Lab Girl

“Working in a lab for twenty years has left me with two stories: the one that I have to write and the one that I want to.”

Jahren contends with herself in these lines: she cannot simply tell the story of all of her successes. She must also tell the story of all of her struggles, which is what she does in the ensuing chapters.

“I must have cracked thousands of seeds over the years, and yet the next day’s green never fails to amaze me.”

Throughout the memoir, Jahren never loses her sense of wonder. She is filled with love and amazement when it comes to the plant world, and seeing something as simple as a seed growing still fills her with these feelings.

“She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her.”

Jahren quotes these lines from Dickens’David Copperfield in reference to Lydia at the hospital pharmacy.Jahren has always had a strained relationship with her mother, and Lydia comes to fill in that role to a certain degree.

“One new idea allowed the plant to see a new world and draw sweetness out of a whole new sky.”

For Jahren, every root is a new idea. With every new idea, or root, comes new potential to grow. Just like plants, Jahren’s budding ideas allow for her to move forward and see “new worlds.”

“I tried to visualize a new environmental science that was not based on the world that we wanted with plants in it, but instead based on a vision of the plants’ world with us in it.”

These lines represent intellectual growth and breakthrough for Jahren. She does not want to teach science the way she has been taught but instead wants to study plants from the inside out.

“People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep.”

Here, Jahren emphasizes just how important wood is to humans. It’s a simple, enduring material that people have used for centuries. In this way, humans have a strong, reliant connection to trees.

“Once we got our lab coats on, everything felt more normal.”

Jahren often feels more at home in the lab than she does in the outside world. Once she puts on her lab coat, she is in her element and knows that she can relax.

“These brave trees […] know better than all the saints and martyrs put together exactly how to store next year’s treasures in Heaven, where the heart shall be also.”

Jahren points to the wisdom and foresight of trees. They understand intrinsically how to prepare and plan for the next year.

“Female professors are the natural enemies of the academic world, as I was privileged to overhear discussion of my sexual orientation and probable childhood traumas.”

These lines point to the central theme of misogyny in this memoir. Despite her success, Jahren nonetheless endures judgment such as this from male members of her field.

“The nightmare of losing the lab was all the more horrifying because it had been my only concrete dream.”

When Jahren is not able to secure funding for her lab in Georgia, this presents a potentially horrifying situation. Not only would she lose the lab, she would also symbolically lose the only thing she had ever truly hoped for—a career in science.

“If a single woman can be thought of as a dog at such events, then a thirtysomething single man is effectively characterized as the guy manning the hamburger grill.”

These lines touch on socially misogynistic tendencies that Jahren contends with. A single woman is a like a dog who will do all she can to get the hamburgers, i.e. the single men.

“A corn plant knows what it is supposed to be, even though it meanders along the way.”

Jahren notes that a corn plant will eventually become what it’s supposed to become even if it takes some time. So, too, does Jahren discover her path even though it is not always direct.

“That he would be as hardy as all Viking men and women are, and that he will justifiably hate me for being an unfit mother, that part of me having grown up under too much shade and wizened without flowering properly.”

Jahren hopes her son will inherit positive Norwegian characteristics. She also acknowledges the ways in which her own strained upbringing and resultant character flaws will inform their relationship.

“I am tired of carrying this dull orphan-pain, for though it has lost its power to surprise, every season it still reaps its harvest of hurt.”

Due to her strained relationship with her mother, Jahren has always contended with a certain pain in this regard. She is eager to let go of it, but even after many years, it still has the ability to hurt her.

“Every plant must find its own unique path to maturity.”

Here, Jahren emphasizehow plants must find their own way to grow. These lines accompany a section on Jahren’s relationship. It has taken her a long time to find a functional relationship, but she eventually does so with Clint.

“I cry because I can see only what I am losing and not what I will gain, which is hidden from me by my two-inch-thick uterus.”

Jahren endures an emotionally taxing pregnancy. She is afraid of how her life will change after having a baby and cannot concentrate on how her life will grow after having her son.

“During the last ten years we have learned that a tree actually remembers its childhood.”

Jahren describes trees as having memories and being informed by them. So, too, is Jahren heavily informed by her childhood and upbringing.

“Like Julia Child drawing a finished soufflé out of the same oven into which she inserts an uncooked one, I select a hundred healthy differentiated embryos.”

Here, Jahren makes a figurative comparison between her world as a scientist and Julia Child’s work as a chef. By doing so, Jahren implies the artistic nature of her work.

“I wanted to make him know that […] no matter what our future held, my first task would always be to kick a hole in the world and make a space for him where he could safely be his eccentric self.”

After Jahren marries Clint, she wants to reassure Bill that he will always have a place in her life. Her relationship with Bill is a central part of the memoir, and she makes it clear that he is one of the most important parts of her life.

“He is happy with what he is and does not question it—at least not yet—whereas I will forever be stuck in the in-between.”

Jahren describes her relationship with her son. The two have different personalities; Jahren over analyzes her station in life whereas her son seems confident in his decisions.

“While I am too impulsive and aggressive to think of myself as a proper woman, I will also never fully shake this dull, false belief that I am something less than a man.”

Jahren’s feelings of inadequacy are a frequent theme in the memoir. Here she describes her feelings of never fitting in the category of being a proper woman, one foisted on her by society.

“His clock and my own were forever out of sync, a simple fact that placed an untraversable canyon between us.”

Jahren personifies a plant she is studying. She wants to understand“him,” but she cannot fully do so and thus cannot fully relate to him.

“Because—as Marge Piercy first said—both life and love are like butter and do not keep: they both have to be made fresh every day.”

Here, Jahren reflects on her relationship with Clint, which is constantly evolving. It is something alive and malleable that cannot be ignored and allowed to spoil.