... name one female composer. It was harder than name one female scientist. It amazed Lottie how much it continued to amaze her that social strictures had crushed women throughout the centuries; some dark part of her assumed that women were inferior, that she was inferior, so her grandmother must have been inferior! And Evelyn! Evelyn inferior! Consciously Lottie never felt inferior, but now and again she wanted to punch the nearest man.
During Evelyn‘s naps Lottie took up the book Dr. Mihiner had given her about famous “microbe hunters.” It was written in a gushy style full of exclamation points but the work these men had done, much of which she knew about from college courses—grinding the first microscopes, uncov ering the mystery of fermentation, conquering syphilis— was thrilling.
There were no women in the book unless you counted the references to Madame Pasteur:
As an adult it had occurred to Lottie that her mother... might have felt like a boarder herself in their big house teeming with her father‘s vibrant kin, and perhaps she found solace and good company in her books. Or perhaps she felt protected by her books, barricaded in, numbed, Lottie didn‘t know. .... Her mother had never had a hard word with any of her husband‘s relatives; she let them do what they wanted and she read.
Artifact | 
