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Summary
Chapters 41-45
Chapter 41: Recommit
Encouraged by Walter and Harriet, Elizabeth tells a shocked audience that she’s made the decision to leave “Supper at Six” to return to full-time research. Elizabeth tells her audience that Mrs. Fillis, the would-be heart surgeon, has completed pre-med training and is now in medical school. There’s thunderous applause. She then cites Harriet's advice about taking time for herself as a key factor in her decision to leave. She thanks the audience, reminding them that they can use the laws of chemistry—which govern everything—to change anything they want.
Chapter 42: Personnel
After leaving the show, Elizabeth finds that Donatti and Meyers’ comments in Life have prevented her from getting job offers. Harriet gets a call from Frask, now head of Personnel at Hastings. Frask invites Elizabeth to Hastings for a meeting regarding a potential job opportunity. The narrative briefly jumps back in time to focus on Harriet, whom it’s revealed has divorced Mr. Sloane, and who has also submitted the original Roth story to Vogue. It’s immediately published. Back at Hastings, Frask introduces , and Avery Parker to Elizabeth, and explains their help with funding her work. Avery asks Elizabeth to come back to Hastings, but she immediately refuses. They’re interrupted by Donatti, who is alarmed to see Elizabeth and Frask but tries to brazen it out. Avery hands him a notice of termination, and tells him that they’re hiring a new head of Chemistry: Elizabeth Zott.
Chapter 43: Stillborn
Elizabeth, Mr. Wilson, and Avery sit in her lab, discussing Elizabeth’s upcoming hire. Mr. Wilson explains that the Parker Foundation came to Hastings because of her, and because of Calvin. Elizabeth immediately connects the dots, and is disappointed: she thinks the job offer is a ruse to make her give them Calvin’s research. Unusually for Elizabeth, this hypothesis is completely wrong. Avery Parker reveals herself to be Calvin’s biological mother, and describes how she got pregnant at seventeen and was sent to a Catholic home for unwed mothers to give birth. She was anesthetized before her delivery, and when she came to, she was told Calvin was stillborn. She believed this for years, until a nurse looking for a reward contacted her and told her it wasn’t true. Calvin was alive, and living at All Saints (but as the reader knows, when Mr. Wilson sought him out there, he was told that Calvin was dead). Avery begins to cry, and tells Elizabeth that she’d like to meet Mad, her granddaughter.
Chapter 44: The Acorn
Shocked and skeptical about this enormous set of revelations, Elizabeth questions Avery about her story. Avery explains how she had tried to find Calvin for years. When she heard from Mr. Wilson that he was dead, she funded a memorial bursary to honor him. When she learned he was alive, she was determined to meet him. The Parker Foundation continues to fund Elizabeth’s and Calvin’s research, but loses track of Elizabeth after Calvin dies. She wanted to meet her at Calvin’s funeral, but mistakenly believed that Elizabeth leaving early was a sign she didn’t love Calvin. Elizabeth protests that she did, and that she still does, and bursts into floods of tears. The women embrace as she cries.
Chapter 45: Supper at Six
Avery tells Elizabeth that Mad sent Mr. Wilson the family tree she had made, wanting to thank him after she discovered Mr. Wilson had helped to fund All Saints. Elizabeth asks what happened to Calvin’s father, and Avery sadly tells her that he died of tuberculosis before Calvin was born. They discuss the possibility of Avery becoming part of their family. Elizabeth tells her that she’s already family—in fact, Mad had written on her family tree that Avery was the “acorn” that started everything. Elizabeth invites her over for supper at their house, telling her that she needs to meet “the rest of the family,” blood relatives and chosen ones. The novel ends with Elizabeth petting Six-Thirty and picking up a pencil to begin her research again.
Analysis
Elizabeth's grief meets its match in this section, as the dramatic revelation that Avery Parker is Calvin’s mother shows she hasn’t been mourning alone. Her decision to leave “Supper at Six” and return to Hastings is a truly transformative moment of grappling with her loss and redirecting her life towards the original passion that motivated all her struggles and successes—scientific research. Avery's story supports and adds to this, as she also experiences grief and loss over a child and a lover. The damage from Avery’s lifelong mourning over a son she never knew and the systemic forces that kept them apart can never be undone. However, she can now step into the arms of a loving family. There are other parallels between her experience and Elizabeth’s, too. Avery also lost her partner when she was very young and knows how Elizabeth feels as a young woman faced with a pregnancy she wasn’t expecting. Their grief and their similar experiences bring them together and allow them to see that Calvin’s presence is still felt and alive in the world.
Elizabeth’s transition from public life as a television host back to professional work as a chemist underscores the importance of education as a liberating force. Her on-screen persona in “Supper at Six” is initially meant to sweeten the dose of educational content she’s giving her audience. By framing her “chemistry lesson” as a fun cooking show, she can impart her knowledge without devaluing the work homemakers do every day. Although it’s rarely overt, she’s constantly challenging the audience to rethink their roles and capabilities. Despite the importance of what she does on “Supper at Six,” returning to Hastings is not a failure for Elizabeth. It’s the realization of all of her most fondly held ambitions, a chance to show her audience that if they apply the lessons she’s given them, they can achieve any goal they want. The impact of education is also emphasized through Avery's dramatic backstory, as the decision to support Calvin's education and teach him rowing—even unknowingly—is what sets him on the path to all of his successes. This last section drives home the message that making education accessible is the key to lasting change. When Elizabeth is teaching homemakers that vinegars are acids and cake bubbles are chemical reactions, she’s proving that it’s possible to begin to remove the barriers to learning that sexism and prejudice have held in place for so long.
With this in mind, the desire for non-male voices to be heard clearly and powerfully is the plot engine that drives this entire final section. There’s yet another parallel drawn here between Avery Parker and Elizabeth. Avery is also not allowed to speak for herself, and has been forced to allow Mr. Wilson to be the “public” male face of the Parker Foundation although she’s the owner. Elizabeth’s struggle for recognition in the male-dominated scientific community is a smaller instance of the broader fight for women's rights. Her cool, cutting last words to Donatti—“You’re just not smart enough”—celebrate the tables being turned. In his ignorance and prejudice, it’s the former head of Chemistry who turns out to be “just not smart enough” to keep his seat.
This final section of the novel also revisits the idea of how families are built. Families do not have to look like cookie-cutter clones of one another; in Lessons in Chemistry, they can be formed by blood and simultaneously constructed by choice. As in the atomic model, there are many different sorts of strong bonds. Avery's desire to connect with Mad, especially after the painful estrangement from her son, shows both sides of this. They are blood relatives, but Avery asks to be in Mad’s life. She doesn’t assume that just because they are relatives Elizabeth will allow her access. Elizabeth is then able to invite Avery warmly into their family because she’s already a member and she allows herself to be chosen. The prospect of a collective, private “supper at six” brings Elizabeth’s TV work full circle. Her version of an ideal supper at home involves all the people she loves most, a group whose connections prioritize mutual respect, love, and shared experiences rather than genetics.
