with observing a young girl who claims that she hasn’t eaten any food for four months.

It’s a scarcely believable claim that the nurse herself is convinced to be false but is the bizarre case featured in The Wonder Official Trailer based on a true story or is it a work of fiction?

The Wonder release date and plot preview

The Wonder was released on Netflix Wednesday, November 16, 2022 after several screenings at film festivals and a brief cinema release.

The film stars Florence Pugh. It follows Lib Wright, an English nurse who is sent to a rural Irish village in 1862 Ireland. She is tasked with observing a young girl that hasn’t eaten for four months.

Lib can’t quite grasp how the fasting girl is still alive and word of her incredible feat quickly spreads, attracting tourists and pilgrims who believe the child could be a saint.

However, more details about the girl are revealed and it seems that there is something more sinister at work.

Is The Wonder based upon a true story or fictionalized version?

The Wonder is a fictional story based on Emma Donoghue’s novel.

But the Irish-Canadian author was inspired to write by real-life examples ‘fasting girls,’A disturbing phenomenon that was repeatedly reported in the Victorian era of 1800s.

It was a bizarre coincidence that young girls, often prepubescent, claimed to be capable of surviving without food for many months, even years.

Emma Donoghue was inspired by the story of Sarah Jacob (12 years old), a Welsh girl whose story was covered by The Times newspaper in 1869.

Sarah claimed that she hadn’t eaten in 10 years since turning 10 years-old two years ago.

The Times employed four English nurses to watch the girl, and to determine if her parents were truthful.

Sarah became starved after being observed for two weeks. Sarah’s parents refused to give Sarah food and she eventually died a few days later.

Sarah actually had secretly eaten small amounts of food while she was alone. She was unable, however, to do so when she was under supervision. Following her death, her parents were convicted for manslaughter.

The Wonder’s writer discusses ‘fasting girls’

Speaking in the run-up to the film’s release, The Wonder’s writer, Emma Donoghue, discussed the strange true phenomenon at the heart of the story and the research was carried out to inform her novel.

“The Wonder is a very strange story but it is, in fact, inspired by fact, in that there were about 50 or 60 cases of so-called ‘fasting girls’ who hit the papers,”She elaborated. “I’m talking from the 16th century through to the 20th, every now and then, in countries ranging from Europe through Britain and Ireland to America and Canada, you’d get a girl or a young woman who was said to live on no food.”

“It’s like this cultural fantasy we have about the ultimate femininity is, you know, someone so free of the needs of the body that she can just live on air or magnetism of prayer,”The author was not finished. “So, I set a story like that in the very real, very grey setting of post-famine Ireland, because I figured I was going to be quite critical of the culture, so I chose my own culture of Ireland that I was criticising.”

You can stream the Wonder right now Netflix After releasing on Wednesday November 16, 2022.

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