***"Rebecca Reviews" examines contemporary books, films, television shows, and other cultural products through the lens of the generational saeculum. These are not sponsored posts; I borrow or purchase each item with my own funds and there are no affiliate links here. The opinions expressed on this blog are entirely my own. Regardless of my recommendation, please do your own research and decide what you're comfortable consuming.***
Once upon a time, the famous suffragette and Algonquin Round Table writer Alice Duer Miller penned a collection called Are Women People? The idea that women deserved the vote by virtue of their humanity and citizenship may have been radical at the time, but Miller used humor and satire to pillory her opponents. Later, she would use empathy and creativity to influence the involvement of Americans in World War II with the her story-poem The White Cliffs.
The example of Alice Duer Miller's life and work illustrates three truths in literature: First, literature can be, and often is, very influential. Second, the writing and plot need not be first-rate to capture an audience's imagination and spur them to action. Third, the nobler goals of suffrage and equality need not be reached by sacrificing one's humanity. Women are people. So are men. But in Lessons in Chemistry*, the popular and award-winning novel by Bonnie Garmus, it's hard to know who the humans are because the world they inhabit is so alarmingly bleak and hopeless.
LIFE IN PLASTIC
The story of Lessons in Chemistry is simple enough. Act One: A brilliant and beautiful female chemist is oppressed, assaulted, and stolen from throughout her early career. Act Two: The woman achieves fame as host of a cooking show on afternoon tv. Act Three: She leaves it all behind to be true to herself.
It's a common enough trope, this millennial "hero's journey", where being a real woman means tying one's identity to a career and opinions, rather than one's faith, values, or moral character. "Do what's right for you" or "Live your truth" obscures any question of self-sacrifice or virtue, because in a post-postmodern world, there is no objective truth. Everything is a dead end, so look out for number one!
This dog-eat-dog mentality features relentlessly in the story's characters (including the "humanized" dog, Six-Thirty), who made this book such an emotional slog-fest. I don't know the last time I spent six hours with so many miserable people, and I hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon. They are selfish, lying, gluttonous, jealous, cowardly, and unrepentant. I kept waiting for the moment when one of them would do something actually self-sacrificing and brave. After all, Lessons in Chemistry takes place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where the majority of G.I. Generation men encountered by protagonist Elizabeth Zott would have experienced either the deprivation of the Great Depression or the horrors of World War II and the Korean War. But instead of behaving like heroes and survivors, the males in this novel are either arrogant, sexist, bullies or cowardly, ineffective weenies. Are these men people?
Then there's the women. As the 1950s bridged into the 1960s, the Silent Generation began to exert pressure on the home space, encouraging women to break out of their "little boxes" by exploring new careers, new loves, and new lifestyles. But this shift was a gradual one, brought about by increased introspection on the meaning of a life lived in service to social codes that seemed to have lost meaning in the post-Crisis era. That simply doesn't jive with all female characters of Lessons in Chemistry, who exude victimhood and hatred, pursuing their personal agendas with unquestioning #girlboss enthusiasm. Chief among these is Elizabeth Zott. Zott doesn't have deep, unmet desires for personal fulfillment. She has goals. In that respect, the book's oft-cited sport of rowing is perhaps an apt metaphor for this sort of story: "Sit down, get to work, and never look behind you 'til you cross the finish line." Are these women people?
ANSWERS IN GENESIS
I suppose what concerns me most is Lessons in Chemistry is not really a story, but a narrative. It does not have a dynamic character; Elizabeth Zott is, in essence, the same unyielding, unhumbled, and frankly, unqualified person in the end as she is in the beginning. While Zott's final "chemistry lesson" to her television audience is that "Chemistry is change," she herself does not change at all. Instead she learns that she is special, and even though she has no undergraduate degree and only a few years' experience in a lab, she deserves to be promoted to Head of Chemistry thanks to the funding of her late lover's rich mother. Zott is a winner.
Why is she so deserving? Well, because she's wicked smart, of course. Elizabeth Zott is working on abiogenesis. That's right, she's trying to recreate the origins of life itself, having ruled out the existence of God completely (the book is rife with bitter barbs against Christianity and Catholicism). While the idea that a scientist could be an atheist is far from shocking, I am disturbed that this is yet another display of arrogance and pride masquerading as heroism. It's the same idea that has allowed #TechBros to pilfer millions from the economy in startup and crypto scams, because somehow our culture has conflated bravado with bravery. The fact that so many readers love this book is evidence to me that our culture has been sadly taken in by the greatest lie of all time: YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL, AND YOU DESERVE IT.
Don't ask why, or how, or what happens next. Live for the moment. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Just do it. Hedonism meets nihilism, in a hopeless slurry of pleasure, meaninglessness, and self-love. Sadly, this isn't just a terrible way to die; it's a terrible way to live, not only for what it does to you, but what it does to others. That's a point that Lessons in Chemistry never explores, because to do so would butt up against the economic principle that every benefit has a tradeoff (or to put it in scientific terms, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). In other words, it would force the author to confront the truth: that a society full of selfish people is hell on earth.
HUMBLE PIE
In addition to offering a truthful explanation of the origin of life and the consequence of "having it all", the Bible's book of Genesis also gives an example of what happens when society is saturated with selfish people:
"The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. [...] Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth." (Genesis 6:5, 11-12).
That's right, the *whole earth* had to be reshaped in a global flood because sin gave way to wickedness and violence. Even founding father John Adams understood the dependence of society on virtue when he said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Society is transactional by nature. We're dependent on the grace and goodwill of other people to get through the day in peace, but they're dependent on us too. The golden rule is worth its weight, because it works. If all we can offer is lies, hatred, and violence, we should expect to reap exactly what we sow.
But what if everyone else is already so mean? Look at Elizabeth Zott, the neglected, abused, oppressed and overlooked scientist. She has to fight so she doesn't get hurt again!
To that I can only ask, what is Elizabeth Zott fighting for? Why does she fight? She's not afraid. She's not insecure. She's not ignorant. She doesn't have a larger motivation outside herself (love, justice, truth). She's simply ambitious, and that's hardly the stuff of a hero. Diamonds are made through heat and pressure. Elizabeth Zott is already tough and beautiful, as the novel reminds us constantly, so what need has she to be humbled? Lessons in Chemistry is simply a commercial for the ideals it espouses. Unlike the simplest of folk tales, this book doesn't give anything useful for living a better life or understanding the world as it is.
Being a woman in the workplace is hard. Managing a home is hard. Parenting is hard. Life is hard. That doesn't mean you have to be hard too. The first step towards making a better world is being a better person. And if you can do that, you might just find someone saying, “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”
Boy, wouldn't that be nice?
---
*Content Warning: Be advised that Lessons in Chemistry has multiple references to sex, abuse, and pornography, one rape scene, another attempted rape scene, and a generous sprinkling of foul language. Proceed with discernment.*