Imagination and (Historical) Reality: The Victorian Age in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things

Currently, there seems to be a revival of interest in the Victorian age, and especially the fin de siècle, throughout Western cultures. Reasons for this are manifold and may include the search for the origins and the parallels between Victorian times and several topics, themes and problems of our own end of century. Moreover, both ages appear to share a preoccupation with history. This fascination with notions of history and with Victorianism also reverberates in contemporary British fiction, as can be seen in the Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things. The concept of history and historical truth is very much in the centre of this book. By using multiple perspectives on the story as well as fantastic elements Gray emphasizes the ultimate unreliability and subjectivity of any (historical) discourse, thus making a point that relates to broader postmodern theories. On the other hand he ironizes exactly those literary and cultural theories. There is, finally, another aspect to his novel: the Glaswegian or Scottish dimension. The book can be read as a plea for a creative imagination of the Glaswegian and Scottish pasts, thus forming part of the collective project of Gray and his fellow Scots to “imagine Scotland”. This belongs to the search for national identity, which currently is - in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe - such an urgent topic.