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“Evolution’s missing,” Calvin persisted, riffling through the pages.
“That’s enough, Calvin.”
“But—”
The ruler cracked down hard against his knuckles.
This quotation comes from a section of the novel which describes Calvin’s early childhood. Growing up in the All Saints Catholic boys’ home, Calvin’s education only contains materials that the priests who teach him find appropriate. Calvin, who is already interested in science, is troubled when he discovers that the textbooks the boys use have had the chapters on evolution sliced out. When he questions this, he receives a physical punishment: ironically, the priest uses a scientific instrument to hurt him. Moments like this fuel Calvin’s desire to become a brilliant scientist. The fact that the priests refuse to teach evolution at All Saints only increases Calvin’s drive to find the answers elsewhere.
Do surgeons smile during appendectomies? No. Would you want them to? No. Cooking, like surgery, requires concentration. Anyway, Phil Lebensmal wants me to act as if the people I’m speaking to are dolts. I won’t do it, Harriet, I won’t perpetuate the myth that women are incompetent. If they cancel me, so be it. I’ll do something else.
Here, Elizabeth is in the middle of an argument with Harriet about whether or not she should accept the demands Lebensmal is making for “Supper at Six.” Elizabeth is firm in maintaining her serious approach to teaching her viewers on the show. Rather than relenting, which would suggest that the lessons she’s teaching aren’t serious, she compares the focus cooking demands to that of a surgeon operating on a living person. Lebensmal’s suggestion implies that she should treat her audience as if they lack intelligence, and that the point of the show is entertainment over education. She refuses to reinforce the outdated idea that women are not capable of learning at the same pace as men, and she is prepared to have “Supper at Six” cancelled if she can’t use it to teach chemistry.
Stability and structure,” she repeated, looking out at the studio audience. “Chemistry is inseparable from life—by its very definition, chemistry is life. But like your pie, life requires a strong base. In your home, you are that base. It is an enormous responsibility, the most undervalued job in the world that, nonetheless, holds everything together.”
On “Supper at Six,” Elizabeth addresses the studio audience, drawing a direct and explicit comparison between chemistry and homemaking. She reiterates the idea that just as chemistry forms the foundation of all of life’s processes, homemakers provide an essential “base” for the household. Throughout her time on “Supper at Six” Elizabeth has tried to teach her audience that they’re performing chemical processes, tests, and experiments all the time as they go about their daily lives. She wants them to take away these lessons, but also to learn how undervalued their role is maintaining the stability of daily life. This educational comparison of homemaking work to the base of a pie is supposed to remind her viewers that they are capable of continuing to learn. After all, it can’t be any harder than the full-time jobs they already have.
