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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Misogyny and Gender Discrimination
Although she’s a phenomenal chemist, Elizabeth’s career is hindered by constant professional roadblocks due to gender discrimination. The scientific world of the 1950s and 60s was even less welcoming to women than STEM is now. Her male colleagues and superiors consistently underestimate or dismiss her contributions, shamelessly plagiarizing her work at any opportunity. The fact that Elizabeth doesn’t have a PhD is also sometimes used as excuse to keep her in a junior role. The Hastings scientists refuse to let her run her own lab because she lacks a doctorate and prevent her from putting her name to her own papers. However, the only reason she hasn’t defended a PhD is that her thesis advisor sexually assaulted her before she could complete her degree at UCLA. When her boss Donatti doesn’t believe that she’s working on abiogenesis because it’s a doctoral topic, her protestations that she was working on a doctorate are waved away. Fran Frask, the office manager, was also close to earning a PhD before she was similarly assaulted and prevented from completing her graduate work.
Some characters (like Calvin Evans, Walter Pine, and Dr. Meyers) believe in Elizabeth and try to help her achieve her goals despite her gender. These men also behave kindly and equitably to other non-male characters in the story, implying that their support isn’t contingent upon Elizabeth’s good looks. Other men, like Robert Donatti, are of the opinion that Elizabeth is only really of value to anyone because of her beauty and her youth. However, these qualities are the last things she wants to be valued for. Her more misogynistic colleagues—male and female alike—believe that she’s only with Calvin to catch herself a rich husband. This couldn’t be more incorrect; Elizabeth doesn’t want to marry Calvin or anyone else. She refuses when he proposes to her because she believes all of her work would be attributed to him if they became husband and wife. She wants them to be lovers but not to lose her name and her publication history. It’s a concept Calvin accepts only begrudgingly.
All of the other women in the novel also come up against limits imposed by men and gendered violence, and many take inspiration from Elizabeth’s refusal to be intimidated or condescended to. For example, Harriet Sloane’s husband treats her poorly, and she finds companionship and the impetus to change her life in Elizabeth’s orbit. So too does Elizabeth’s daughter Mad, who adopts many of her mother’s more obstinate and less traditionally feminine character traits.
The Power of Education
Elizabeth’s direct, professorial way of speaking and her talent for explaining complex things is the source of her star power. Several characters make remarks about how easy it is to understand her and learn from her. Although she’s been deprived of a complete scientific education herself, she refuses to believe that women are less capable than men of coming up with and testing complex hypothesis. On “Supper at Six” Elizabeth demonstrates the power of education to allow people to exceed their expectations. She doesn’t gatekeep her learning or try to make chemistry seem mysterious and inaccessible, like other scientists in the novel. Rather, her show repeatedly demonstrates that homemakers and housewives are doing chemistry every day, whether or not they know it. On her show, women are encouraged to take their intellectual development seriously. Elizabeth and the people who watch her support each other in learning in the home. For those who need it, there’s also encouragement and solidarity for going back to school to pursue highly skilled careers.
Throughout the novel, Elizabeth also explicitly says that she doesn’t believe women are less willing or less capable of being educated than men. She states it at the Hastings Institute, on “Supper at Six,” and in her instructive, funny notes in Mad’s lunchbox. Elizabeth also refuses to wear the highly sexualized clothing that her misogynist boss Lebensmal insists on for her live appearances, instead choosing to dress in a way that doesn’t make her figure the center of attention. She wants to center the learning experience, and to do so she de-centers her sexuality. She always makes a point of taking audience questions on live TV, demonstrating her trust in the intellect of the married women who make up the vast majority of her audience. This is also why she is so heartbroken when the Life article portrays her as a beautiful TV personality rather than a scientist.
Elizabeth's scientific background allows her to approach problems analytically and often dispassionately. She refuses to take things for granted and encourages the same attitude in her daughter Mad, who’s often in trouble for asking ‘unsuitable’ questions at school. Like her mother, Mad demands understanding in all contexts. This way of experiencing the world, which prioritises inquiry and discovery, frames the acquisition of knowledge as one of life’s greatest joys. Lessons in Chemistry also argues that the pursuit of knowledge is the best way to change one’s life, regardless of gender or circumstance.
Families Made and Found
The family at the center of this novel is a somewhat unconventional one. It lacks a male figure, doesn’t contain a marriage, and is also missing many of the other trappings of the 1960s nuclear American trope. Instead, Elizabeth Zott, her daughter Mad, and their foundling dog Six-Thirty form a family unit that is held together by the strongest sort of chemical bond: love.
At the beginning of the novel, it seems unlikely that this would be the case. Elizabeth has been quite clear that she is uninterested in having children or marrying. However, when Calvin dies and she finds out she’s pregnant with his child, she can’t bear to terminate the pregnancy. Although she struggles with motherhood when Mad is first born, Elizabeth gradually gathers friends and allies around her, and these people become folded into the family. For example, Harriet Sloane begins the novel as a neighbor who’s barely an acquaintance, but she quickly becomes an unofficial family member. Six-Thirty also sees Mad and Elizabeth as his family, vowing to protect them and devoting his life to watching over them. Others drift into this group and stay there, making it clear that it’s not just blood relationships that allow people to feel connected. Shared experiences and beliefs will also irrevocably link people.
By contrast, the “conventional” family itself doesn’t get much positive attention in this book. Married couples abuse each other and cheat on each other in Lessons in Chemistry. Rather than painting an idealized picture of family life, the novel suggests that the kind of partnerships and families that are considered socially desirable are often very flawed. To this point, Elizabeth’s parents were married, but their family was miserable. The only love Elizabeth experienced as a child came from her brother, who died because of his own father’s cruelty and rejection. Calvin was raised in a Catholic boys’ home without access to his parents, and he felt nothing but resentment for the father he believes abandoned him. It’s implied that the priests—his only parental figures—sexually abused him.
Calvin and Elizabeth both lacked conventional parental relationships, and their own lack of a legal partnership or marriage makes the time after his death very difficult for Elizabeth. However, she doesn’t feel that they need to be legally tied together in order to be a family, regardless of what her colleagues at Hastings think of her. This all seems deeply ironic when the identity of the mysterious donor to Elizabeth’s research is revealed to be Calvin’s mother Avery Parker, who has spent years trying to make up for the “loss” of her child. Like Elizabeth, Avery had a baby out of wedlock. It turns out that even though everyone at Hastings was cruel to Elizabeth about her pregnancy, the abiogenesis funding at Hastings was actually coming from a woman who’d gone through pregnancy unmarried.
Healing from Grief and Loss
Many of the characters in Lessons in Chemistry spend a lot of their time grieving the death of a loved one and trying to move on. Elizabeth and Calvin have grown up surrounded by grief, and that seems to transfer itself to the next generation of their little family. When Elizabeth loses her brother to suicide, she feels horribly untethered from the world and is forced to suppress her mourning. The painful, sudden loss of the only person she loves is later horrifically echoed by Calvin’s death. After he dies, Elizabeth is once again left to fend for herself, and doesn’t have Calvin’s influence to protect her. She is utterly heartbroken when he passes, but instead of crumbling she chooses to persevere. This, it turns out, is typical for her. Her irrepressible drive to continue her scientific work leads other people think she’s cold and heartless, as does her painfully misquoted response to the reporter at Calvin’s funeral. She also attempts to exercise away the stress and horror of her bereavement, clocking hundreds of miles on the erg even while she’s pregnant.
Six-Thirty approaches grief from the other end of the spectrum, losing himself in the doldrums of his pain before rousing himself to protect his family. As a failed bomb-sniffing dog, Six-Thirty has so far spent his life feeling guilty about not doing his duty. When Elizabeth adopts him, he decides that protecting her and Calvin is his true purpose. Calvin dying because of Six-Thirty’s leash makes the dog feel viciously ashamed and guilty, and he redoubles his efforts to ensure Elizabeth and Mad’s safety. Other characters also deal with grief, trying to heal in different ways: Mad grieves her father’s absence by making the family tree and researching his childhood, and Avery Parker grieves Calvin by funding the orphanage in which he was raised, then funding Elizabeth’s chemistry research. All of these different reactions emphasize the idea that healing from grief is a gradual and very idiosyncratic process.
