Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

does life mainly evolve through small gradual changes, or through big catastrophic ones?

You think you are about to possess what men have hopelessly yearned for throughout the ages: the soul of an innocent, trusting, dependent child inside the opulent body of a radiantly lovely woman.

The imagination is, like the appendix, inherited from a primitive epoch when it aided the survival of our species, but in modern scientific industrial nations it is mainly a source of disease.

Thinking has maddened me for weeks. My one relief has been argument with Harry Astley. He says I will only find peace by embracing his bitter wisdom—and him. I want neither—except as enemies. He says cruelty to the helpless will never end because the healthy live by trampling these down. I say if this is true we must stop living so.

EDUCATION—“Very poor children learn to beg, lie and steal from their parents—they would hardly survive otherwise. Prosperous parents tell their children that nobody should lie, steal or kill, and that idleness and gambling are vices. They then send them to schools where they suffer if they do not disguise their thoughts and feelings and are taught to admire killers and stealers like Achilles and Ulysses, William the Conqueror and Henry the Eighth. This prepares them for life in a land where rich people use acts of parliament to deprive the poor of homes and livelihoods, where unearned incomes are increased by stock-exchange gambling, where those who own most property work least and amuse themselves by hunting, horse-racing and leading their country into battle. You find the world horrifying, Bell, because you have not been warped to fit it by a proper education.”

KINDS OF PEOPLE—“There are three kinds of people. The happiest are the innocent who think everyone and everything basically good. Many children are like that and so were you until Hooker (very much against my will) showed you otherwise. The second and biggest kind are half-baked optimists: people with a mental conjuring trick which lets them look at hunger or mutilation without discomfort. They think the wretched deserve to suffer, or that their nation is curing—not causing—these miseries, or that God, Nature, History will make everything right one day. Doctor Hooker is one of that sort and I am glad his rhetoric did not blind you to the facts. The third and rarest sort know human life is an essentially painful disease which only death can cure. We have the strength to live consciously among those who live blindly. We are the cynics.” “There must be a fourth kind,” I said, “because I am no longer innocent and hate what Dr. Hooker and what you think equally.” “That is because you are searching for a way which does not exist.” “I will search as long as I live rather than be a childish fool or selfish optimist or equally selfish cynic,” I told him, “and I will make my husband a searcher too.” “You will be a tiresome couple.”

FREEDOM—“I am sure there was no word for freedom before slavery was invented. The old Greeks had every sort of government—monarchies, aristocracies, plutocracies, democracies—and argued fiercely about which system gave people most freedom, but all of them kept slaves. So did the ancient Roman republic. So did the stout squires who founded the U.S.A. Yes, the only sure definition of freedom is non-slavery.

SELF GOVERNMENT—I asked if there are any lands of cheerful, prosperous people who govern only themselves. “Yes. In Switzerland several small republics with different languages and religions have lived peacefully side by side for centuries, but high mountains divide them from each other and the surrounding nations. To improve the world, Bella, you need only build a high mountain between every town and its nearest neighbour, or chop the continents into many islands of equal size.”

WORLD IMPROVERS—“Yes, I foresee that despite my teaching, Bell, you are going to become the most modern kind of half-baked optimist, the sort who wants to abolish riches and poverty by sharing out the world’s goods equally.” “That is only common sense!” I cried. “There are four sects who agree with you, but have different plans to bring it about. “The SOCIALISTS want the poor to elect them into parliament, where they plan to tax the surplus of the rich and make laws to give everyone productive work in good conditions, along with good food, housing, education and health care.” “A lovely idea!” I cried. “Yes. Beautiful. The other world-improvers point out that parliament is an alliance of monarchs, lords, bishops, lawyers, merchants, bankers, brokers, industrialists, military men, landlords and civil servants who run it to protect their wealth AND FOR NO OTHER REASON. Socialists elected into it will therefore be outwitted by these, or bribed, or compromised into nonentity. I agree with this prediction. “So the COMMUNISTS are forming a party of folk from every class of society who will patiently work and wait for a day when their country gets into serious financial trouble, then they will overturn it and become the government—for a short time. Having ruled the land until everybody has what they need and are able to keep it, the Communists say they will disband because neither they nor any further government will be needed.” “Hooray!” I cried. “Yes, hooray. The other world-imp...

I left the Notre-Dame suddenly today after two hours of terrible confusion. The cause was my own ignorance. Will I ever reach the end of it?

You were too sane to teach a child about craziness and cruelty. I had to learn about those from people who were crazy and cruel themselves.

He then asked Bella if she wished to be a general practitioner or to help particular kinds of people. She said she wanted to help little girls, mothers and prostitutes. He said this was a good idea because at present almost all who worked with these people had different sexual organs from their patients. Bella said she was determined to teach all the women who came to her the most modern and effective contraceptive methods. Baxter and I advised her to keep this intention secret until she was able to practise it. What she then told her patients in the privacy of a consultingroom would be unlikely to cause a public scandal. If she wished to argue publicly for birth control she would do so most effectively after working as a fully qualified clinician for at least five years. She only agreed with us when we admitted that the length of the waiting-period must be her choice and no one else’s.

Prevention of disease was more important than cure. There were no better public benefactors than those who strove to make Glasgow better watered, drained and lit—better housed, in short.

But when we got children of our own I discovered most younger people are happily unfeeling toward parents and guardians they feel confident with.

Lady Blessington was so deranged even in her eighth month she wished to lie with Sir Aubrey all night long. She sobbed and wailed when not allowed to do so.” Tears streamed down Bella’s cheeks. She said, “The poor thing needed cuddling.” “You could never face the fact,” said the General through clenched teeth, “that the touch of a female body arouses DIABOLICAL LUSTS in potent sensual males—lusts we can hardly restrain. Cuddlin! The word is disgustin and unmanly. It soils your lips, Victoria.” “I know everyone here is telling what they think is the truth,” said Bella, drying her eyes, “but it sounds daft. Sir Aubrey talks as if he was liable to tear women apart, but honestly, if he cut up rough with me I think I could break him over my knee like a stick.”

“No normal healthy woman—no good or sane woman wants or expects to enjoy sexual contact, except as a duty. Even pagan philosophers knew that men are energetic planters and good women are peaceful fields. In De Return Natura Lucretius tells us that only debauched females wriggle their hips.” “That creed is both false to nature and false to most human experience,” said Baxter.

“She was mad,” said the General, “so needed no reason. If she is now sane she will come home with me. If she refuses she is still mad, and it is me duty as her husband to place her in an institution where she will be properly treated. I cannot leave her in a ménage which is turnin me maniac ex-wife into a nurse!”

“You queer sad old General,” said Bella mournfully, “did you honestly think your wife a maniac because she wanted warmed by you more than an hour a week, while you regularly hugged a young girl for four?”

“Thank you for giving me life, Father, though from what you say my mother had most trouble making me and you took none at all. Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having. Thank you, Sir Aubrey, for releasing me from my father, and thank you for driving me away from your house. Or perhaps I should thank Dolly Perkins for doing that. Without her it seems I would have gone on clinging to you. Thanks, Dr. Prickett, for trying to make life bearable for the poor silly creature I used to be. You cannot help being one still. Thank you, Mr. Grimes, for discovering and telling me how I had to travel through water to get my useless past washed off. Thank you for mending me, God, and giving me a home that is not a prison. I will continue living here. And Candle, how good to have a man I need not thank at all, who I cuddle and who cuddles me every night, is pleasant company in the mornings and evenings, and leaves me alone every day to get on with my work.”

“They cannot win a divorce action against you, Sir Aubrey. Your alleged adultery with Dolly Perkins is irrelevant. A husband’s adultery is no ground for divorce unless it is unnatural—committed anally, incestuously, homosexually or with a beast. If they appeal on grounds of extreme cruelty their own witnesses must testify that you locked Lady Blessington in the cellar because she was raving mad, and to keep her safe while you fetched medical help. A divorce action will end with Lady Blessington taken into protective custody as a ward of court. Were it not for the scandal we should welcome it.”

Bella, though not chloroformed, was now unconscious, and Baxter and I knelt with our backs to him behaving as if he did not exist. With the butt of the pistol in his pocket he could easily have stunned me and perhaps Baxter, and carried off Bella to the waiting cabs with the help of Mahoun. But that would have been a cowardly action and the General was no coward. Maybe he lingered because he was seeking a short, fierce, gentlemanly phrase to attract our attention before he strode out, for he was not used to being ignored.

“Do not quarrel with the institution before you have seen through all its workings and understand them. Meanwhile use your free intelligence to plan better ways of doing things.”

He treated his wife and children like he treated the workmen: as potential enemies who must be kept poor by violence or the threat of it. He thought any remark which did not obviously flatter him was rebellion.

Well, I enjoyed my Wedderburn while he lasted and was gentle with him when he fell apart. I still visit him once a month in the lunatic asylum. He is bright and cheerful, and always greets me with a mischievous wink and knowing grin. I am sure his insanity began as a pretence to evade imprisonment for embezzling clients’ funds, but it is real enough now.

The envy the poor and exploited feel toward the wealthy is a good thing if it works toward reforming this unfairly ordered nation. That is why we Fabians think the trade unions and Labour Party are as much our allies as any honest public servant (Liberal or Tory) who wants a decent minimum wage, a sanitary house, proper working conditions and the vote for every British adult.