Bella Baxter

Bella Baxter is one of protagonist of the novel. She plays a predominant role in Archie McCandless’s first person sections of the novel. Chapters 14 - 18 are written from Bella’s point of view, as they present her letters to Godwin Baxter during her time abroad with Duncan Wedderburn. According to Archie’s and Alasdair Gray’s accounts, Bella Baxter came to be when “surgical genius,” Godwin Baxter, used the human remains of Victoria Blessington “to create a twenty-five-year-old woman” (ix). Although “local historian Michael Donnelly” insists that Archie’s theory about Bella’s origin is “a blackly humorous fiction into which some real experiences and historical facts have been cunningly woven,” Gray interprets Archie’s story as truth (xiii). This is why he bookends Archie’s account with his own writings. Gray is desperate to control how others see Bella and how her story is disseminated...