A short religious commentary on Lesson In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Dear Reader,
It has to be said that I had a prejudice towards this book before I read it. This is mainly because in my local waterstones, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus greeted me with its bold flying colours every time I walked in the door on the notorious bedside table book stand. These bedside table books (named as such because they are always put on a small side table at the front of the shop, with a sign that -like a lamp- hovers over the book, displaying the critics’ 5* review of said read), I tend to avoid as I usually find that they are put there directly to cater to the ‘all’ audience. All meaning: those who will buy the book which will then sit on their own bedside table for eons. Call me Elizabeth Bennet because my pride and prejudice almost blocked me from reading my favourite book this far this 2023, and perhaps my favourite protagonist of all time. Meet Elizabeth Zott.
This book is such a testament to great fiction and even greater authors. For a relatively compact book it connects so many genres and overarching themes, that most exemplary authors must spend entire book series writing about to explore fully. I would say a main theme of this book is gender equality – and it should come with a warning of rape and sexual abuse reference as this does arise strongly as a topic not just once, but more realistically rather consistently in its contents. This book reels out in a matter of stages; there is romance, tragedy, maternal bonding, isolation, and conflicting morality all deeply stated in the plot, in a way that in my non-expert opinion is masterful.
Whilst as I mentioned the main theme of the book is gender inequality, with a remarkable feminist lead, the book is also centred very largely around religion within society. I couldn’t help but focus in on this as a theology student. The Christian religion, or more importantly how the Christian practice is used by men to mould and solidify the patriarchy, is continually referenced again and again in the way this narrative spills out. As a strongly placed Agnostic, nothing in my 13 years of education on this subject (as I was quite young when I began to be introduced to the bible in its patriarchal glory as many young girls were), has made me consider atheism more.
This book really does question the chemistry behind everything, such as what attracts us to religion and keeps us within it. It asks why, in such a similar way, we hate when people step out of gender brackets, we similarly are mortified when people slip down the slope of secularism.
This is so well summed up by a line in the book, where a Reverend answers the question of what is ‘an example of an ineffective collision, something that lacked energy and never changed, but still had a big effect.’ as crucially, Religion.
This simply cast open the whole discussion of religion that had been underlying within the text like a sleeping beast. As religion becomes a larger theme within the text, it became clear that like that sleeping beast, religion was the underlying cause of so much of the hardships within Elizabeth Zott’s life.
The patriarchal society she lived in, the reason her child was considered illegitimate and the reason she was even further held back in her field of chemistry- which arguably was already held back so fiercely at the time by man’s refusal to reach beyond the bible to see order in the laws of science.
Whilst I was so fascinated by how much religion ran alongside the theme of gender inequality in the book, in retrospect these two enigmas are so completely fluid, as to ignore one factor would be to not understand either topic completely.
If Garmus didn’t include as much of a religious commentary as she did alongside her main focus of 1950s gender politics, it would be to imagine a world where sexism sprang out of the ground one day, without anyone to blame for it unless for the women who fell victim to its rath all the way through history. For this reason, I chose to write about theism as major theme, as to ignore its presence would feel similarly devoid.
Arguably this may be, why it is religion that forms the current within the river of feminism that this book is set sailed by. Garmus chooses to tackle and unearth the root of the problem, the sleeping beast, that is arguably still keeping women in the box’s society (always religious society) carves out for them. She effectively illustrates how through time we do not climb out of these boxes, into the white man’s world- but simply get air holes punched into our boxes, holes that whilst partially liberate us, are made by sharp needles that usually tear holes in our sides in the process.
This blog is simply a celebration of how well this book was written, and I wished to focus in on the theme of how religion is used within it, because of how excellently I thought the author discussed this from the eyes of the ‘all’. Garmus allows us to unearth the sexist roots of religion through the lens of science, a child, a guilty believer, the good kind of preacher and the bad, and through all this- our own eyes.
For the first time I understand exactly why this book is marketed to the ‘all’ and sits mighty on the bedside table stand in your local bookseller- because it is a scientific fact that all should read it.
Until next time,
Issy.
x
