Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Episode 124

Release Date: January 24, 2024

This week your hosts discuss Poor Things by Alasdair Gray. Lilly only compares it to the movie a few times. They talk about the book's "found manuscript" framing device, satirizing gothic novels, and sex positivity in fictional victorian Glasgow. They also use the word "Frankenstein" as an adjective to what is hopefully a hilarious degree. Instead of an actual Words are Weird segment, they do some off the cuff word root research.

Find us on discord: https://discord.gg/dpNHTWVu6b or support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fictionfanspod

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words, too. I'm Lily,

Sara: 0:06

And I'm Sarah.

Lilly: 0:06

and today we'll be discussing Poor Things by Alistair Gray. But before we get into that, Sarah, what's something great that happened recently?

Sara: 0:15

Something great that happened recently is I bought my hotel room for galley. Which,

Lilly: 0:22

yay! Oh,

Sara: 0:24

had put off and put off, finally decided that I was going to do it, and then rooms were sold out, and there were No hotel rooms, and that lasted for like a month. And it got to the point, obviously Gali is in a month, almost exactly. And it got to the point where I was like, well, maybe I'm not going to Gali! Or, maybe I'm just gonna fly in and fly out on the same day, because I could go to an overflow hotel, but that's just not the same. But, I checked today and they had rooms available, so, huzzah!

Lilly: 0:57

that'll be so much fun.

Sara: 0:58

Yeah. Although also sad, cause I'm gonna be all on my own.

Lilly: 1:02

I know. I'm sorry.

Sara: 1:04

Letting me down.

Lilly: 1:05

sucks. I wish I had infinite time and money.

Sara: 1:08

Eh, I feel ya there.

Lilly: 1:10

My good thing is that I am currently sitting underneath an electric blanket and it is warm and I am happy.

Sara: 1:17

That is indeed a good thing.

Lilly: 1:19

It's very cozy. What are we drinking tonight? Hehehehe.

Sara: 1:26

so I'm not drinking port. And I don't have any brandy, which I feel is also a very Victorian drink. So I decided I would just drink whiskey.

Lilly: 1:36

There you go.

Sara: 1:37

It works. It's not, not quite the, uh, atmosphere engendered by the book, but it's close enough.

Lilly: 1:44

I had this whole somatic beverage planned out. I was going to have a protein powder hot chocolate, because don't listen to what anyone tells you. I've had like four different brands and they're all disgusting. But, hashtag health. And weird health drinks are also a very strong presence in this book.

Sara: 2:04

Yes, they are.

Lilly: 2:06

So I was like, that would be perfect. Anyway, and then today happened, so I'm drinking box wine.

Sara: 2:11

I think you're probably enjoying your box wine more than you would have enjoyed your weird protein powder hot chocolate.

Lilly: 2:18

Well, that's true. I wonder, there's gotta be cocktail drinks that use protein powder.

Sara: 2:24

You could always try adding your protein powder to your wine.

Lilly: 2:27

Oh, God.

Sara: 2:30

I think, I think that, um, fits the theme of terrible protein drinks.

Lilly: 2:36

That's true. Although in Poor Things. It's not a protein drink. The character has to, like, mix his digestive juices into his food. Or, there's a couple of weird things. It's very strange, but I think protein powder is the same level of strange and gross, so it works.

Sara: 2:56

I think protein powder is certainly more appropriate than mixing your own digestive juices into your drink in real life.

Lilly: 3:03

yes. Okay, fair enough. Anyway, all of that is pointless because No. Cheap box wine it is. Well, I have not read anything but this novel recently. How about you?

Sara: 3:17

I've been very slowly reading The Grimoire of the Gods and the Girl by K. R. R. Lockhaven, which is the last book in his Azure Archipelago trilogy.

Lilly: 3:28

Wait, me too. I thought we weren't supposed to talk about it. Are we allowed to talk about it?

Sara: 3:32

Oh, I can have a different answer if you don't think we're allowed to talk about it.

Lilly: 3:37

No, I just want listeners to know. Me too.

Sara: 3:42

Uh, it's not out yet. We're reading early copies. It's very slow going because I am still obsessively watching Gardener's World and knitting. So that's how most of my spare time is taken up.

Lilly: 3:53

Also a very good use of spare time.

Sara: 3:55

It is, except that it means that I am not having good answers to this question when we record.

Lilly: 4:03

I'm gonna gift you an audiobook, just to be a bitch.

Sara: 4:06

I can get audiobooks. Mmm,

Lilly: 4:11

for not listening to it.

Sara: 4:15

no, probably not.

Lilly: 4:17

Are you sure? Are you sure?

Sara: 4:18

With an audiobook specifically, yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Lilly: 4:21

Alright.

Sara: 4:22

I don't think I would feel guilty about not listening to it. I mean, if it was a really expensive audiobook, maybe I would.

Lilly: 4:28

Well, I'll tell you it's a really expensive audiobook. Anyway, poor things. I watched the movie a couple weeks ago, absolutely loved it, and was like, Sarah. I need to read this book. I need to know, like, what the heck the source material for this was. So we did. Thank you for helping me rearrange the ca

Sara: 4:48

You're welcome. I'm always pleased to rearrange our calendar at last minute.

Lilly: 4:54

Listener, you can't see her grimace right now.

Sara: 4:56

Actually, no. It wasn't, it wasn't that difficult to rearrange our calendar. It's easier to do in the start of the year than it is in the end of the year. And I did really enjoy Poor Things. It's a bit of an odd book, but I liked it.

Lilly: 5:08

It is weird. Yeah. So, right off the top, it has one of my absolute favorite tropes, which is where the author pretends he found a manuscript.

Sara: 5:19

I really liked it because it's not just that the author pretends that he found a manuscript, like it goes one step further because the manuscript has warring texts attached to it, so there's that further layer of points of view.

Lilly: 5:34

And it's absolutely delightful. So there's the main story. Which is Poor Things, the memoirs of Archie McCandless, who is one of the characters in the story, obviously. And then we also have a couple of letters that are included with it, some in the story and then some as an afterwards. And then there's also a couple of, like, historical footnotes that the author included. As if Victoria McCandless was a real doctor who had been practicing and, like, writing medical documents that people were reacting to in the era. Like, he commits to the bit.

Sara: 6:14

He really does. I really, I really liked how dedicated he was to making it seem like this was a historically accurate novel. It's not at all, obviously. But,

Lilly: 6:25

Yeah.

Sara: 6:26

but he, he makes up references and publications and all sorts of things that could in theory have existed. And it's done in a really quite seamless manner. So that's, that's a lot of fun.

Lilly: 6:39

It really is. And then, of course, the, sort of, I'm going to call it vaguely epistolary, because so much of the text is one memoir, and then there's a couple of, like, additional letters included, whereas I'd say a full, fully epistolary book would be entirely letters back and forth.

Sara: 6:59

was gonna say, I don't know if I would really call this epistolary. There's a letter, but there's no dialogue between letters.

Lilly: 7:06

Yeah, but anyway, it definitely harkens back to Frankenstein, which this book is absolutely, you know, referencing, parodying. I'd say it's parodying the gothic genre as a whole, with, like, strong ties to Frankenstein.

Sara: 7:22

I think I would agree there. There are a lot of frankenstinian elements to it. I don't know if frankenstinian is a word, but I'm making it one. And that's kind of, is it a spoiler to say that that's kind of the premise of the novel of the memoir?

Lilly: 7:37

I don't think so, because So, there's a foreword by The actual author, but pretending to be the author who found this manuscript. Which is so delightful, anyway. And he gives a bunch of spoilers in that, which is a very cool vibe.

Sara: 7:54

Yeah, he basically gives the plot of the novel away. Or the overarching plot, I would say, because there are plenty of small details that he doesn't touch upon. But you go into the novel knowing, essentially, how it's going to play out.

Lilly: 8:07

Which is such a I mean, it's an important literary device. And whenever books do something like that, it makes me question the concept of spoilers as a whole. I mean, not really. There are times when it's a spoiler, and there's times when the author wants you to know that information, so it's different, but

Sara: 8:24

Yeah, and I think we've talked about this a little bit with some of our Discworlds conversations, maybe some of our other conversations as well, but there are some books where the joy is in the journey and some books where the joy is in the destination, and I think where the destination is the point, that's where spoilers really can inhibit your enjoyment of the book as a whole, whereas this is one of those where how you get to each point is why you're reading, not because you are concerned or interested or whatever in what's going to happen next, per se.

Lilly: 8:59

That's true, this is not a whodunit.

Sara: 9:01

Yeah.

Lilly: 9:02

It is so overdramatic in some parts. I absolutely loved it. This book is very wry, I would say.

Sara: 9:10

It is. I mean, it's, it's very overdramatic. And it's, I know it's a satire, but there was one point at the very beginning that bothered me so much where part of the premise of the book, as we've said, is that it's a found manuscript. And the way the manuscript is found is that the author's friend finds it in a bunch of stuff that's left on the street for essentially like city garbage to collect. And. He looks through and finds this manuscript, these notes, and asks the, I think it was a legal firm who had put them out, asks if it's okay to take them, and the legal firm tells him, no, this is super confidential, you shouldn't have looked in it at all. And at that point, I'm like, why didn't you just shred it? It's 1992, shredders existed. Like, just shred it! Which is totally not the point because this is satire and I think part of that is satirizing how companies worked just a little bit. How legal firms worked. But still, that's my minor, my very minor nitpick.

Lilly: 10:12

Well, there are several points in this book that are just absolutely silly. Like, that's the only word for it. But this book isn't really, like, lighthearted, funny, ha ha.

Sara: 10:22

It's, no, it's definitely not.

Lilly: 10:24

But it gets so over the top, but it plays it like with a straight face the whole time. And it will have some conversations, actually, I think our next comment is about, like, sexism. and how the characters and the dialogue in this book are so sexist, but they're also such ridiculous asses that you're clearly supposed to be laughing at them, not agreeing with them. But that's a hard line to walk, especially in times when I could totally believe someone say some of those things out loud and mean it.

Sara: 10:58

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think part of the sexism you is because of the time period in which the novel takes place. Because Victorian era, yeah, it was just sexist. Part of it, I think, is having the characters be so over the top in order to poke fun at how sexist it is. There's one point in the book where a character is given

Lilly: 11:21

Clean bill of mental health.

Sara: 11:23

Yeah, where a character is given a clean bill of mental health for reasons because she shows no signs of, and they list a long list of various actual medical conditions, or medical conditions as they were diagnosed at the time, but that includes things like, uh, lycanthropy, uh, You know, Algolagnia, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, which is apparently sadomasochism. She's not irrationally belligerent, or unhealthily reticent, and is also not obsessively sapphic. I like the obsessively there. She could be a little sapphic, that's okay, but obsessively sapphic.

Lilly: 12:02

And that was so interesting, too. They throw the word sapphic around quite a bit, which today I really love as an adjective for lesbian things. Because in this particular instance, Bella's not a lesbian, right? She's clearly bi, which is why sapphic is a better word for it. But they, in the text, it's used so dismissively that I was so torn because I was like, I love that word, but you're using it wrong, but you're not using it wrong, but I'm mad at you. And I think I was supposed to go through that journey.

Sara: 12:35

Probably. I mean, again, I think I fall on the side of a lot of that is just how society was at the time, including the way they use it, that kind of dismissive tone.

Lilly: 12:46

Absolutely. This is, to some degree, historical fiction. It feels weird saying that because there's also a Frankenstein monster. So it's not, you know, accurate historical fiction except for these very old fashioned views.

Sara: 13:02

I have a counterpoint to that that I don't want to say because it's a spoiler.

Lilly: 13:07

I know, there are some spoilers in this book. Or, there are things about this book that I don't want to spoil.

Sara: 13:14

I think it relates to the way that, so, as we've said, we get a lot of the set up for the novel in the foreword, but the author very specifically says he's going to leave one section to the end instead of including it as the introduction, and I think that that is the bits that are spoiler.

Lilly: 13:33

Yeah, fair. Well, this book, overall, and this isn't a spoiler because it's in the introduction, it's about a young woman who is actually a Frankenstein's monster. They don't use that word in the book, obviously. And all of the men around her try to control her. They think they're controlling her, but she's actually a badass lady. Learning to become a badass lady, she kind of has to start from scratch, being a Frankenstein's monster. I don't think that's too spoilery, do you?

Sara: 14:00

No, I don't think that's a spoiler.

Lilly: 14:01

And I think it's important to include a little bit more of that flavor, so you're not like, Oh, so I'm just gonna read a depressing book that's supposed to not get mad at because it's making fun of the people that make it depressing? That would get really old really fast.

Sara: 14:14

That would get old fast. This was actually quite a fun book. And a fairly quick read.

Lilly: 14:19

I agree. It was much less silly than the movie. I know I already called the book silly, but the movie was more whimsical and sweet. And I'll get into that in more detail later.

Sara: 14:32

I'm really looking forward to hearing you explain that. I don't think the book was whimsical or sweet at all.

Lilly: 14:39

No, exactly!

Sara: 14:40

So, so, to hear that that's how you would describe the movie is kind of shocking. But intriguing.

Lilly: 14:47

Well, and also the basis on me suggesting that we read this book. So I started it and I was like, oh no. But the author was part of the writing team of the screenplay, which I think is always really interesting.

Sara: 15:00

Although, he did die before the movie came out. I'm not sure if he died before the screenplay was completed.

Lilly: 15:06

Oh, I didn't know that. I just know that the credits list two writers and he's one of

Sara: 15:10

Yeah, but he is dead. Apparently they started, I looked at the Wikipedia page for the movie, and apparently the producer or director, whoever, came to him originally in around 2010 or so, wanting to make this movie. So it's been a long process, and he was involved in the beginning, but I don't know. Even though he's listed in the credits for the screenplay, I don't actually know how much of that he would have completed.

Lilly: 15:36

That's interesting. Well, I'll say, as far as, like, actual actions on the page, 90 to 99 percent of the plot points are the same.

Sara: 15:45

He died in 2019.

Lilly: 15:47

That was a couple years ago.

Sara: 15:48

A day after his birthday, he was born on December 28th and died December 29th. Obviously, many years apart, but

Lilly: 15:56

Yes. But there are two characters. I'm just getting into this now. I need to stop. It is very similar but has a very different tone, which I think is a fascinating experience. I highly recommend both the movie and the book. But Sarah, who should read this book? We didn't talk about it earlier. I'm putting you on the spot.

Sara: 16:12

You should read this book if you enjoy gothic novels. If you liked Frankenstein, but want something that's a little more feminist, I think this is a good book.

Lilly: 16:20

And also, I think if you enjoy the concept of satire, even if you're not super familiar with gothic novels, if you went in knowing that this is a satire of gothic novels, I think you'd still get there.

Sara: 16:31

Yeah.

Lilly: 16:33

To avoid spoilers, skip to 3854. It feels silly to say that the main character of this book saves this book, but Bella fucking saves this book.

Sara: 16:50

I mean, Bella, Bella is the reason why this book is not a drag to read.

Lilly: 16:55

Yeah. But also, she's the main character, so duh? I, but also not duh. I don't know.

Sara: 17:03

I think an argument could be made that Archie is at least co main character.

Lilly: 17:09

That's true. It's definitely his memoir.

Sara: 17:11

It's his memoir, it's his point of view. A lot of what we see from Bella is remotely through the one long letter that she sends.

Lilly: 17:21

We have the one long letter that she sends, and then the afterwords written by Victoria, who is also Bella, but not exactly. But that's interesting too, right? Because you have the trope of, well, the story is about a woman, but it's from the perspective of men. And about all of the men around her, so how could that be feminist? But this book does absolutely make sure she has a voice, still.

Sara: 17:45

does, and then, I mean, again, you get her perspective at the end, where, and now that we're in the spoiler section, I can say, she essentially says that what we have just read is a work of fiction, and as the reader, you're left to determine which you believe is true.

Lilly: 18:01

Is she a Frankenstein creation of her own infant child's brain implanted into her adult body?

Sara: 18:09

Or,

Lilly: 18:09

Or was she an abused wife who ran away? Which one happened more often?

Sara: 18:15

Yes.

Lilly: 18:16

But even in the memoir section, the character of, we'll say, Bella, who is either the Frankenstein creation of a woman's child's brain put into her own adult body, or the fake name that Victoria adopts to get away from her abusive husband, depending on which version you want to believe. Bella still has a lot of agency. What really strikes me about this story is that it's full of men who think they're controlling Bella. And in some cases, they do. Like, obviously, when she's young, her father is controlling her. But a lot of her romantic partners think they're in charge and think they're manipulating her. But she sees right through them and gets exactly what she wants from them and is like, Goodbye.

Sara: 18:58

She has a lot of agency, it's true. And I do think that, for example, her relationship with Godwin, the essentially Dr. Frankenstein in this novel. Even though He wants her to fall in love with him. I don't view his treatment of her as a manipulation, right? Like, he's he's not showing her the world only so that she will recognize that he's, you know, the one for her. He genuinely wants to give her a broader depth of experience. Heh

Lilly: 19:31

He. Wanted to be creepy and gross, but kind of loses steam.

Sara: 19:36

Yes.

Lilly: 19:37

He tries to create the perfect girlfriend, and then for some reason she sees him more as a father figure. And he's just kind of like, Welp, damn. He's definitely not happy about it, but he also doesn't punish her for

Sara: 19:50

He doesn't try to change her mind, which I thought was a really interesting storytelling decision.

Lilly: 19:57

It also really saves his character, because he's pretty creepy before then.

Sara: 20:03

And obviously, just the concept of Frankensteining up a girlfriend for you

Lilly: 20:08

Yeah,

Sara: 20:09

creepy. Yeah.

Lilly: 20:11

But then when she ends up being a real human, he's like, well, alright. I think what I'm mostly referring to is Wetterburn, who is possibly my favorite character. Not really, obviously Bella is my favorite character.

Sara: 20:26

really like the glimpse of Wedderburn that we get in Victoria McCandless's afterward, her, her explanation of the novel, but I was less impressed with Wedderburn as we see in the main body of the novel.

Lilly: 20:42

no, he sucks. That's why I like him.

Sara: 20:44

Impressed is not the right word. Or, I mean, it's an accurate statement, but it doesn't convey what I mean, which I think is that I didn't get the same enjoyment from his character as it sounds like you did.

Lilly: 20:56

And this might be me. So I saw the movie first, and the Wedderburn character is so dramatic. The wailing and the, oh, he intends to, like, seduce Bella before she gets married and, you know, have an affair and then leave her like trash. But then ends up falling in love with her.

Sara: 21:19

In the movie, in the book, he wants to marry

Lilly: 21:22

Well, yeah, in the movie he eventually wants to marry her too, but not right away. So,

Sara: 21:26

But I'm saying in the book, it's very explicitly, they're gonna get married like that first day that, after they've eloped.

Lilly: 21:33

Yeah, and from the very beginning, Bella's like, Hey, I'm engaged. Yeah, I'll go fuck with you around Europe, but, like, I'm not marrying you. I'm engaged. But he's so convinced that he's a manipulative mastermind. And, well, she agreed to run away with him, so she must be agreeing to marry him. The idea that she means what she says doesn't even cross his mind. Ugh, absurd, ridiculous, terrible.

Sara: 22:00

A sexually liberated woman in Victorian London. What a concept. Or Vic Victorian, Victorian Britain. I guess not London, cause they're in Glasgow.

Lilly: 22:09

There was a lot of text around the difference between Scottish people and English people that I was just like, yep, okay. Uhhuh, I did not, I mean, I understood it at like a factual level, but I'm sure there's a lot of baggage there that I was not understanding.

Sara: 22:29

I think there's that, but I think there's also, I don't know, this is a much lower stakes description of it, but I feel like it's kind of like Northern California versus Southern California. If someone said that I was from Southern California, I would definitely correct them, because I'm not from Southern California, I'm from Northern California.

Lilly: 22:49

Mm hmm.

Sara: 22:50

And I feel like there's a little bit of that, except with added conquests and wars and stuff.

Lilly: 22:57

Well, yeah. I mean, I understand that political tension. The book is clearly written by someone who's in that political tension.

Sara: 23:06

Yes.

Lilly: 23:07

And so, there were some very long conversations. Not that long. But I was definitely going, I am not as invested in this as you are, but clearly this is important.

Sara: 23:17

Yeah, fair enough.

Lilly: 23:19

why did that come up? Oh, oh, because Bella is a sexually liberated Scottish woman. Oh, except Victoria, the mother, like the, the pre Frankenstein woman, pregnant woman, is from Manchester. So, anyway, there's a lot, like I'm saying, there's a lot going on with that whole thing that I understood at a surface level, but I feel like there was a lot more going on that I didn't really get.

Sara: 23:44

I do think that there are some nuances that you understand if you are from the UK, or Glaswegian, or Mancunian, that we didn't get because we are none of those things.

Lilly: 23:56

Not even a little.

Sara: 23:58

We got some Scottish background, maybe.

Lilly: 24:00

Wedderburn is great and got exactly what he deserved. He fucked around and found out. He thought he could manipulate Bella and he ends up in an insane asylum. It was delightful.

Sara: 24:10

I did like it. I mean, I just, I find his character kind of sad. And I like him better, as I said, I like him better in the non science fiction version of the story, where he's in an insane asylum, partially to get away from any penalties for not paying clients. And tax evasion and things like that, but he clearly, clearly has his faculties and, uh, Victoria goes and visits him every week and they have a fun chat. So I liked that version of him.

Lilly: 24:41

I really loved both of these stories. Like, we'll just call it two different stories, right? There's the bulk of the novel. Which is Archie McCandless's memoir version. And then there's Victoria's rebuttal. And they're both very good, but I liked them for very different reasons.

Sara: 25:02

Yes.

Lilly: 25:03

I also really enjoyed how sex positive the book was overall. And I mean, A part of me does think that it was going overboard on the sex positivity to make fun of Victorian sensibilities,

Sara: 25:15

I think there's probably a little bit of that, yeah.

Lilly: 25:17

but I can still enjoy that part. Bella does sex work in Paris and then comes back and is like, All right, I'm ready to get married now. And Archie's like, All right. People do try to make her feel bad, but not the people that we're supposed to like.

Sara: 25:31

Yes. I mean, her horniness did make me tired. I'm not gonna lie. But that's just because I'm ace, I think. And I was like, girl, just slow down. Just, just, you know, let Wedderburn have a night where he's not having sex with you. He needs it. You could probably need it, too. You know, it would be okay.

Lilly: 25:51

Oh, but that part was told through Wedderburn's eyes, because we also get a letter from Wedderburn to Archie and Godwin, who have been left at home while Bella fucks Wedderburn across Europe.

Sara: 26:03

That's, that's true.

Lilly: 26:04

So Wedderburn's version, in the memoir version, is that she was insatiable but also like a roving demon and in order to constrain her he tried to tire her out and so developed what I assume was a cocaine addiction to try to outfuck her and he couldn't. I think what is maybe in between the Wedderburn memoir version The Bella memoir version and the Victoria rebuttal version is maybe all of his gambling and drinking gave him whiskey dick and he was embarrassed about

Sara: 26:37

Quite possibly.

Lilly: 26:38

But no, no, it was Bella's fault for being a nympho. It's not his fault because everything is always Bella's fault.

Sara: 26:45

It's never the man's fault in a sexual relationship. It's always on the woman.

Lilly: 26:50

Unless the woman is acting weird and then it must be because she's fallen in love with someone. It can't possibly be because she's excited to explore a new city.

Sara: 26:58

Yep. But either way, I still, I got tired reading it.

Lilly: 27:02

That's fair.

Sara: 27:03

of whose perspective is correct, and how accurate it was.

Lilly: 27:07

Oh, there was a ton of sex. But not like fun sex in this book. There were just a lot of characters having sex. It wasn't like on the page.

Sara: 27:14

Yeah, it's, it's not explicit at all, and most of the time it's couched in euphemisms, so the word sex is not even mentioned.

Lilly: 27:23

At all.

Sara: 27:24

Yeah.

Lilly: 27:25

Although they do talk about the clitoris, but only in the topic of female genital mutilation. So, prepare yourself for that, I guess. I think also, what pushes this book over, because with satire, I'm always worried that like, what if I think this is satire, but it's not? What firmly pushes this over in my mind is that all of Bella's agency and everything ends up with her saving the day. They're in their final confrontation, her first husband that she had forgotten or run away from, depending on which version you're Going by has shown up to stop her marriage to Archie pulls out a gun to force her to go with him And she just like disarms him because no one expected her to fight back So he's so taken aback that she's able to grab the gun from him And then the real hitter the big hitter was when she realizes that she recognizes her first husband Not from having been married to him, but because he had been a client of the brothel she worked at, and she makes fun of his kinks in front of, like, a bunch of very fancy men.

Sara: 28:34

did like that, but I felt a little bad for him shamed. You know.

Lilly: 28:40

I agree, no one should be kink shamed, but also no one should try to kidnap their wife.

Sara: 28:45

Yes.

Lilly: 28:46

That balances out. And a wife whose mid kidnap attempt is the only person who's allowed to kink shame someone. I've said it. That's my decree.

Sara: 28:57

It, it is a great scene though, and I, I did like that she recognized him, not because she had any memory of her previous life, but because she recognized him as this client that she had made fun of earlier in the novel in her letter.

Lilly: 29:14

Yeah. It really does a lot to put the power back in her hands.

Sara: 29:19

Yes.

Lilly: 29:19

The book makes sure that you know that, like, she is not lesser for doing sex work. Having done that saved her at the time for financial reasons, but also those experiences were ultimately beneficial, which I think is really meaningful.

Sara: 29:33

But also, I think it's important to say that the book never shames any of the other women who are doing sex work. Not that we see a lot of them, right? But there's no kind of undercurrent of, oh, Bella is the good sex worker and everyone else are sluts.

Lilly: 29:51

Right? Yes.

Sara: 29:52

Which I think is important to mention too.

Lilly: 29:54

Yeah, I agree completely. Because then that would defeat the purpose if that was how it handled it.

Sara: 29:59

Yeah, so I do think that this book, despite some of the character views on it, I think the book itself is actually quite sex positive in a way that I wasn't expecting from a gothic novel satire.

Lilly: 30:14

also love that, okay, if Archie was writing this memoir to put himself in the best light possible, he decided that the way to do that would be to be completely chill with Bella's past sex work.

Sara: 30:29

Yeah, he just doesn't care.

Lilly: 30:31

Yeah, and that's, you know, maybe that's the idealized version of him in his own memoir, but he still was like, no, I need to have handled this well.

Sara: 30:41

Well, okay, so here's a question. How much truth, because Victoria McCandless's afterword doesn't touch on all of the events in the memoir. It just says that No, actually, I had all of my memories. I was running away from my husband. Godwin Baxter was a regular doctor who didn't know any secrets to bringing life to people. Like, how much truth do you think that there is to all of Archie's memoir? We know that she did have a liaison with Wedderburn, but do you think that she actually did sex work?

Lilly: 31:23

So, out of her rebuttals, they're all against the, like, over the top supernatural stuff.

Sara: 31:30

That's true.

Lilly: 31:32

was a normal guy. He wasn't some lumbering monster. She was just a lady fleeing her marriage. She wasn't Frankenstein creation. And the fact that she doesn't address it makes me think that, yeah, yeah, of course she did. Because also, in the afterword, when we see, like, her political pamphlets and things like that, she's very much pro, you know, sex education, birth control. She seems like the kind of lady. Who would be like, yeah, of course I did that, and it's fine, why are you being weird?

Sara: 32:01

That's, that's true. She does seem like the kind of woman who would be like that. I mean, I think that you can be pro sex education and all of those things, even in Victorian England, Britain, without having done sex work yourself. But I concede your point.

Lilly: 32:17

I think she would have said, no, that wasn't true, in her list of things that weren't true.

Sara: 32:23

Yeah, fair enough.

Lilly: 32:24

Victoria's rebuttal at the end really threw me for a twist. That is not in the movie at all, by the way. The movie is just the memoir section, it has none of the, like, surrounding framework of being a found manuscript or anything like that.

Sara: 32:39

I want to say that's interesting, but also I think that's very understandable because I think that that specifically would be really hard to capture in a movie format.

Lilly: 32:48

Oh yeah, totally.

Sara: 32:50

So what else was different between the movie and the

Lilly: 32:56

I think the biggest difference, like I said, the plot points are basically the same. However, the characters of Godwin and Archie have very different motivations. In the movie, Godwin is fully a father figure.

Sara: 33:10

No, no romantic aspirations whatsoever.

Lilly: 33:13

Not at all. And Archie even accuses him at one Or not accuses. He like, asks at one point, after he and Bella are engaged, he's like, are you okay with that? I kind of thought you would have wanted that. And Godwin is like, I understand why you would think that. But gross, she's my daughter.

Sara: 33:33

Interesting.

Lilly: 33:34

Which makes it like, very wholesome.

Sara: 33:36

Yeah, that's, like you say, so different from the motivations of Godwin in the book.

Lilly: 33:42

Absolutely, and the Archie in the movie does not try to control her the same way that he does in the book. I mean, there's still some, like, he's pretty repressed at the beginning, so he's like, Oh, sex is scary. But the whole time, you know, when Bella's running around and everything, he's just like, I just missed you. I don't care anything about what you did. I'm just jealous that other people got to spend time with you when I didn't. And it's very sweet. The confrontation with her first husband is also a little different. In the movie, she decides to go with him when he shows up at the wedding. She's very much just like, Oh, new life experience, sure, let's find out what that's like.

Sara: 34:20

Okay, even though that's obviously not what happens in the books, I can see the book Bella doing that.

Lilly: 34:27

Right? And it's so close to the end that it doesn't, like, change the whole story.

Sara: 34:33

Yes.

Lilly: 34:34

In the movie, she finds out that the husband was, like, super abusive. And he tries to stop her from leaving, because she's like, I've decided that you suck and I'm going back to Archie. And obviously he has a problem with that. And in the confrontation, he gets shot.

Sara: 34:50

Hmm.

Lilly: 34:51

And she learns how to transplant brains from Godwin's notes and puts his brain in a goat. No, puts a goat's brain in him. All the way around. She, she puts a goat brain in him. And that's the end of the movie.

Sara: 35:05

Okay, that's very different.

Lilly: 35:08

Yeah, so in the book, the, like, examples of Mad Scientist is that Godwin cut a black rabbit and a white rabbit in half and, like, swapped them, right? So you had a half black and white rabbit and another half black and white rabbit. In the movie, It's, like, half French bulldog, half duck. So when I say whimsical, I mean, like, super over the top silly.

Sara: 35:33

Yeah, that seems like a really random change.

Lilly: 35:37

Well, the whole tone of the movie is very surreal. When Bella and Wedderburn are going to these cities, they're not, like, For example, when they go to Lisbon, it's like a sci fi version, like a steampunk version of Lisbon.

Sara: 35:50

The Wikipedia page did mention that there were a lot more steampunk elements in the movie.

Lilly: 35:56

It makes everything very over the top, in a way that I think works very well for the story, but made the tone of it less serious, in a way?

Sara: 36:05

Yeah. I feel like that's a change that would work in a visual medium, but I don't think it would have worked in the novel. I don't think the novel would have benefited from that change.

Lilly: 36:17

Yeah. Well, I think that was the movie's way of saying, like, please don't take this seriously.

Sara: 36:22

Mmm. Mm.

Lilly: 36:24

in the novel, you get the narrative, like, the narration, which is very biased and makes sure that you know you're supposed to think Wetterburn is a dumbass, right? Versus the movie. Use, like, visual cues to tell you, like, hey, this is over the top and silly. And then, yeah, just that very small change in Archie and Godwin just made the whole thing very, like, sweet and wholesome. My favorite thing, definitely about the movie, and I think it is true to some extent in the book, while Bella is running around through the world, people are generally pretty nice to her.

Sara: 36:59

I do think that she has a good experience traversing the world until she gets to a point where Dr. Hooker and Mr. Astley

Lilly: 37:09

Lord Astley.

Sara: 37:10

Lord Astley

Lilly: 37:12

Lord Rick Astley. No, I'm just kidding.

Sara: 37:16

take her, well it's mostly Dr. Hooker who wants to show her kind of the darker side of humanity and so then she has a bad experience in Egypt, I think it is.

Lilly: 37:26

So that does happen in the movie as well. Those two characters are also pretty different, I guess. The steamboat part, she has a different experience in the movie, but that feels less impactful to the story overall. In the movie, neither of those characters wanted to fuck Bella, so there's that.

Sara: 37:42

That is a change. I mean, I don't necessarily think that Dr. Hooker wanted to fuck Bella. He probably did.

Lilly: 37:49

Everyone did. That was actually the funniest rebuttal, I think, of Victoria's afterwards, was I wasn't some, like, bewitching creature that everyone fell in love with on first sight.

Sara: 38:02

Yeah.

Lilly: 38:04

It's a fun story, it does some cool things with the genre, and the movie is very sweet. I spent the whole time so worried, cause Bella starts the story with, like, the mental capacity of a three year old, or something. And I knew nothing about this movie except that it was artsy fartsy. And I was like, oh fuck, she's gonna get raped. They're gonna do something dramatic with that and it's gonna suck. And they don't. Everyone is nice to her. She's the one manipulating other people. She does not get taken advantage of. And I appreciated that.

Sara: 38:37

It's a nice change of pace, certainly.

Lilly: 38:40

is! Maybe the bar is low, but I was just like, No sexual assault, A Do we have a pet peeve corner, or words are weird? I don't think so.

Sara: 38:54

I don't think so. I mean, I mentioned earlier, but algolagnia is a really weird way to say sadomasochism.

Lilly: 39:01

Yeah, I wonder what the root is for that. Ooh, algorithm.

Sara: 39:04

Interesting.

Lilly: 39:06

Algolia is uh, IT company. I'm sure they love being associated with that.

Sara: 39:10

New Latin from Greek algos, pain, plus lagnia, lust, from lagnos, lustful. The first known use was 1897. So it's actually quite a recent word.

Lilly: 39:22

Is algorithm also derived from the Greek word for pain?

Sara: 39:30

It could be painful just based on math. Wikipedia has a lot more to say about this. No, it's from

Lilly: 39:39

From the system of Arabic numerals. Yeah, it's not Greek. Okay, fine.

Sara: 39:42

Yeah.

Lilly: 39:43

That would have been funny, though.

Sara: 39:45

It would have been funny. Algorithms are often very painful, but.

Lilly: 39:54

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Sara: 39:57

Come disagree with us! We're on most social media, at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at FictionFansPod at gmail. com.

Lilly: 40:07

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Sara: 40:14

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find our show notes and some other nonsense.

Lilly: 40:19

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated.

Sara: 40:23

Bye!