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Summary
Chapters 19-22
Chapter 19, December 1956
Baby Mad grows up in a permissive, low-consequences environment, where Elizabeth allows her to explore and learn by touching and doing. This is all much to the dismay of Harriet, who’s sure that she’ll cut herself or shock herself one day. Despite Harriet’s concerns, Mad thrives, especially because Six-Thirty is carefully guarding her. Elizabeth’s teaching methods mean that Mad learns voraciously and quickly. They also create a symbiotic relationship where both mother and daughter learn from each other. Dr. Mason comes to visit and persuades Elizabeth to row with his team. She’s very resistant but ends up being very glad to have joined.
Chapter 20, Life Story
Elizabeth returns to Hastings because she needs a job to support herself and Mad. She gets one, as Donatti knows she’s a huge asset. However, she’s forced to accept a lower position than she previously held, which stings, and she also has to humble herself in front of the smug Donatti, which feels even worse. There are complications at home too. While Mad is already reading and is an exceptionally gifted toddler, she struggles with social interactions. Elizabeth worries that Calvin’s shyness is heritable, and so she sneakily enrolls Mad in kindergarten by altering her birth certificate, hoping that being around other children will help Mad socialize.
Chapter 21, E.Z
Elizabeth is settling back into her role at Hastings, but she's given the responsibilities of a lab tech rather than those of a chemist. Her return to Hastings is as unpleasant as she’d feared, especially as her paycheck matches her new, diminished position. Frustrated, she goes into the bathroom to pull herself together, and unexpectedly gets into an argument with Frask. Elizabeth and Frask exchange insults, losing their tempers and shouting at one another. Their argument leads Elizabeth to tells Frask that she didn’t get her PhD because she was attacked by Dr. Meyers, the man supervising her graduate research. Frask then reveals that she was also sexually assaulted by her advisor and kicked out of a doctoral program, and the two women have a surprising moment of connection.
Chapter 22, The Present
Elizabeth tries to follow up on the mysterious investor linked to her research, but she discovers very little. Frask, who has now warmed up to Elizabeth significantly, glumly reveals she’s been fired for gaining too much weight. As an act of revenge against Hastings, she offers to help Elizabeth in a defiant parting gesture. They steal the boxes of Calvin’s research from the Hastings storage facility, putting Elizabeth back in sole possession of his work and the work they did together.
Analysis
Elizabeth has always faced condescension from her colleagues at Hastings, but it’s undeniably worse when she returns after Calvin’s death. There was a great deal of jealousy and unpleasantness surrounding their relationship anyway, but after he passes, the modicum of protection he gave her has also disappeared. Elizabeth finds herself the subject of gossip all over again, and her abilities and achievements are blatantly disregarded. She returns to a workplace that belittles her contributions because it’s her only option, and her proven capabilities as a chemist are meaningless to the misogynists in charge at Hastings. Moreover, the conversation she and Donatti have when she asks him why she has been brought on as a lab tech is full of the smug condescension of the satisfied misogynist. Donatti is delighted that Elizabeth has to ask him for a favor, which he emphasizes with the casual use of the nickname "Luscious," here. He rubs salt in the wound by telling her that this time she can convince everyone she has “earned her place,” instead of “riding on the coattails” of her famous partner. Donatti even goes so far as to tell her she can beef up her meager lab tech salary by taking a stenography course. He’s deliberately assigning her all of the most menial and least technical jobs at Hastings in order to break her spirit.
The shouting match that Elizabeth has with Frask in this section also reveals the true colors of a Hastings colleague’s gender politics. Frask has been a thorn in Elizabeth’s side the entire time they have worked together, dismissing her as a woman trying to get above her station. This seemed to be in the regular run of the casual workplace sexism of the 1960s, which was perpetuated by people of all genders. However, when Elizabeth presses her, she finds out that she and Frask have had opposite reactions to the same experience. They were both sexually assaulted in a way that permanently drove them out of getting their PhDs. Frask’s response was to accept the conditions that her abuser laid on her, giving up a career in psychology to conduct more traditionally feminine activities. Frask was frustrated by Elizabeth because of her talent and good looks, but also because of her tenaciousness. Instead of being cowed by the oppressively sexist environment at Hastings, Elizabeth used her traumatic experiences as fuel for her scientific ambition. It’s also painfully ironic that Frask, who made sure everyone was scandalized by Elizabeth’s pregnancy, is dismissed from Hastings because of a physical reason herself. In Lessons in Chemistry, it seems that any bodily change considered unfavorable or unattractive is enough of a reason to take away a woman’s gainful employment. Even in professional environments, women’s bodies are constantly under intense, unfair scrutiny, just one of the many obstacles they face in pursuing success.
Although Elizabeth hates the idea of the world treating Mad cruelly, she does teach her young daughter to do some very intense scrutiny in her own right. Elizabeth's approach to teaching Mad through experiential learning causes Mad to interact critically with every facet of her world. Mad’s accelerated learning, the novel implies, is partially a result of genetics and partially due to the way the adults in her life relate to her. Elizabeth lets her touch things, break things, and read things in ways that Harriet Sloane finds odd and sometimes alarming. Although Mad is a precocious early reader, her engagement and critical thinking can also disconcert the adults around her.
