Godwin Baxter
Poor Things (1992) illustration, courtesy AGA
Character Description: Godwin Baxter
Godwin Bysshe Baxter: the greatest medical man the Empire had ever seen (maybe aside from his progenitor, Sir Colin who was the first medical man to ever be knighted). Godwin, a monstrously ugly, kind gentleman, cares for nothing more than those who cared for him. A true servant of the art of science. Or perhaps not? His dubious motive for creating Bella to remedy a 'woman-shaped emptiness that ached to be filled', casts a rather more monstrous shadow on this most humble of men. An anomaly, a beast, a creator, a destroyer, an enigma, a father(?), a God (in more ways than one).
Written by Scott Hay
In the opening line of contributor Scott Hay’s essay Godwin Bysshe Baxter: A Man, A God, A Monster, Hay asks: who exactly is Godwin Bysshe Baxter? The question is apt. As Hay’s title suggests it is not easy to box Gray’s monstrous doctor into a neat category. He is made of multiple parts: he is man and god and a monster too. So how do we unpick Gray's tripartite Victorian doctor?
Godwin is part man: He is, after all, the product of man’s creation. More specifically one man's creation - Alasdair Gray. Many of Gray’s socialist perspectives filter through Godwin’s dialogue, as the following two examples from many serve to illustrate: '[19th century] public hospitals are places where doctors learn how to get money off the rich to practice on the poor’ (p17); ‘[Godwin] argued fiercely that manual work be the primary training for every British profession’ (p198). Just like his maker, Gray's doctor also shares an all-consuming dedication to his art. The character even relates the two disciplines: ‘Medicine is as much an art as a science’ (p16). Both men practice their art in domestic settings - Godwin at 18 Park Circus; Gray at his residences in the West End of Glasgow, latterly at Marchmont Terrace.
Godwin is part God: His name ‘God’ ensures this as does his (re)creation of Bella Baxter from the dead body of Victoria Blessington (nee Hattersley) and the brain of her unborn child.
Godwin is part monster: Godwin is monstrous in appearance. He has an ‘ogreish body’ (p15), and owing to an unexplained lack of bodily parts (namely his pancreas), Godwin relies on concocting his ‘digestive juices by hand’ at the dinner table (p72). Fairly monsterous I think we can agree. The character and the novel in which he appears are also partially drawn from a monstrous source text: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).
Godwin is man and God and monster: God's name is, of course, a pun that finds numerous punchlines within the pages of Poor Things. His monsterous face, however, is based on that of a man - Gray's close friend, writer Bernard McLaverty who also had a hand in the novel's creation...
In many ways, the novel Poor Things shares something of Godwin’s multiplicity. It too was born out of multiple parts, which were pulled together to make a whole. So, before you read Scott Hay's essay, you might want to learn a little more about the making of Godwin Baxter as told by Alasdair Gray and Bernard McLaverty.
The following text is an extract from Alasdair Gray's A Life in Pictures (2010), pp. 241-42.
'While wringing my brain for new story ideas I woke up one morning from a peculiar dream. In what seemed many years ago I saw a young woman, seated and staring out a window at children playing in the back green between high tenements. A dim figure beside me said “she will not be able to think before she has memories to think with”, and I realized the young woman had only just come into existence. This suggested a version of the Frankenstein story without the horror. Thinking this might become a short story I began to imagine a Victorian genius who could fabricate such a woman, then a less clever friend who would tell his story. Suddenly I was writing perhaps my funniest novel, Poor Things. As with 1982 Janine, I kept thinking it would end with the next chapter or two, but after several unexpected twists it only stopped on the 320th page. It blended areas of my life I had never expected to use – my love of the great Victorian radicals and Fabians, Victorian Glasgow with the coal-fired industries that flourished long after I was born in 1934 and my People’s Palace Day’s with Elspeth King and Michael Donnelly. When visiting Bernard MacLaverty for our monthly game of chess I also read him chapters of Poor Things, He suggested my heroine’s brain should come from her unborn child. I first thought this a repulsive idea, then saw it as a necessary one. Like most accidental workers I was also helped by accidental discoveries. Someone gave me Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise, a plea for universal tolerance written in 1779. William Jacks, a leading Scottish industrialist had translated it, paid William Strang to illustrate it, and Maclehose & Co., printers to Glasgow University, to issue it in 1903. Strang was from Dumbarton ([my wife] Morag’s home town) and a famous etcher and illustrator. I attempted pastiches of his paintings for Poor Things, though these could not suggest the power and subtlety of his lights and shades. Beside a mastery of character, Strang was also a master of the grotesque. One etching shows a woman leaning out over the jaw of a skull.
As a frontispiece of this novel I drew Morag in the same position.
Poor Things: Morag as Bella Baxter (1992), courtsey Kat Rolley and Morag McAlpine
I caricatured Bernard MacLaverty to make a face for my huge scientific genius Godwin Baxter.'
Poor Things: Sketch of Bernard McLaverty (for character of Godwin Baxter) (1992), courtesy AGA
To hear Bernard MacLaverty read from Chapter Four of Poor Things, recorded at Gray Day 2023, click on the playbar directly below. Scroll a little further to the next playbar to listen to McLaverty recount his involvement in the making of Poor Things.
Recording from Gray Day 2023 Live featuring Bernard MacLaverty, 25 February, Òran Mór, Glasgow, courtesy AGA
Godwin Bysshe Baxter:
A Man, A God, A Monster
By Scott Hay
Who exactly is Godwin Bysshe Baxter? Well, he is the son of the greatest medical man to have ever blessed the British Empire, Sir Colin Baxter. ‘The first medical man to be knighted by Queen Victoria’ (according to McCandless) (p15). Godwin Baxter is the product of Sir Colin’s love for spreading his tutelage among the servant class of his household. ‘It is said that Godwin’s father got him late in life by a domestic servant [Mrs Dinwiddie]’ (p15). Baxter was given the fruits of his father’s achievements, an education, an estate, and his name, but Sir Colin gave Godwin much more than just that. To understand Godwin, we must first understand his childhood. Godwin was introduced to the art of science from the moment of his creation. Born into this world, surrounded by the implements through which he would one day achieve his own form of greatness. Godwin was born into a life of analysis, examination, and assessment, which awoke, or extenuated, his hereditary interest in all things anatomical. ‘Each morning and evening he [Sir Colin] recorded my temperature and pulse, took samples of my blood and urine, then analysed them. By the age of six I was doing these things for myself’ (p19). Godwin was raised to be analytic, pragmatic, practical, and to assess the world before him as if it were an experiment. For the greater part of his life, he was in fact his own greatest experiment, treating himself throughout his entire life, for the sins of his father.
Morbid anatomy, specimens, samples, doses, measurements, examination, analysis. This was life for Godwin Baxter. A true servant to the art of science, everything was done in the pursuit of discovery. Godwin believed that the best way to truly engage with your art was to live it, to practice it, to be it. Godwin, with no real harm in his heart sees everything and everyone around him as part of his experiential analysis of the world and all the bounties it contains. Godwin is a pure soul, neither malicious nor benevolent. We first see Godwin’s commitment to the sciences laid bare when we are introduced to Mopsy and Flopsy and we witness the artistry he performs with his surgeon’s knife:
'The most obvious oddity in the first was the colour of the fur: pure black from nose to waist, pure white from waist to tail. Had a thread been tied round the body at the narrowest part all hairs on one side would have been black, all on the other side white. Now, in nature such straight separations only occur in crystals and basalt -- the horizon of the sea on a clear day may look perfectly straight, but is actually curved. Yet by itself I would have assumed this rabbit was what any one else would assume -- a natural freak. If so, the other rabbit was a freak of an exactly opposite sort: white to a waistline as clean and distinct as if cut by the surgeon's knife, after which it was white and black to the tail (p23)'.
Godwin, unimpressed, or maybe sullen, feels like he could have done much better with his experiment. Godwin states that he ‘has done nothing wonderful’ (p23), while McCandless recognises it for what it is, hailing Baxter a ‘greater saviour than Pasteur or List’ (p23). Baxter dismisses McCandless’ claims and explains his own personal fascination with the subject. As we learn more about his dalliances in the world of morbid anatomy, we learn more about the man himself.
But what more can we learn from taking a closer look at Godwin's pet rabbits? Contributor Teya Zeinalabidin investigates.
Character Description: Mopsy and Flopsy
Mopsy and Flopsy are briefly alluded to in Gray’s introduction as ‘the queer rabbits’ (p13). They are treated in more depth by McCandless when Godwin invites him into his home in Park Circus. McCandless sees two rabbits, one ‘pure black from nose to waist, pure white from waist to tail...the other rabbit a freak of an exactly opposite sort’ (p22). He Describing the line between black and white sections of their fur as being ‘as clean and distinct as if cut by a surgeon’s knife’ (p22), it becomes clear McCandless reaches a conclusion about how these ‘queer rabbits’ have come to be.
Within the plot as a whole, the rabbits can be regarded as narrative devices. Until McCandless meets Mopsy and Flopsy, Gray’s writing offers a realist account of two medical students at the University of Glasgow in the late 19th century. The only real oddity is McCandless’ and Godwin’s social reserve and the latter’s physical peculiarities. Once the rabbits are introduced, however, the reader’s perception of the genre begins to shift. The rabbits set up an element of magical realism in the novel that paves the way for Bella’s (re)birth in 'the making of Bella Baxter’ (p32). Owing to this, the reader might imagine the 'thread' that McCandless envisages being tied around the narrowest part of the rabbits' bodies - delineating starkly juxtaposed furs - as a metaphorical thread that ities two elements of the text: the magical and the real.
But nothing is ever black or white and certainly not in Poor Things. After months apart from Godiwn, McCandless returns to Park Circus to find that Mopsy and Flopsy are, indeed, ‘pure black, the other pure white’ (p28). McCandless urges himself to not reach any ‘fantastical conclusions’ (p28) for what he retrospectively rules was only a hallucination. In the novel’s wider context, especially in light of Victoria’s appending text, the rabbits' story serves as a symbol of the fallibility of the voices that contribute to the retelling of events.
Written by Teya Zeinalabidin
Poor Things (1992) book jacket. courtesy AGA
One of the most fascinating moments in Poor Things is the moment where McCandless is given an insight into the mind of Godwin Baxter at his home in Glasgow's West End. Readers enter the prestigious 18 Park Circus where Godwin, like his father, made his home his workspace. McCandless describes the interior of 18 Park Circus as being strange and filled with a multitude of things. One description that allows us to analyse the psyche of Baxter a little closer is 'a xylophone, harp, kettledrums, an erect human skeleton and glass jars folding pickled limbs and bodily organs… their brown morbidity was contrasted by surrounding vases of daffodils, pots of hyacinths and a great crystal bowl’. (p29). Baxter’s studies into the world of morbid anatomy are such an integral part of his life that they latch onto and bleed into every aspect of his home and his psyche. Scattered among festering organs are pieces of art, works of great literature, furniture, his dogs, and house servants. Baxter sees all parts, pieces, and aspects of life as a piece of his sempiternal experiment, each another part of his grand designs … much like another great creator we all know … Working in a domestic setting was something very prominent in Alasdair’s life. Oftentimes his work would leech and bleed out all over the abode. Here, I think we can compare Godwin and Alasdair directly. Godwin has made his house his office, operating theatre, and more, but has still managed to cram in the niceties of comfortable living, decorating Park Circus eclectically. This domestication of the working environment is something many of Alasdair’s friends have spoken of. Take for instance the quote from Bernard MacLaverty in the video below, who upon meeting Alasdair and Morag toddling up Byres Road, noticed the Persian rug furled up underneath Alasdair’s arm. When asked what the rug was for Alasdair replied: ‘That’s to help Morag get over the more difficult bits!’ (Alasdair Gray Archive, 2022, 0:45).
Gray Tales, Day 4 (with Bernard McLaverty) (2022), filmed by Kevin Cameron with thanks to Creative Scotland and D8, design by Neil McGuire, courtesy AGA
INTERLUDE
Gray’s long-term collaborator, artist Nichol Wheatley, with whom Gray worked on his Òran Mór mural (2004) and Hillhead Subway Mural (2012), offered his own intimate perspective on Gray’s working practices at Making Imagined Objects: The 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference (2021):
'Alasdair saw himself as a servant of art. In that, in many ways, he only existed to serve the art that he made. To that end timetables, budgets and other considerations were of secondary importance to the art that he was trying to express. This obviously was not confined to his pictorial art. Everyone who had dealings with Alasdair knew off his disdain of deadlines, however most of us recognised this as being the price of working with a truly remarkable artist and writer. Alasdair would do anything to make the novel, the drawing, the play, the poem, the article, the mural the best that he possibly could' (extract from Nichol Wheatley’s paper ‘Alasdair’s Practice’ presented at Making Imagined Objects: The 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference (2021).
K
nowing what we know about the monstrously ugly, kind, and intelligent man that is Godwin Baxter, it can be hard to define if his genius is monstrous or God like. If we are to look at his crowning achievement, his magnum opus, his most revealing action, the creation of Bella Baxter, we can analyse many aspects of his character and how he operates internally. Baxter comes into ownership of a corpse. A drowned corpse of a pregnant woman. Baxter, doing what he does best, takes the life of the foetus using his surgical skills and the forbidden knowledge passed down to him from his father, and gives it back to the dead body of the twenty-five-year-old. Creating life from death. Baxter himself comments on his intentions, and preparedness, when he finally comes into possession of the corpse that would complete his research. ‘My childhood hopes and boyhood dreams, my education and adult researches had prepared me for this moment’ (p33). When McCandless is first introduced to Bella, and he witnesses her beautiful form and accompanying childlike mentality, he is appalled, shocked, horrified, and abhorrently against Godwin’s creation, and Godwin’s reasoning for the creation of Bella. McCandless claims that Baxter is a beast and seeks 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 young woman’ (p36). Baxter defends himself and his decisions and is candid with McCandless stating: ‘I cannot remember a day when I did not feel inside of me a woman-shaped emptiness that ached to be filled’ (p38). Baxter further shows his emotional want by stating that ‘I needed to admire a woman who needed and admired me’ (p39). All of Sir Colin’s teaching, the attention from his nurses and companionship from his many hounds still left Godwin wanting. Baxter yearns for companionship more than anything else.
Poor Things (1992) illustration, courtesy AGA
Godwin takes a leaf out of the book of Genesis, channels his inner Viktor von Frankenstein, and creates life from death. He births Bella Baxter and intends to educate her, to let her see the world, to be forever under his wing, accompanied and observed at all times. Here we see the controlling nature of Baxter’s personality come into play. He wishes to control, and audit Bella’s experiences as to always allow himself to be the only player in the shaping of her worldview. However, Bella proves more rambunctious than Godwin or McCandless could have imagined. She is a true spirit; she imbibes herself with every pleasure and sensation the far corners of the world have to offer. There is much more to be told about Bella but for the sake of Godwin, I shall delve no further into it.
Godwin creates life from death, an incident which we could spend hours morally debating. One, if not two lives being lost, created another. She enjoyed all there is to enjoy, and endeavoured to make the world a better place. Godwin was selfish in his actions, admitting this to Bella, ‘I was selfish … I wanted to win your love for more than I cared for the scorched and broken victims of heavy industry’ (p195). Godwin shows the entirety of his soul in this moment by admitting his intentions to Bella This moment, again could be compared back to the meeting with Mopsy and Flopsy, Godwin’s first successful experiment. Godwin created Bella for selfish reasons, for companionship, for love, for science, but his selfish reasons dissipate and the pangs of responsibility, the responsibility of fatherhood, possibly, ring through his being. Bella does not resent her God, she thanks him, she praises him for making her as she is: ‘You made me strong and sure of myself, God, by teaching me about the fine and mighty things in the world and showing me I was one of them’ (p195). Baxter knows that he could not teach Bella about everything in the world, the filth, the madness, the craziness, and so he lets her go and allows her to lead her own life.
Is he a God, or is he a monster? The victim, becomes the victim, becomes the victim, at the hands of Godwin Baxter. The broken body of a suicidal woman, ripped from death and thrust back into a world of deceit and madness. The soul of the babe, pure and innocent, moulded into a woman of the world. The jilted lovers. The forgotten father figures. Who can we trust throughout the tale? Are we to truly believe the recollections of Mr. McCandless, with his penchant for dialogue? Or do we believe Godwin, and McCandless, and who they claim to be, what they claim to be … or perhaps Victoria McCandless, ex Bella Baxter, MD? In her letter to posterity, Victoria describes Godwin as a ‘big sad-looking man … but that animals, small people, hurt and lonely people, all women (I repeat and emphasize it) ALL WOMEN AT FIRST SIGHT felt safe and at peace with him’ (p259). We are given varying degrees of insight into the character and life of Godwin Bysshe Baxter, each with a varying degree of honesty and playfulness. It is up to us as readers to piece together this man, to compile individual aspects of his being together into a gigantic heap, to stitch and mould contrasting ideas alongside one another. Again, it is up to us as readers to analyse the monstrous genius of his art and his character.
Godwin Baxter is the exemplification of the tortured artist, tied to their work, obsessive, pragmatic, compulsive, and exuberantly enthusiastic about its role within the world. A true servant of the art of science, fully committed to his craft.
Poor Things (1992) illustration, courtesy AGA
There are, of course, many ways of answering the question Scott Hay posed at the start of his essay: 'who exactly is Godwin Bysshe Baxter?' It is a question contributor and Clinical Psychologist Stuart Cooney, seeks to answer by taking a psychological approach to Gray's monsterous doctor.
Godwin Baxter: Psychological Formulation
By Stuart Cooney
Poor Things’ monstrous Godwin Baxter is a fascinating and complex character, who plays a pivotal role in shaping the stories of Bella Baxter and Archie McCandless. In chapter two of Poor Things we are given an insight into Godwin’s early life and this gives us the opportunity to speculate on how these experiences may have shaped him into the character we meet. To explore Godwin’s character, I have used an approach called psychological formulation.
Formulation is a tool used by Clinical Psychologists in therapy, to collaboratively develop an explanation or hypothesis of an individual’s experiences and difficulties. This approach draws from psychological theory. Formulation is used to help people make sense of their experiences, and understand how they might find themselves stuck in current patterns or difficulties. This can be very helpful for setting goals for therapy.
The diagram you'll see at the end of this introductory text, presents a formulation of Godwin Baxter and uses a format from a psychological therapy called Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). Using this approach, we are able to consider Godwin’s character and the journey he takes us through the pages of Poor Things. I have used this method to explore Godwin’s early experiences and the environment that he has grown up in. The formulation in the diagram, considers the impact that this may have had on how he sees himself and others. In this we consider the impact of growing up in the shadow of his father, and in a home where the only warmth and affection he received was from family pets. We can speculate how this could shape his view of himself and the world and also establish the fears or threats that he may hold. For an individual to protect themselves from these deep fears, they are likely to develop and use defensive strategies or safety behaviours to protect themselves. For Godwin, a key safety behaviour is his life’s devotion to his experimental medical work, perhaps motivated by a desire to live up to his father, Sir Colin’s legacy or to fill that 'woman-shaped emptiness'. As we would expect, these safety behaviours come with consequences, however unintended they may be. Moreover, this is likely to feed into the ways in which Godwin views himself, confirming his beliefs and playing into his key fears, with his escalating medical experimentation creating a conflict in Godwin of feeling both a god' but also 'monstrous' and 'damnable'. As can be seen in the formulation below, this leads to a vicious cycle of safety behaviours that he struggles to break out of.
Readers of Poor Things will be well aware of the conflicting account of events that Gray introduces towards the end of the novel with the letter from Victoria (Bella) McCandless. Victoria’s letter is far kinder to Godwin than McCandless account, which forms the main text of the novel. As a reader, we are uncertain as to what the true account of events is: 'You, dear reader have now two accounts to choose between'.
In the introduction and final note of the book, Gray creates uncertainty and conflict regarding the veracity of the reports from Victoria and McCandless and it is possible that both are unreliable narrators. The psychological formulation of Godwin Baxter that is presented here is informed entirely on the account of Archie McCandless but it is interesting to also consider a far different Godwin Baxter, based on the limited information Victoria gives us in her letter. In her version of Godwin, she questions McCandless’ representation of Godwin as strange and monstrous:
'Why did my second husband describe Godwin as a monster whose appearance made babies scream, nursemaids flee and horses shy? God was a big sad-looking man, but so careful and alert and unforcing in all his movements that animals, small people, hurt and lonely people, all women (I repeat and emphasize it) ALL WOMEN AT FIRST SIGHT felt safe and at peace with him'.
Furthermore, Victoria contests some of the facts of his earlier life regarding his mother, who she claims was part of his life and that 'Godwin loved and acknowledged his mother'.
The use of psychological formulation in therapy can be a hugely illuminating and powerful tool to help make sense of our experiences and our own story. This can be an interesting device to apply to literature, to explore character in a deeper way. It is important to highlight however, that this approach, like any literary interpretation, is speculative and subjective and based on my own interpretation of the novel. Nevertheless, I hope this journey into the psychology of Alasdair Gray’s work is helpful to reflect on the complexities of such a gruesomely interesting character.
Character Prompts
What does Godwin’s view by others say about the power of appearance?
What does Baxter’s wish for Bella not to see him in his weak, dying state say about him as an individual?
How does Baxter’s education influence Bella’s physical, intellectual and social growth?
What does Baxter’s experiments and his self interest in creating Bella say about the idea of male medicine and the female body?
Get involved! Share your response to the promts using #PoorThings
Prompts written by Grace Richardson and Janaki Mistry
