#98 Learning Cruel Lessons in Chemistry
A review of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Unsplash image by Ben Moreland
I know this book has been wildly popular this year. Several interviews with the author came through my social media feed. Stacks of the book were being sold over the summer at the local Costco. A movie adaptation was coming to one of the streaming networks. This made me curious about what I might be missing. People love it. I did not. I did not hate it, but it could have been so much better.
I will not spoil it for those of you who might see the movie and want to read the book. I am not a big fan of being lied to. This book takes a different approach to lying to the reader. The author does not lie directly to the readers. She introduces us to her main characters who have been lied to their entire lives. The characters are placed into terrible and unusual family circumstances that seem to serve as useful plot devices.
The protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, has extraordinary progressive ideas for a woman growing up in the middle of the 20th Century. The author voices all the rules and misconceptions of the patriarchy through the characters the female protagonist interacts with. Societal rules dictate that women cannot become scientists, must marry, and of course, must not conceive or raise a child out of wedlock. Additionally, they can only participate in ladylike sports and obviously competitive rowing is not one of them.
Unsplash Image by Mitchell Luo
Nearly all men of power in Elizabeth’s life attempt to assault her sexually and nearly all abuse and underestimate her. It’s not just the men. Even the women, who are so deeply socialized in the norms and ideology of the patriarchal society, try to sabotage Elizabeth. They judge her non-conformist choices and ambitions quite harshly. Welcome to America in the 1960’s. We have not changed all that much.
The voice of Elizabeth feels mechanical as she plods through life with futuristic ideals and cannot understand why all the other people stuck in the system cannot see things her way. Although she is portrayed as a beautiful woman, Elizabeth fails to act in the way of a “femme fatale.” She defies all the stereotypes of how women typically use and exploit their beauty to attract and to manipulate men. The men and women around her are totally stumped.
That hook of science and honesty becomes the selling point for a cooking show that Elizabeth is hired to host. She presents recipes in the language of a chemistry and controlled acid-base reactions. She presents an empowering message to her female viewers that they seemingly have never heard before. Women viewers hear that they are capable and that their work planning and serving family meals is important. They hear that they should be setting aside time to care for themselves in addition to their families. Elizabeth becomes a media influencer before there ever was such a thing.
Unsplash Image by Cooker King
The idea of the television show that Elizabeth uses to teach chemistry and self-care to her audience of housewives is a clever and a sweet fantasy. Maybe our daughters need to read this story so that they know what the ladies of the former era went through. Women could not even complain or report the sexual abuse or harassment they endured because no one would ever believe them. The old-fashioned morality looks antiquated, unfair, and silly.
Author Bonnie Garmus’ personal story as a successful first-time novelist at the age of 60 is inspiring as well. The author became tired of being dismissed and passed over at her job before angrily stepping aside to sit down and write the first chapter of this juggernaut book. The concept and the message of empowerment blaze brightly. Couldn’t we get there without all the lies?
Do we need the surprise at the end to tie it all up? Perhaps that is what modern readers need. We follow story threads that intertwine and we need something fantastic to pull them together. We need to hear the very complex thoughts of all the characters, including the family dog. All along we know that some mystery person lurks in the background. The set up for a surprise is irresistible.
Surely young readers just think, why didn’t the characters in the book just dig in a bit more to do their research? They could not. People did not have computers on their desks or in their pockets. We are reminded of how limited we were before the internet that now makes information searches and images appear in seconds right at our fingertips. Garmus’ characters had to trust the people in their lives and with rare exceptions, their families, supervisors, co-workers, and clergy were the most untrustworthy.
Photo by Jeremy Beadle on Unsplash
I think many readers will enjoy the book and it would certainly make a great holiday gift. Some men may feel the discomfort of criticism as the patriarchal system that undeniably benefits them, is systematically exposed. I will share my favorite quote that highlights the progressive thoughts and conversation of Elizabeth and her neighbor, Harriet.
“According to Harriet, men were a world apart from women. They required coddling, they had fragile egos, they couldn’t allow a woman intelligence or skill if it exceeded their own. ‘Harriet, that’s ridiculous,” Elizabeth had argued. ‘Men and women are both human beings. And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behavior. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological; it’s cultural. And it starts with two words: pink and blue. Everything skyrockets out of control from there.” (page 237)
Indeed
