Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Week 9: Identity, Ambition, and What Women Are Allowed to Want
Read the chapters that most directly examine the internal lives of Elizabeth and the women around her — their ambitions, their disappointments, and their private reckonings.
Previewing Week 9 of Lessons in Chemistry
Read 3 of 7 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 12-week guide when you’re ready.
Beneath the plot mechanics of the cooking show and the corporate battles, Lessons in Chemistry is really a novel about desire — what women are permitted to want, and what happens when they want it anyway. This week we slow down and look at that inner life.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Elizabeth's ambition has always been to do science — to contribute, to discover, to be taken seriously as a researcher. How does she reckon with the fact that her greatest influence comes through a medium she never sought and initially disdained?
2.The novel populates its world with women who have been bent out of shape by the limited roles available to them — who are bitter, or numbed, or performing contentment they do not feel. Which of these secondary characters strikes you as most fully realized, and why?
3.Garmus takes care to show that not all the women in the novel are proto-feminists waiting to be awakened. Some actively enforce the status quo, some are indifferent, and some are genuinely comfortable in traditional roles. How does this complexity serve the novel's argument?