56 pages • 1 hour read
Alasdair GrayPoor Things
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Bella Baxter’s Letter: Glasgow to Odessa: The Gamblers”
Content Warning: This section discusses colonial violence and non-consensual medical experimentation.
Bella addresses her diary entries to God (Godwin). The first half of this chapter is written in iambic pentameter. Bella assures Godwin and McCandless that she and Duncan are not married. After having sex all night, which Bella calls “wedding,” Duncan sleeps all day. Whenever Bella leaves Duncan alone, he grows jealous, asks who she spoke to, and accuses her of having had hundreds of lovers before him. He says that the line on her stomach means that she had a baby through a cesarean section. Bella asks Godwin if she had a baby daughter before her accident and wonders what happened to her.
She and Duncan arrive in Amsterdam. Duncan, still suspicious of Bella, starts taking anti-lethargy pills so Bella cannot go away while he sleeps. Bella teaches herself to sleep with her eyes open, so Duncan’s attempts to tire her out fail. One day, she wakes up with Duncan in a gambling parlor. She tries to convince him to go back to their hotel together, but Duncan insists on gambling and wins a lot of money, refusing to stop when she asks. Bella stops writing in iambic pentameter.
Bella befriends a Russian man who thinks Duncan’s luck will soon run out. She has him tell Duncan this. The Russian man owes the English a debt, as an Englishman named Mr. Astley once did him a great favor. Duncan points out that he is Scottish, not English, and ignores the man’s advice. The Russian man suggests that Bella sequester a portion of Duncan’s winnings so he does not lose everything; she does so. The next day, Duncan returns to the gambling parlor. Duncan loses all his winnings, withdraws more money, and loses that, too.
The Russian man recommends that Bella get Duncan onto a cruise around the Mediterranean on “a cargo ship with passenger accommodations” (176) to get him away from temptation. Bella agrees. Duncan asks where she got the money; she does not tell him, and he assumes she got it through sex work. Bella and Duncan board a Russian merchant ship that takes them around the Mediterranean to Odessa.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Odessa to Alexandria: The Missionaries”
Bella reads a magazine called Punch, where she is introduced to the concept of socialism. When she asks Duncan what a Socialist is, he tells her that they are “Fools who think the world should be improved” (181). Bella did not realize the world needed improving.
She meets two men on the ship: the American Dr. Hooker and the English Mr. Astley. When Bella asks about the Russian man, Mr. Astley has no memory of him. Bella spends time with Hooker and Astley as Duncan recuperates. One day, the men argue about religion. Hooker is a staunch Protestant who did missionary work in China. Astley is apathetic about religion and instead believes in “Malthusiasm,” which “offers no comfort to the poor, the sick, the cruelly used and those on the point of death” (186). Bella knows little about religion but tells the men that because God (meaning Godwin) is kind and selfless, other people must be, too. Hooker and Astley are shocked that Bella knows nothing of Christianity and sees the world as fundamentally a good and kind place. Bella senses that they are hiding something from her and resolves to discover what.
Hooker and Astley discuss politics, colonialism, and capitalism. Bella understands little, but when she asks questions, Astley tells her that women should not learn about politics. Hooker disagrees: In America, people believe that women are intelligent. He believes he can educate Bella about politics without “wounding her womanly instincts” (191). Bella agrees to be “educated” and listens as Hooker explains his theory of race science in which Anglo-Saxons must civilize the world’s other races through colonialism for their own good. Bella argues that she has seen people from all over the world and none of them are as wicked as Hooker suggests. Hooker suggests a visit to Alexandria so she can see the truth and stop being a child. Bella agrees to visit Alexandria and concludes by asking Godwin why he did not teach her politics.
The next six pages of Bella’s letter contain near-illegible scribbles. The pages are soaked with tears. Godwin tells McCandless that the letters say, in part, “no no no no no no, help blind baby, poor little girl help help” (209), and so on, foreshadowing what Bella saw in Alexandria.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Alexandria to Gibraltar: Astley’s Bitter Wisdom”
Still distraught over what she saw in Alexandria, Bella spends more time with Astley, who begs her to embrace his political beliefs and marry him. Bella wants to do neither, but reads books from Astley and Hooker, including the Bible. Duncan sees her unhappiness after Alexandria and begs her forgiveness for forcing her into sex work. She laughs and admits to hiding a portion of his winnings. Enraged by this, Duncan refuses to sleep with her.
Astley continues to educate Bella about his pessimistic beliefs on women, education, history, unemployment, empire, and freedom. He wants to convince her that cruelty is inevitable and useful. Bella insists that she would rather try to make the world a better place. Astley tells her about all the different kinds of people who want to make the world a better place: the Socialists, Communists, Violent Anarchists and Terrorists, and the Peaceful Anarchists. He finds fault with all of their methods, though Bella agrees with elements of all of them. Astley offers his own solution to the world’s problems: Bella should marry, raise his children, and make their village and local school a better place. To Astley, this solution offers Bella “the chance to be as happy and good as an intelligent woman can be on this filthy planet” (222). Bella rejects this selfish vision and privately resolves to become a socialist.
Duncan informs Bella that since she is a thief who still refuses to marry him, he wants to go to Paris. Bella protests that she only has enough money left to get them home to Scotland (though she keeps the money sewn into her coat lining a secret) and Duncan decides that they will stay in Gibraltar until he can have more money from his inheritance sent. Bella just wants to go home but feels she cannot abandon Duncan. She concludes this part of her diary telling McCandless that when she returns home, they will wed, and they and Godwin will set about improving the world.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Gibraltar to Paris: Wedderburn’s Last Flight”
In Gibraltar, Duncan withdraws money from the bank, and they board a ship to Marseilles. Duncan starts gambling again and loses all his money in five days. They manage to get third-class train tickets to Paris on an overnight train. When they arrive, Duncan is exhausted but refuses to return to Scotland. Bella leaves him drinking absinthe at a cafe and enters a hotel to book a room. The hotel turns out to be a brothel, but the owner, Madame Cronquebil, gives them a room. Madame Cronquebil is originally from Manchester and is delighted to speak English with someone. She is kind to Bella and Bella confides in her about what happened in Alexandria.
In Alexandria, Hooker and Astley took Bella to a hotel veranda with well-dressed patrons. People begged the patrons for money, which Bella initially mistook for a game. When patrons threw coins, the beggars snatched at the coins in a frenzy, and hotel guards whipped them. Hooker pointed out one of the beggars to Bella; a blind little girl holding a baby. Bella walked over to the girl and gave her a purse of money, but other beggars immediately snatched it away. Bella wondered if the girl was her own lost daughter, picked her up, and brought her to the verandah, wanting to adopt the girl and the baby. Hooker told her that she could do no good and violently separated her from the two children. In the scuffle, Bella bit Astley’s hand. Hooker wanted Bella to see the horrors of the uncivilized world. Bella was enraged that Hooker and Astley were uninterested in helping others, instead using religion and politics to make themselves feel superior.
Bella goes outside to bring Duncan into their hotel room but finds that he has vanished. When he returns, he tells Bella that he no longer wishes to marry her. Bella is glad that Duncan wants to leave her. She gives him the £500 note from Godwin and tells him to use it to get home. She decides to start working at the brothel.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Paris to Glasgow: The Return”
Bella works at the brothel for three days, earning 480 francs. She only works with French customers to protect her reputation in Britain, though she spies on an English client she calls Monsieur Spankybot. He wears a black mask so she never sees his face. Bella becomes friends with a fellow socialist called Toinette who also works at the brothel.
A doctor arrives to examine all the women working at the brothel. Bella objects to his harsh manner and his fixation on the women’s genitals, saying that doctors should be “kind and gentle and care for every part of their patient” (240). Madame Cronquebil worries that she will lose her license for the brothel and bribes the doctor with all of Bella’s earnings.
Bella leaves the brothel and finds Professor Charcot, a colleague of Godwin’s whom she met on her first world tour. In exchange for her help with a hypnosis demonstration, Charcot gives her the money to return home to Glasgow. Bella concludes her letter by informing Godwin and McCandless that she will be home soon, and that they must all work together to improve the world. Just after Godwin and McCandless finish reading, Bella returns home and, after a brief joyful reunion, asks Godwin where her child is.
Chapters 14-18 Analysis
The doctor mentioned in this section, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), was a real French neurologist who specialized in treating what was then called hysteria, a nervous disorder which was believed to affect women. The rest of the characters in this section are fictional. As always, several characters in this part of the text all want to control the narrative and the interpretation of events, reflecting the theme of The Problems of Narrative and Perspective. Though this part of the text is ostensibly Bella’s version of events, it is again mediated through Godwin, McCandless, and Gray. Bella’s tale exposes many of the details omitted from Duncan’s letter, especially his reckless gambling and her own growth. Astley and Hooker try to control the narrative of the world by educating Bella about politics. They want to dictate how she sees the world, since she has not had much of a formal political or religious education.
There is a lot of debate in these chapters about Women’s Roles in Victorian Society. Duncan is completely unable to cope with Bella’s sexuality. He wants to possess her, so he cannot bear it when she leaves him alone for even a few hours because he immediately assumes she must be sleeping with other men. Women in Victorian Britain were not expected to have their own sexual desires (or, indeed, any desires at all). They were expected to be sexually available to men, while also paradoxically expected to remain virgins until marriage. Part of Duncan’s distress about Bella is that she sleeps with him but refuses to marry him. This has never been an issue for him before, per his own descriptions of his dalliances with other women. The difference is that Bella is not a working-class woman, so she is expected to be more sexually reserved.
Another major expectation for women at this time was that they should not engage with politics. Women were not widely considered intelligent enough for political discourse. Lacking the vote, there were in any case limits to how much women could participate in political discourse and action. In Bella’s narrative, she eschews convention and chooses to engage with Medical Progress and Politics anyway. Duncan’s definition of a socialist as a foolish person who believes it is necessary and possible to improve the world harkens back to Godwin’s beliefs about the changes that ought to be made to the British medical system. Bella’s decision to align herself with progressive socialist politics informs her own view of medicine: She believes that the doctor in the brothel should be more compassionate toward his patients. Socialist politics focus on the wellbeing of all members of a society, and that often entails pushing for medical reform.
Not all of the book’s characters are socialists. Hooker and Astley take very different views, suggesting that attempting to alleviate suffering is actually bad and useless. Astley subscribes to the philosophy of Thomas Malthus, who believed that improving society was impossible because population growth would always outstrip resources. Astley and Hooker believe pseudoscientific theories about differences between human “races,” and they think that colonialism is a civilizing force that helps the world advance. These thoughts were not uncommon in the Victorian era, but they are very outdated now. In the 21st century, there has been a great deal of discussion about the horrors of the British Empire and other forms of colonialism. Today, it is understood that race is a social construct, and that people of different backgrounds do not differ in intelligence or value.
