The Anhedonia of "Lessons in Chemistry"

Why I found no joy in a book (ostensibly) about cooking

Glamorous stock images of women in science from the 1940s.

I first learned about Lessons in Chemistry the way I usually learn about pop-culture culinary cross-overs: through friends and family who think of me as their “foodie” friend. “It’s all about home economics,” they said, “and the science of cooking. And cooking shows! Aren’t you writing about all of that in your dissertation?” I wasn’t familiar with the book beyond its premise—an ambitious young chemist, thwarted at every turn in the early 1960s world of laboratory research, becomes the star of a science-oriented cooking show. I didn’t know that it had received rave reviews from multiple book critics and had already achieved bestseller status; the former surprised me given the latter, especially when I saw the book’s cover, awash in pink and featuring the flatly designed illustrated face of its glamorous lady chemist (notably wearing cat-eye glasses, not lab goggles). It seemed like a cheeky, pointed look at mid-century sexism in the workplace, a perfect “beach read” with equal dashes of domestic creativity and feminist ambition. All of that would have been enough for me to pick it up, just to be in dialogue with what others thought would clearly be my bag. Yet even one chapter in, I texted a friend to tell her that I was already “feeling a sense of anticipointment”. And today, when I finished it, I finally figured out why: this is a book in which cooking—and the non-professional lives of women—are both discussed as important, but inherently disrespected.

The novel speaks, at least on a surface-level, to crucial elements of first- and second-wave feminism: the right for educational and professional advancement, women’s opportunities to be something other than merely decorative; the importance of paths to economic and personal self-determination outside of marriage and motherhood. Elizabeth Zott, the novel’s protagonist, fights for all of these things in her career as a talented chemist, even after she falls into a passionate love affair with an acclaimed (and equally idiosyncratic) colleague at her laboratory. Yet rather than developing a character whose actions feel wholly contextualized and enriched by her historical context, writer Bonnie Garmus treats Zott as a living, breathing anachronism. She starts the novel by saying so:

“Back in 1961, when women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around in seat-beltless cars without giving it a second thought…[Zott] rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over.”

By treating Zott as an exceptional women, Garmus ultimately treats every other woman in the novel—even those with genuine character arcs and moments of pathos—as unexceptional, and more damningly, unthinking in their acceptance of the status quo. After her lover dies and Zott is unjustly fired from her laboratory, Garmus does not linger in the genuine struggles of single motherhood, but makes Zott a naturally gifted parent, raising a prodigy child and turning her kitchen into a laboratory without a second thought (or a call from social services). That same pivot occurs when Zott, struggling to find work, is offered the chance to host a cooking show on a local television station, and during the first live taping, jettisons the cue cards to explain the process of cooking via the principles of chemistry.

There is a brief moment at the top of Zott’s culinary career when she gives voice to the idea that cooking is a valuable exercise. “I take cooking seriously,” she says in her first taping, “and I know you do, too.” But then her framing takes a turn:

“It is my experience that far too many people do not appreciate the work and sacrifice that goes into being a wife, a mother, a woman. Well, I am not one of them. At the end of our thirty minutes together, we will have done something worth doing. We will have created something that will not go unnoticed. We will have made supper. And it will matter.”

What Zott—and by extension, Garmus—is insinuating is that when most women cook dinner, it is hardly worth remarking upon. Yet when Zott cooks, she is enacting scientific processes, we must stop and take notice. Only when cooking takes on the framework of unemotional, rational thinking can it become worthy of respect. She signs off each show with a closing remark: “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.” It’s a cheeky feminist riposte to the idea of women always being of service, but it’s also a blithe elision of the idea that a woman could find even a moment of real satisfaction in the context of conventional domesticity.

Zott is initially approached to host the cooking show because she’d be capable to speak, as her producer suggests, “woman to woman”, which she is wholly unenthusiastic about. She claims to respect housewives, their time, and their intelligence, but also patronizes them by suggesting that the only way they’re going to earn anyone’s respect is to step away from the work of managing a home, or professionalizing that work in both action and language. (Among the many implausibilities of the book is the notion that home cooks would begin referring to their table salt as sodium chloride.) Zott is told that her job as a star of daytime programming is to wake up her viewers, yet she is constantly stating that no one takes cooking seriously unless it is presented as a serious task. “[The station executive] wants me to act as if the people I’m speaking to are dolts,” Zott tells her (sole) female friend. “I won’t do it….I won’t perpetuate the myth that women are incompetent.” Yet by constantly emphasizing that any other kind of domestic work is a form of mindless drudgery, she inadvertently suggests just that: women’s work has to be reframed as intellectually-intensively as men’s work in order for it to matter.

I don’t entirely understand why women—or food people, for this matter—love this book, or how they can stand being told that the only way for the work of cooking to be important is if it is framed through the scientific method. Not once we ever hear of Zott talking off-camera about why she loves or finds satisfaction in cooking, or, for that matter, why she loves science. We never see her preparing a dish with any degree of thoughtful consideration, or even eating something and marveling at its chemical balance. Perhaps she falls into the trap identified by the cultural theorist Roland Barthes, in which “we do not see our own food or, worse, we assume that it is insignificant.” Or perhaps she has so internalized the demeaned status of conventional womanhood that she doesn’t see her new career as having inherent worth without filtering it through the lens of scientific accomplishment. We may never know, for the inner life that fuels her passions, chemical or gastronomic, is entirely absent; Garmus leaves that for us to imagine by way of what other characters say about her. As a result, she comes off as a thought experiment of enacting women’s work in a man’s world, succeeding not because of her ability to change norms for women, but her (ahistorical) refusal to abide by them.

If only Garmus had given a moment of credence to the women who have used science to inform and promote their culinary careers—Shirley O. Corriher, the famed biochemist and cooking expert, and Elizabeth Cawdry Thomas, a crucial co-organizer in the first conferences on molecular gastronomy in the 1990s—she might not have assumed that intellectual rigor and culinary charisma were incompatible. Indeed, she might not have worked so hard to create a wholly dispassionate, rational protagonist, but rather someone who embraced her own subjectivity, in and out of the kitchen. Perhaps this is just the continued fate of works, fiction and non-, that turn their attention to the domestic sphere in search of something that isn’t just “women’s business.” I look forward to seeing how the forthcoming television adaptation of the book is released, especially with Brie Larson on hand to give subtle depth and emotion to the flat feminist perfection of Zott. But at least for the moment, I’m finding this take on women at the intersection of cooking and science to undercooked, and it’s left me frustrated and hungry for more.

Recommendation: A bit belated, but last Friday night we took a long drive out to Newbury, MA, to catch Circus Smirkus on one of its final tour stops of the year. Growing up as an enthusiastic creative arts summer camper (aka more of an “indoor kid”), I knew lots of kids who trained with Smirkus, the only tent-traveling youth circus in the United States. Every performer in the show, from the trapeze artists to clowns to jugglers, is between the ages of 10 and 18, and they are astonishingly good. This year’s production is a take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and my kid was absolutely mesmerized by the show, and by the possibility that one day she too could fly through the air with the greatest of ease. There are only a few shows left, so if you’re in the greater New England area and need an excuse to head up to Maine, you couldn’t find a better one than this…

The Perfect Bite: On our way out of town this weekend, we stopped at B.T. Smokehouse in Sturbridge, MA, for some surprisingly great barbecue (with or without the Massachusetts context). We shared a platter of brisket, pulled pork, and sides of dirty rice and baked beans, but what really stopped us was the fried chicken—perfectly crunchy and richly seasoned, with six different barbecue sauces on the table ready for dipping.

Cooked and Consumed: Two dishes that came together this past Tuesday with surprising ease and success (and put the dregs of our CSA box to good use). First, Helen Rosner’s chicken and schmaltzy cabbage in a cast-iron skillet. Somehow I never got an education in cabbage-cooking (if only I’d been born in the Midwest), but treating cabbage as a perfect tray- or pan-roasting medium, especially under pan drippings and served with crunchy bread, has changed my appreciation for it. Second, this lovely salad of zucchini matchsticks with lots of fresh herbs, shaved pecorino, and slivered almonds from the NYT, all dressed in tons of crushed capers and lemon juice. Abandoned summer zucchini is no longer a problem…