"Back in 1961, when women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around seatbeltless cars without giving it a second thought; back before anyone knew there'd even be a sixties movement, much less one that its participants would spend the next sixty years chronicling, back when the big wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people were starting to think fresh and believe everything was possible, the thirty-year-old mother of Madeline Zott rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over."
This is the opening paragraph of the novel. With its very first words, the paragraph situates the time period in which the narrative is set. This setting—the chronology—is essential for framing the contextual background. The year 1961 is particularly significant as it is, technically, the first year of the decade of the 1960s. It was a time when being a woman came with certain expectations of inferiority hardwire into the male psyche. That turbulent decade would become the most transformative of the 20th century. This is especially true for women. This paragraph effectively establishes how the setting is integral to the story by illustrating how in many ways it seems like a completely different world today. The descriptions of fashion, leisurely interests and activities for wives and mothers, and even the construction of cars are not societal elements typically associated with the countercultural upheaval of the decade. This paragraph really seems to be discussing a world that was already outdated.
"Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself."
The protagonist, Madeline's mother, is a chemist by education who becomes the host of a very popular cooking program. Each episode ends with her signature tagline, quoted above. Unlike many cooking show hostesses of the time—and there were many across the country—Elizabeth does not use her platform to inculcate patriarchal ideology by presenting the illusion of an impossibly perfect wife and mother. The assertion contained in the second half of this quote is not intended to convey tiredness from a job well done. It is, instead, a subversively coded message to her female viewership to take ownership and agency of the things they really want to do. Elizabeth is presented as one of those heroic precursors to the feminist mantle which would be freely take up by millions of women a decade later. The subtext communicated in her tagline is that mothers are more than just cooks and maids and wives. Inside every one of the women who religiously watch her show is a misunderstood, underappreciated, and oppressed dreamer.
"Her project, abiogenesis, had only been approved because a fat-cat investor had dropped from the heavens and insisted on funding, of all things, abiogenesis. What were the odds? Although this was exactly the sort of weird thing multimillionaires did: fund useless pie-in-the-sky projects. The rich man had said he'd read a paper by an E. Zott—something old out of UCLA—and had been fascinated by its expansion possibilities. He'd been trying to track down Zott ever since."
E. Zott is, of course, Elizabeth. The fat-cat investor does not know this fact, however. Before finding resoundingly expected success as the host of a cooking show, Elizabeth had been forced to deal with misogyny rampant in the world of research science. This quote reveals that Elizabeth is no mere hostess as abiogenesis is a discipline that seeks to explain the beginning of life on earth. Fellow scientists—almost universally male—have difficulties overcoming sexism in the 21st century. At the midpoint of the last century, it wasn't difficult because, for the most part, overcoming sexism was not even attempted. The point of this quote being that the natural tendency of all involved at the time was to assume that any scientific advancement could only have been made by a male. Elizabeth's decision to use an initial instead of a full name is not by accident but resonates strongly with the patriarchal sexism marking the century.
