Lessons in Chemistry: An intersectional look at Elizabeth Zott

 

Lessons in Chemistry is a 2023 Drama Miniseries released on Apple TV based on the award-winning novel by Bonnie Garmus. Set in the 1950s, the series focuses on main character, Elizabeth Zott, and her journey as a woman chemist, the ONLY woman chemist in her laboratory and city. Being set in a hyper-traditional time period, the series not only explores the inequalities women faced in the home, but through the identities of chemist Elizabeth Zott explores the difficulties of navigating a patriarchal profession, and the pressure to conform to societal femininity standards for motherhood, dress, and attitude. These challenges are only in one of her identities, her gender. This essay will explore how Lessons in Chemistry lends itself to intersectionality by creating episodes showcasing Elizabeth's overlapping identities of Gender, Class, Race, Motherhood, and Occupation. Referencing Mary Celeste Kearney’s 4 components of intersectionality,  from her essay “Orange is the New Black: Intersectional Analysis”, we will see how Elizabeth is an intersectional character whose identity is formed by multiple social constraints and forces. 

Elizabeth is asked to step away from work to fetch
coffee for her male coworkers.

To understand how the show constructs her identity, we must first briefly define Kearney’s four components.  Intersectionality is the recognition that social identities like race, gender, and class overlap, creating unique experiences of privilege and oppression. According to Kearney’s essay, the first component is that human identities are multiple, interdependent, and relational; no single category can define a person on its own. Secondly, identity is shaped by social structures and power systems, with societal expectations influencing access to privilege, status, or agency. Third, interlocking identities must be understood in their historical and geographical context, as societal values change over time. Lastly, intersectional analysis emphasizes recognizing oppression, showing how overlapping identities reveal injustice and opportunities for progressive change. Keeping these principles in mind, we can further examine how Elizabeth exemplifies intersectionality in Lessons in Chemistry.
The television adaptation of Elizabeth Zott presents her differently, or rather, more specifically than her literary version. The show is written to go more in-depth into significant moments of Elizabeth's life, thus explaining how her identity and personality have been shaped. This series further showcases her intense background with a con artist preacher father, close relationship with a gay brother, and excruciating trauma from not only a misogynist, but a rapist PHD professor. Even more than her early life trauma, the series being set in the 1950s brings its own set of unique challenges for women, and especially Elizabeth. As a character, Elizabeth pushes against the norms of society because of her passion, trauma, and personal morals, which have been shaped by her intersecting identities as an atheist, single parent, woman, and chemist. She works at Hastings Research Institute as a lab tech, following the discontinuation of her PHD finalization due to her refusal to apologize for defending herself while experiencing a planned sexual assault from her PHD advisor. Making her trauma and setting central to the narrative helps deepen her relationship with other characters like Harriet Sloane and Reverend Wakley to introduce racial, faith,  and class contrasts. Despite the large amount of context of Elizabeth's background, it is clear that of all of her identities, her gender is where she most often meets resistance in her life.
    This show takes a very traditional heavy look at women of the 1950s. As a woman in the 50’s, there was an incredible amount of societal expectations. In this series, we see how these expectations clash with Elizabeth's safety as a woman, her love of science, and her role as a single mother. From the very beginning it was made clear that Elizabeth’s gender was the ultimate reason that she is treated as less than; the jeering from her fellow chemists, the disregard for her input and intellect, and the push for her to join the “Little Miss Hastings” pageant done by of all the secretaries of the lab, despite her firm disinterest and intent to continue her work. The push for this pageant shows that her female coworkers feed into the norm of putting women on a pedestal and being useful as objects. Furthermore, the show proves through a very extensive scene of sexual assault from a male in power that others in her field see her being more beneficial as a sexual being, and an assistant second to the men, than a great chemist. This is further proven in a flashback during episode 2 “Her and Him” when the female department head tells Elizabeth to apologize for defending herself and escaping when she was assaulted, saying “ the department has asked for a formal statement of regret…these types of misunderstandings rarely allow for second chances…this is an elegant solution that works for everyone….unless of course you'd prefer to discontinue your PHD candidacy ”. This paints just how devalued, abused, and powerless Elizabeth was by the patriarchal circumstances of her career, and how even the women of society excuse this behavior because social norms demand women show respect and submission to men, especially in the workspace. These systemic constraints show that Elizabeth fights not only against sexism, but that her gender overlaps with her identity as a chemist and survivor of assault. In addition, as the series progresses, these instances show how her gender is not only the cause of many conflicts out of her control, but also how it intersects with her class and role as a mother.

Elizabeth and "Mad" attend a cookout hosted
by their neighbors.

    In episodes 3 and 4 of the series, we explore her challenges in early motherhood, battling the unexpected and new experience, with societal discrimination and job troubles. After the death of her partner, Dr. Calvin Evans, Elizabeth finds out that she is pregnant with their child. Before his passing, she expressed that she did not want children due to societal expectations that might limit her to abandon her work life to take care of the child. Despite this, once she discovers she is pregnant, she ultimately decides to have her baby due to the circumstances of the world she lives in after Calvin's death. The baby is the one part of the relationship Elizabeth and Calvin had that she can still hold onto after their research is withheld from her and stolen by Hastings Lab to use as their own. She was unable to stop this from occurring, as she was fired from the Lab for getting pregnant. This is another way that her gender, motherhood, and occupation intersect to result in oppression and mistreatment. The firing of her from her job is something that overlaps and conflicts with another one of her identities, her class.

While Elizabeth has lived most of her life in the lower middle class, this becomes an issue when intersected with her occupation and identity of motherhood. The discrimination and oppression she faces after being fired from her position at Hastings leaves her in a more vulnerable situation, having to not only account for the cost of living after Calvin's death, but for the necessities of another human who cannot contribute financially (her infant daughter). Not only does her class intersect with her identity as a mother and chemistry professional, but as the show goes on and her relationships with other characters deepen, her race and class intersect, allowing her to see and fight against the oppression of others.
After Calvin's death, Elizabeth remains in the house he lived in long before she moved in with him. She quickly makes friends with her neighbors, who grieve Calvin along with her and assist her with her newborn, as she has no family or friends from her field of work to lean on. However, living in a predominantly black neighborhood that is being threatened systematically by the city to be torn down for the construction of a new freeway challenges Elizabeth's identity as a white, middle-class woman. Before now, she has not had to consider her race as a source of oppression or conflict, but seeing the discrimination and racism that the rest of her neighborhood and now her friends are facing shapes her character by enabling her to use her privilege and, later in the show, her platform to recognize and fight against oppression. In episode 6 of the series “Poirot” Elizabeth is asked to attend a peaceful protest at the construction site of the freeway.

Harriet and Elizabeth facing the police during their 
peaceful protest of the freeway construction.

Being a white, recognized, television personality, she would be a great voice for the cause, and show the importance to non black members of the community of stopping this unfair construction and systemic racism. At first, she prioritizes her TV schedule and is afraid of pushback from the misogynistic station owner, but later, after much thought and self-reflection, she decides to not only attend the protest but also advocate for the event and community by doing an announcement on live TV against the station owner's wishes. This narrative of the show offers opportunities through the experiences of other characters to explore Elizabeth's intersectionality deeper and how the identities of other characters overlap with hers, shaping her character and personal values. By exploring race and class as a part of her story and relationship with other people, Lessons in Chemistry shows that intersectionality is based in a wide interlocking system of identities and people within society. 

Lessons in Chemistry is not simply about women in the 1950s or female scientists, but more so about how one main character's identities, setting, and lived experiences contribute to their representation of intersectionality and acknowledge that within intersectionality, we can recognize and acknowledge oppression that individuals face within all areas of society.

Work Cited

 Kearney, Mary Celeste. “Orange Is the New Black: Intersectional Analysis.” How to Watch Television, by Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, 2020.

Smith, Sarah Adina. Lessons in Chemistry. Apple TV, 2023, disc Episodes 1-8.

Thompson, Ethan, and Jason Mittell. How to Watch Television. S.L., New York University Press, 2020.