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Bonnie Garmus's novel Lessons in Chemistry’s title belies an important fact about the book: it is usually talking about two things at once. The pun in question refers to the literal “lessons in chemistry” the protagonist teaches, and also to the lessons in interpersonal kindness and compatibility that she learns from Calvin Evans, the love of her life. The author transports readers to the America of the 1950s and 1960s, where we follow the haphazard journey of the chemist Elizabeth Zott. She’s a woman whose life defies the era’s traditional expectations, and the book follows her progression from a scientist to a television star and back around again. The novel is set during a period in American history where societal expectations for women were fixed, predominantly domestic, and extremely difficult to defy. In the postwar society of the 1950s, women were most often expected to fulfill the roles of dutiful homemakers and mothers. The professional sphere was largely the domain of men, with women's contributions usually undervalued and often completely overlooked. Higher education (beyond the joke of leaving college with an “MRS” degree) and ambitious career aspirations for women were exceptions rather than the norm.
Against this backdrop, the gorgeous, genius, but awkward Elizabeth is an extreme outlier. She’s a young, single woman with a career in organic chemistry, during a time when such a path was so rare as to be basically unheard of. Her presence in the chemistry lab and at the Hastings Institute of Science is an act of defiance against the narrow path women’s lives were usually expected to take. This by no means suggests she always succeeds, or that her actions even in this fictional world immediately change everything for the better. Elizabeth’s potential, like that of the women before and after her, is still restrained by the glass ceilings of the time. She’s just much less restrained by the end.
Stripped down to the studs, Lessons in Chemistry is an exploration of the ease with which those in power can prevent others from achieving equality. It also examines the resilience required to challenge the status quo. In doing this, the author reflects on how women themselves sometimes reinforce the gender roles that limit them. Although there are women who support Elizabeth, like Harriet Sloane, there are many more who do not. For instance, Frask, a personnel manager with whom Elizabeth regularly butts heads, begins as an enforcer of women’s lower status in the working hierarchy of Hastings. She has a great deal of internalized misogyny, which stems from a traumatic experience when she was a graduate student. Because she was unable to overcome the barriers to entering the field as a psychologist, and because she’s been raised to believe that she could never do the same work as a man, Frask regularly throws Elizabeth to the wolves at Hastings. She’s the person who gets Elizabeth fired, because she spreads the gossip that the unmarried female chemist is pregnant with her deceased boyfriend’s baby. However, as the story progresses, Frask begins to see that she was wrong to have treated Elizabeth as an enemy. Her eventual alliance with Elizabeth, cemented when she writes a letter to Life that restores Elizabeth’s reputation, turns out to be instrumental in bringing her career back full circle to full-time research.
Masculinity in Lessons in Chemistry also presents itself in various forms. Here too, however, men who support women in their professional aims are few and far between. While there are some allies to women, like Calvin, Walter, Reverend Wakely, and Dr. Mason, there are far more men who actively take advantage of both women’s work and their own male privilege. Donatti's aggression and thievery, Boryweitz’s casual plagiarism and dismissiveness, and the viperous cruelty of the police officer who interviews Elizabeth after she is raped are all examples of this second type. They think that whatever women—whether it be their accomplishments or their bodies—have is theirs to take.
Even though she loves Calvin, Elizabeth is absolutely determined never to lose anything else to a man. Her choice not to marry is not just a personal preference, but a professional strategy to preserve her identity. She doesn’t want any more men’s names on her work. When Calvin suddenly dies, Elizabeth suffers the severe social repercussions of having an unmarried sexual relationship in the 1950s. People at Hastings treat her with extreme callousness. They always assumed she was only with Calvin for his fame and that she “deserves” to be ashamed of herself. After Calvin's death, Elizabeth channels her grief into her work, smashing up her kitchen to create a private lab, and later using her television platform to educate and inspire homemakers. Because the world of chemistry in places like Hastings is run by unwelcoming bigots, Elizabeth creates her own soapbox to speak to, teach, and learn from women. She refuses to be sexualized or to infantilize her audience, taking her responsibility as an educator seriously. This seriously affronts her producer Phil Lebensmal, but Elizabeth is resilient enough by this point to deal with his small mind and bruised ego.
Elizabeth’s version of motherhood is just as experimental as her cooking and her work in abiogenesis. Rejecting the typical self-sacrificing role of a mother (much to the alarm of others around her), Elizabeth approaches parenting with an open mind and a reliance on the scientific method. This approach is an affront to the era’s usual methods for child rearing, but it’s also a strategy to nurture Mad Zott’s own analytical and independent thinking. It’s not just in parenting that Elizabeth uses trial and error, either. Whether perfecting a recipe for spinach bake or trying to teach her dog Six-Thirty vocabulary words, she’s always testing out her ideas. She observes, hypothesizes, experiments, and then assesses the outcomes, treating life’s challenges like chemists treat experimental failures. Even the worst mistakes can be reframed as useful data, and the worst days as useful lessons.
Elizabeth’s family, composed of friends, her child, her child’s grandmother, and her dog Six-Thirty, defies the conventions of the era's typical family unit. Like her relationship with Calvin, the bonds she has with her loved ones are rarely official, but are binding and permanent all the same. The inclusion of Avery Parker into this unconventional family confirms this. Although Avery is Mad’s biological grandmother, she’s also a total newcomer to the Zott supper table. Her bond with Mad and Elizabeth is formed a little by blood, and a lot by choice and circumstance.
Through Elizabeth’s story, Garmus communicates that personal strength and intelligence can effectively defy society’s expectations if the right support is there. The sexism and gender violence that Elizabeth faces in every workplace, her efforts to stay true to her convictions despite pressure to do otherwise on “Supper at Six”, and the shattering grief of Calvin’s sudden death are all impossible-seeming obstacles. However, once she finds a community that supports her and applies her brilliance and defiance (as well as the stubbornness and stamina she gains during on her endless sessions on the erg) she’s no longer alone in a world that detests smart, outspoken women. By the end of the novel, she’s finally able to do what she has always wanted: be employed as a scientist first, and a woman second.
