Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer is a novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, published in 1992. It won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize the same year.
A postmodern retelling of the gothic horror novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the narrative follows the life of Bella Baxter, a surgically fabricated woman created in late Victorian Glasgow. Bella’s navigation of late 19th century society is the lens through which Gray delivers social commentary on patriarchal institutions, social equality, socioeconomic matters and sexual politics.
The novel itself is Epistolary novel, being composed of a fictional novella entitled Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer, several extended letters, a spread of original illustrations, as well as an Introduction and Critical Notes. The bracketing Introduction and Critical Notes feature a meta-textual component, in that they simultaneously exist in the novel’s fictional canon, but are also credited to real-life author Alasdair Gray.
The novel is illustrated by Alasdair Gray, despite the text claiming the illustration were created by Scottish painter and printmaker William Strang.
Under the guidance of Godwin and Archibald, Bella quickly matures intellectually and emotionally, developing into a curious, assertive, and sexually liberated woman. Though McCandless falls in love with her, Bella resists his romantic idealization and seeks her own experiences. She leaves with the decadent lawyer Duncan Wedderburn on a whirlwind trip across Europe and the Middle East. During their travels, Bella confronts the inequalities and absurdities of the Victorian world, eventually realizing that Wedderburn sees her more as a possession than a partner. Disillusioned, she escapes him and returns to Glasgow.
Back home, Bella becomes a champion of women's rights, social reform, and public health. She and Archibald eventually marry—not as a result of submission, but as a conscious, equal partnership built on mutual respect and shared political ideals. Together, they work to improve the lives of the poor, challenge the hypocrisy of the upper class, and confront the outdated moral structures of their time.
However, a letter from Bella herself—now known as Victoria McCandless—completely contradicts McCandless's memoir. She reveals that the resurrection story was a fabrication, a romantic fantasy created by Archibald to mythologize their relationship and his own sense of loss and failure. Bella insists that she was always a fully formed, intelligent woman, and that her life with Godwin and later Archibald was nothing like the fairy tale described in the memoir. This revelation casts doubt on everything the reader has just read, turning the novel into a postmodern puzzle about truth, memory, and the way stories are shaped by those who tell them.
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