Poor Things

As a child, Victoria’s family was very poor. Her father had money, but he used it for business instead of providing for his family. He was a violent man; one day he hit her so hard that she sustained a large, three-inch scar on her head. This is the scar that McCandless describes as “mysteriously regular” and “ringing the entire skull under the hair line” (331) in his tale. Victoria received no education, and her brothers died early of cholera.

Soon after they died, Victoria’s father moved her and her mother into a townhouse. Their quality of life improved dramatically, and Victoria was sent to a convent school to learn how to be a lady, suiting her new position in society. At the convent school, she only learned what the nuns thought would turn her into a good wife. She married Blessington, eager to escape her cruel father. 

Six months into her marriage with Blessington, Victoria was profoundly sexually frustrated. She begged for a clitoridectomy and was referred to Dr. Godwin Baxter for the procedure. Victoria wonders why McCandless portrayed Godwin as a monstrous man, describing him instead as a big, sad man who made everyone he met feel safe. Godwin told her that she had been “badly treated all [her] life by selfish, greedy, silly men” (334) and that the operation she hoped to have would not help her. Fearing she would go mad if she stayed with Blessington, she asked him if he would turn her away if she came to his house for shelter. Godwin replied that he would not, but asked her to “leave [him] alone if possible” (335). 

Two months later, Victoria learned that her husband had gotten one of their young servant girls pregnant. She fled the house and went to Godwin, who took her in without question. He introduced her to his mother, Mrs. Dinwiddie, who had been a servant in Godwin’s father’s house. To explain Victoria’s presence in his life, Godwin invented the story of Bella Baxter, the amnesiac daughter of his distant cousin who died in a train wreck in South America. This invented persona would shield Victoria from scandal.

Godwin expanded Victoria’s education, but urged her not to forget what she had learned growing up or at the convent school, for all her experiences would expand her mind. She learned many things from Godwin and sometimes went to the theater with Godwin’s lawyer friend, Duncan Wedderburn. She met McCandless and noted that he must not have been a good friend of Godwin’s, because Godwin did not introduce McCandless to his mother. McCandless was awkward at their meeting and made Victoria feel uncomfortable. He insisted on kissing her hand when he departed, which was unpleasant because his “salivation was extreme” (339). Victoria did not want to see him again.

Victoria fell in love with Godwin while staying with him. Godwin refused to love her back, claiming that he “want[ed] no master—and no mistress” (339). When Victoria learned that Godwin was incurably ill, having inherited syphilis from his father, she resolved to become a doctor to try to cure him. Failing that, she would become a doctor to help others and to continue Godwin’s work after his death. Godwin approved of the idea and encouraged her to find herself a husband who would let her “do what [she wanted] while satisfying [her] amorous instincts” (341). He took her on a world tour so that she could learn medicine from the best and brightest minds around the world. When they returned, she and Godwin met McCandless in a park. Victoria reflected that McCandless might be the perfect candidate for a weak-willed husband who would let her do what she wanted without separating her from Godwin. She knew McCandless was in love with her and with Godwin; he saw her as the part of Godwin he could possess.

McCandless kissed her; other than a female piano teacher with whom she had had an affair, McCandless was the only person she had ever kissed. He proposed marriage, to which Victoria agreed immediately. In the following days, Victoria thought about her kiss with McCandless and wondered if other men might be better than him at fulfilling her romantic passion. She decided to elope with Duncan, not realizing that Duncan wanted to marry her as well. When Duncan had a nervous breakdown, Victoria returned to Godwin and found that he was dying. McCandless was living with Godwin, which surprised Victoria. Godwin left everything to Victoria, asking her to care for his dogs after his death. Victoria kissed him and then helped him drink poison to avoid a prolonged and painful death. 

Victoria asks her descendant to consider which of the two accounts is more believable: McCandless’s strange and morbid account that steals ideas from other Gothic novels, or her own. She tries to understand why McCandless would write such a thing and concludes that he was always envious of her success and drive. He felt ashamed of his humble origins, so he had to imagine a reality where he, Godwin, and Victoria were all equals. He felt his poor childhood was no childhood at all, so in his narrative, he robbed Godwin and Victoria of their own childhoods, too. Victoria notes that she was not pregnant when all these events took place; there never was an infant daughter.

Victoria believes that McCandless knew that he was writing fiction. She points out that there are many factual errors that undermine the believability of his story. Victoria concludes her letter with a treatise on the importance of socialism and hopes that the world that her descendant lives in is made better by the social movements in her present.

In the final footnote of Poor Things, Alasdair Gray says that Bella Baxter went by the name Victoria McCandless for the rest of her life after her marriage to McCandless. She became a doctor in 1890 and opened the Godwin Baxter Natal Clinic, a charitable institution staffed by female employees that she trained herself. She had three sons, barely stopping her work to give birth. The poor women she treated could not afford to stop working when they gave birth, so she would not do so either.

She published a pamphlet on public health called Against Horizontalism, in which she encouraged women to not give birth lying down, but in a squat, which was easier on their bodies. She criticized the unthinking faith placed in doctors, encouraging people to learn about medicine to take control of their own lives. She advocated for children to be taught basic nursing while in school so that they could learn how to live healthily and how to push for better housing and working conditions. Many journals responded to Victoria’s ideas with scorn and sexism, accusing her of spreading dangerous socialist ideas. 

The First World War was difficult for Victoria; two of her sons enlisted in the army and were killed on the Somme, despite her strong anti-war views and her push for strike efforts to end the war. Her third son worked at the Department of Imperial Statistics and supported the war effort by manufacturing statistical propaganda. He was killed in 1919 after being hit by a car. Victoria struggled to understand why the war had happened. She concluded that this “epidemic of suicidal obedience” (376) was caused by poor parenting. She published a booklet called A Loving Economy – A Mother’s Recipe for the End of All National and Class Warfare (377).

The footnote does not explain Victoria’s actual arguments in the pamphlet. Instead, it includes excerpts from critical reviews. These reviews claim that Victoria blamed herself for the war because she did not cuddle her sons enough. She apparently urged parents to only have one child and to let that child sleep in the same bed as them to “learn all about love-making and birth control by practical example” (378). Various responses accuse Victoria of being an “erotomaniac” and of encouraging incest. 

Victoria faced charges for allegedly performing abortions but was never found guilty. She faded from the public eye, though continued to run her clinic, mostly treating poor, old people and animals. A reporter from the Daily Express interviewed her in 1925. When he asked what advice she had for young people, she gave him a copy of A Loving Economy.

The final piece of historical evidence from Victoria’s later life is a letter she sent in 1945 to the poet Christopher Murray Grieve, better known as Hugh MacDiarmid. In this letter, she was optimistic that Britain would finally get social welfare and a national healthcare system, and that the British Empire would finally fall. She referred to A Loving Economy as her “poor neglected little magnum opus” (389) and claimed that if MacDiarmid had read it, he would know that she had an unusually good understanding of her inner biology. She predicted her death in December due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Indeed, Victoria McCandless died of a stroke on December 3rd, 1946.