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Summary
Chapters 30-32
Chapter 30, 99 Per Cent
Elizabeth cautiously asks Mad about the photo attached to her family tree, and asks her why she claimed to be a descendant of several famous historical women. Mad reminds Elizabeth that all women share 99% of their DNA, and Elizabeth corrects her, reminding her that it’s actually 99.9%. Walter calls her to commiserate about Mudford continuing to teach their daughters the next semester, and to tell Elizabeth that Phil Lebensmal is angry with her. She says she wants to meet him in person, but Walter tells her never to do that. The next day, Elizabeth is infuriated when she sees that Mr. Sloane has given Harriet a black eye, and provocatively tells her audience that the soup the show’s sponsors supply is a good vehicle for poisonous mushrooms. Lebensmal is furious, shouting at Elizabeth and telling her she’s fired. Elizabeth fights back, and he exposes his genitals to her as “a part of her exit interview.” Elizabeth reaches into her handbag and pulls out her 14-inch chef’s knife, and Lebensmal faints.
Chapter 31, The Get-Well Card
It turns out the fainting spell was a heart attack, and Lebensmal is hospitalized. Walter and Elizabeth discuss what’s going to happen next with “Supper at Six,” worried that they will be canceled. Elizabeth tells him what really happened with Lebensmal, and reveals that she found multiple offers of advertisers and evidence of syndication in his office while he was passed out. She tells him that they’re now in charge. Walter takes over the network, also organizing an enormous get-well card to be signed by the office for Lebensmal. Many of the messages in it are cruel or condemning, including the one Walter writes before dropping it in his outbox.
Chapter 32, Medium Rare
Mad and Harriet deceive Mad’s school to attend the taping of Elizabeth’s TV show, even though she’s expressly told them not to. At the studio, they encounter a long line of eager would-be audience members but are almost turned away by a parking attendant. Once inside, Mad is thrilled to see Elizabeth presenting the show confidently and scientifically. Walter recognizes Harriet and Mad, and his secretary takes them to his office. Mad innocently tells him how they got into the studio, and Walter explains why Elizabeth didn’t want her to come to the shows: she was concerned about protecting Mad’s privacy. Later on the show, Elizabeth responds to a question about saying grace by telling the audience she’s an atheist. This was an exceptionally risky move in the 1960s, as the immediate deluge of ringing phones in Walter’s office demonstrates.
Analysis
On “Supper at Six” Elizabeth makes a conscious decision to use her platform to educate. She’s cooking, but she’s also teaching chemistry and commenting on women’s roles in the home and the wider world. She introduces the language of chemistry—cleverly disguised within the context of everyday events—to familiarize women with its terms in a familiar setting. The atomic model, in this section, becomes a metaphor for marriage. Atomic bonds, with their different strengths and categorizations explain types of relationships. “Sodium chloride” gets sprinkled on eggs, instead of salt. By doing this, Elizabeth is subtly rebelling against the accepted wisdom that confines women to domestic roles. She refuses to believe that their intellectual capabilities are less acute than men’s.
Moments like Elizabeth's public encouragement of Mrs. Fillis, and like her brave refusal to lie about believing in God on live TV, imply that she believes her audience will understand her and take her seriously. Part of the reason that Lebensmal is so furious about the changes Elizabeth makes to the show is that he thinks women are stupid. Men like Lebensmal doubt that women can understand the things Elizabeth is discussing, and believe that they need simpler content.
It's not very often that poisonous mushrooms like Amanita phalloides get discussed as ingredients in cooking shows. When Harriet comes over with a black eye courtesy of Mr. Sloane, Elizabeth is so infuriated that she discusses poisoning the soup she’s cooking on TV that night. As usual, she also broadens the point she’s making for her audience, implying that this sort of soup would be helpful “to share with your next-door neighbor...who goes out of his way to make life miserable for his wife.” She’s not actually suggesting that people murder the men in their lives. However, this interlude does tease the idea that if the women of a household are in control of all of its nourishment, being “fair-minded” in one’s treatment of them is not a bad idea.
This veiled threat antagonizes Lebensmal to the point of insanity. When he calls Elizabeth into his office, it becomes clear why Walter had told her never to meet with him alone. In a painful repeat of her sexual assault by Dr. Meyers, Lebensmal decides to “put her in her place” by exposing himself to her and waving his penis in her face. When Dr. Meyers raped her at UCLA, Elizabeth fought back by driving the “seven inches of her number 2 pencil” into his stomach, mirroring the “seven inches of him” that he had forced into her. When Lebensmal assaults her, Elizabeth makes a much more overt threat than her bitter joke with the mushrooms. She carries her chef’s knives with her, as many professional cooks do. When she reaches into her bag and pulls a 14-inch blade out, Lebensmal is so shocked he has a heart attack. Elizabeth takes her power back in this moment, without actually stooping to the level of hurting or frightening him. She uses her mind to solve the problems that men cause her for living in a female body
Lebensmal’s get-well card, filled with cruel messages and condemnations, shows Walter that he wasn’t the only one with misgivings about Lebensmal. Walter is happy to send this card full of bile to the hospitalized producer because it signals the start of a new, fairer regime. KCTV is still going to be run by a man, but Walter is definitely an improvement, and at least tried to prevent behavior like Lebensmal’s from persisting unchallenged.
