"I'm a changeable feast": Poor Things and the female body

    The picture above is taken from the 2023 film Poor Things, a fantastical Frankenstein-esque story that follows the transformation of protagonist Bella Baxter as she travels the world. In this sepia image, salacious lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) drapes himself over Bella (Emma Stone).  In contrast to his appearance of grandeur and haughtiness (complete with perfectly coiffed hair and moustache), Duncan's gaze appears pitiful, his posture small. He seems to plead with Bella to heed his words, like a dog would whine to its owner for attention. His arms coil tightly around her shoulders, unwilling to let go. Distinct from Duncan's muted shades of grey and beige is Bella, dressed in a gaudy ruffled yellow dress, layered over a blue shirt and pink ribbon. A drawing pad sits in her lap, but her actions are hindered by Duncan's overbearing presence. She is unmoved by Duncan's actions, face turned away from him and set in an annoyed and cold glare. She grips her pencil tightly, refusing to look him in the eye. Her dark hair and brows look severe against the muted background. 

    In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, author Mary Douglas draws on Durkheimian ideas of sacred and profane from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to understand our society's conception of dirt and disorder. Dirt, she states, is "matter out of place" (Douglas 2002:44). Seen this way, our obsession with dirt is not tied to irrational ideas of fear, but rather our very human concern with organization. Making sense of our world necessitates classification: the placing of things, behaviors, and thus people into categories that designate them as pure and polluted. However, Douglas clarifies, this process is not the enforcement of absolute truths but the making of our environment conform to ideals. In chapter seven of this novel, Douglas elaborates on the boundaries of society, using the body as a metaphor. Here she explains that margins (like that of the body) are where things can become altered and bent, where things can change form and transcend categories. 

    The ideas of purity and organization outlined by Douglas are reflected in the trajectory of Bella in Poor Things: Bella is woman that has the mind of a child after her caretaker switched her brain with her fetus'. The lawyer Duncan seduces her and the two set off on a romantic trip on which they have frequent sex. Though her initial motivations appeared a simple desire for carnal satisfaction, her travels open her mind to the suffering in the world and she meets intelligent people that introduce her to philosophy. She eventually begins working at a brothel for shelter and money, where she begins a relationship with a fellow prostitute and begins learning about socialism and politics. At the end of the film, Bella's ex-husband threatens her at gunpoint with genital mutilation, to which she forthrightly objects and incapacitates him. She eventually pursues medicine and becomes a doctor, becoming the head of her household. 

    Returning to Douglas, she conveys in Purity and Danger that the assignment of impurity and category is an act of melding the environment to one's ideals. But it is necessary to note that those able to impose their ideas on the world are those in positions of power, while those without are forced to conform to categories regardless of their logic or suitability. This is ever true for Victorian England, in which this film is set. Riding on the tail-end of the Industrial Revolution, the family structure was experiencing great shifts: as men rose to be the sole wage-earners of households, women were relegated to the home, shut out from the workplace and made dependent on their spouses. Here we see the work of dirt, demarcating roles and putting things in their rightful place, with women in the domestic sphere and men in the public sphere. However, this rigid line drawn by society is called into question by Bella. She is promiscuous and unashamed of her body, a clear representation of her toeing the line between what is sacred and profane–what is and is not accepted as the bounds of her gender and sexuality. Bella does not regard her body as porcelain or something to be hidden, but rather a vehicle and symbol of freedom, happiness, and power. 

    Her boldness is exemplified on the dance floor: Bella is taken by the music, allowing her body to move every which way in an eccentric and exuberant dance. Her body jerks and flails but she clearly enjoys herself. Duncan inserts himself into the mix, grabbing her waist and forcing her limbs to move with him to mirror the surrounding dancers to which Bella resists. She instead takes control, putting him in somewhat of a chokehold and forcing him to follow her instead. When Bella joins the brothel, too, she douses herself in the profane and rolls in the dirt, yet maintains her dignity and continues her intellectual pursuits. Then, there is the climax of the film, in which her husband aims to strip her of her bodily autonomy and control over her sexuality, something which allowed her to break free of the stifling existence she once had, sheltered at home, and gave her new perspective on her own abilities and ambitions. Bella's victory over him is a sweet one, as she triumphs over the arbitrary categorizations of gender that corralled her. 

References:

Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.

Nishijima, Atsushi. 2023. From The Seattle Times. Retrieved April 4, 2024. (https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/11242023_Movie-Poor_Things_1542042.jpg?d=1536x1024)