Meghan Racklin

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Meghan Racklin

Meghan Racklin is a Brooklyn-based writer. She writes about books and culture. Most recently, she wrote an essay about archives, anorexia, and Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Courtly Gala Dress with Diamond Stars, 1865

“Towards the end of Elisabeth’s life, a doctor who examined her found that she was suffering from edema caused by starvation, a condition more commonly associated with soldiers in wartime than empresses at resorts by the sea, but she had been starving for so long. Hers was the diet of someone who had to die to be beautiful, and just might. In the end, though, it wasn’t the starving that killed her; it was an anarchist, concerned not with her body but with her crown (he intended to kill a different royal, but didn’t time it right). While Elisabeth was out walking in Geneva, a man named Luigi Lucheni peered under her parasol, then stabbed her in the ribs with a needle. One version of the story has it that she didn’t die on the spot because of how closely her famous corset held the knife in place, though it seems too neat a metaphor for the paradox of beauty’s privation and protection to be true.

When he was asked about his motives, Lucheni kept repeating, “Only those who work are entitled to eat.” He can’t have known that his phrasing would scan almost as a joke. She died starving and worked hard at it.”

Read Meghan’s recent writing here →

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