Calling All Housewives
Summer Book Club | Lessons in Chemistry | Chapters 13-45
This post is part of The Nook Summer Book Club series. We are finishing up our June discussion of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. There are spoilers mentioned below, so please read with caution if you haven’t finished the book yet!
What with traveling and summer camp, I’m cramming the remainder of my thoughts on our June read into this one post, so buckle up!
We last left Elizabeth Zott—underestimated scientist extraordinaire—newly pregnant and essentially widowed, her partner, colleague, and baby daddy having been killed by a freak accident when he slipped on ice. After a whole twelve chapters detailing Elizabeth’s treatment by sexist assholes at work and beyond, I felt slightly annoyed that Garmus used the most obvious plot device known to women—an unexpected pregnancy and single motherhood—to move us into the second phase of Elizabeth’s career and life. Of course Calvin had to die. Of course Elizabeth had to overcome insurmountable obstacles just to be seen as a whole, human person worthy of respect. Just give me a season of Mad Men and be done with it already.
Okay, that complaint aside, I actually love this book. The omniscient narrator—who is so keenly aware of each character’s interior life that she even speaks for the dog—is delightfully sharp and blessed with humor so dry you might miss it if sarcasm isn’t your second language. I nerd out over the science stuff, too—mostly because I’m fascinated by people whose minds actually work that way—and I love how Elizabeth, even in the most difficult moments, is pragmatic and rational to a fault. I sometimes wish I were more like that, but—alas!—I am a highly-sensitive person with OCD. My nervous system is constantly overloaded. (About which I’m sure Elizabeth would have something fascinating to say.)
Moving into the latter 3/4ths of the novel, we watch Elizabeth build tenuous connections with other characters that eventually become solid relational foundations, both for her and her (appropriately named) daughter, Mad. Elizabeth becomes a dear friend, a warm and protective—if not overly logical—mother, and a successful television host for a cooking show designed to educate housewives on both nutrition and the science of cooking. Her character arc is uniquely interesting because she doesn’t appear to change much at all over the course of the novel; she simply becomes more courageous. I sure wouldn’t mind that sort of character arc in my own life.
One of my favorite scenes is when Elizabeth interviews a mother in the audience who admits to having given up her dreams of being in medicine, declaring herself, “just a housewife.”
Elizabeth responds plainly. “There isn’t a woman in the world who is just a housewife.”
Even a housewife—a role women were largely limited to at that time and which now sits on a strange spectrum of either complete devaluation or something akin to worship (will we ever just, I don’t know, appreciate it?!)—is many roles at once:
mother
chef
nurse
financial manager
teacher
pastor
friend
event planner
custodian
chauffer
“Just” never does our work justice, and Garmus makes this case to the reader again and again and again.
In that same scene, Elizabeth then encourages the mother to study medicine at the library and take the MCAT, despite the woman’s protestations that it’s too hard. To this, Elizabeth replies with brilliant simplicity, “And raising five boys isn’t?”
There’s an essential feminism here rooted in the practical truth that women are fully capable human beings, end of sentence. I appreciate the pragmatic approach to equality of the sexes in this book, which offers up emotional sincerity rooted in the facts of science. It’s as simple as inherent dignity, with no political jargon required, because the truth of the matter is it really is that simple.
This idea is repeated in various ways throughout the remainder of the book. Elizabeth fights for women by simply being who she is. As a result, other women—Harriet, Mad, the cooking show audience—find the strength to do the same in their own particular ways.
As a work-from-home mother of two, a big takeaway for me from Lessons was a renewed sense of dignity about the many hats I wear each day, both in housewifery (is that a word?) and in writing. Women are complex, full of life and many worlds, even if our roles seem simple to those around us. As mothers and wives, our work doesn’t have a beginning or an end each day; it’s just our life. I feel compelled to write Garmus a thank-you note for this alone, and for making a career-driven protagonist like Elizabeth as nuanced in her perspective as she is straightforward with her words.
The other story at play here, of course, is that of family and identity. Mad is a copy and paste of her mother but she has a curiosity about the interpersonal workings of human relationships that Elizabeth largely appears to lack. This curiosity about her father and his legacy is what eventually ties up the story with—hooray!—a happy ending. The revelation that Calvin’s real mother was his benefactor all along isn’t that much of a surprise, but it paves the way for a satisfying conclusion. Elizabeth, brave enough now to take some big chances (the knife in the purse! 👊🏻), gets her long-awaited due in the lab where she was once a victim and outlier, and it’s wonderful to witness.
I was quite surprised to see Lessons in Chemistry turn out this way because the first quarter of the book—while not short on tropes—seemed too dark in its tone and narration to follow the standard for upmarket or genre fiction. In the end, though, I found this novel to be the very best of its kind: the reader is challenged to think outside the well-paced plot and to consider the implications of seeing the people around us with only one label. Surprisingly, it accomplishes this goal without the customary navel-gazing found in other books like it, a skill I have not yet managed to cultivate as an author.
Well done, Garmus. You’ve produced a story I feel certain I will think about again and again and again.
Thank you so much for joining me for our first Summer Book Club read! In July, we are reading Maame by Jessica George, so if you couldn’t be here in June I hope you’ll do so this month. Go ahead and grab a copy of Maame here or check it out at your local library.
Share your thoughts on Lessons in Chemistry in the comments below! And if you’re new here, would you please take a second and introduce yourself in the Book Club group chat? We want to get to know you!