60 pages • 2 hours read
Ali HazelwoodLove on the Brain
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Marie Curie
Marie Salomea Skłodowska–Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish-born physicist and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for her work on radioactivity. Curie holds a number of other accolades, such as being the first person and the only woman to win a Nobel Prize twice and the only scientist to win a Nobel in two different fields (chemistry and physics). She and her husband, Pierre Curie, were the first married couple to win a Nobel Prize—they were co-winners of Curie’s first Nobel, and together they won a total of five Nobel Prizes. Curie became the first woman hired as a professor at the University of Paris in 1906, and in 1920 she opened the Curie Institute in Paris for the study of radioactivity.
Curie’s life parallels Bee’s experiences in several ways. Bee is a ground-breaking scientist and one of the top researchers in her field, but the men around her—both superiors and subordinates—underestimate her abilities. Like Curie, Bee co-leads a research project with her significant other and needs him to intervene on her behalf so the men around her will take her seriously. At the same time, Bee fears that her colleagues’ knowledge of her relationship with Levi will be to her disadvantage, just as the French press blasted Curie for her relationship with a younger man. Finally, like Curie, Bee puts her life on the line for her research, albeit in a different manner than Curie, when Guy attacks her in her office.
Curie is Bee’s idol; besides using the lauded scientist as a persona for her Twitter handle @WhatWouldMarieDo, Bee constantly recollects instances from Curie’s life to help her process her own experiences. The anecdotes that Bee recalls illustrate the unfortunate similarities between the way women in STEM were treated in the early 20th century and the way they continue to be treated more than a century later.
Social Media
Social media is a recurring motif throughout the book that appears in several forms. The first is in the anonymous digital identities Bee and Levi create that allow them to connect with each other. Bee operates the Twitter account @WhatWouldMarieDo, the fate of which forms a significant aspect of the plot. At the beginning, Bee experiences great success with this Twitter account; she finds a community of like-minded women, and @WhatWouldMarieDo is generally popular and well-respected on Academic Twitter. This belies the lack of recognition and success Bee receives in her offline academic and professional life until the NASA opportunity finally comes her way.
Levi’s anonymous Twitter account, @Schmacademics becomes an unlikely sounding board for the distrustful Bee. Because the format is anonymous, Bee trusts Schmac enough to open up about her life and experiences, as well as seek his help in difficult situations. This is ironic, considering that Schmac is Levi, and that social media is notorious for people using it to troll and spread misinformation.
Social media proves to be a platform for activism and validation Rocío and Kaylee form the #FairGraduateAdmissions movement, which points out how discrimination against women and other marginalized groups in STEM and academia exists on a systemic level. Guy exploits social media’s weakness, which is the ease of impersonating someone, to ruin “Marie’s” credibility and make her seem like a collaborator with STC. By weaving social media into the plot, Hazelwood shows that the platform’s power depends on the intention of those who use it.
Cats
Cats are a recurring symbol of luck, chance, and uncertainty throughout the book. On Bee’s first day at NASA, she discovers a calico kitten, which she later names Félicitte. Félicitte symbolizes luck because she brings Bee in contact with Levi for the first time since grade school. She is the catalyst for the knight-in-shining-armor moment that happens when Levi rescues Bee from the falling filing equipment, kickstarting their enemies-to-lovers romance.
Schrödinger, Levi’s pet cat, also plays symbolic role in the story. "Schrödinger’s cat” is a famous thought experiment in quantum mechanics that highlights the nature of uncertainty in scientific observation. In the novel, Schrödinger and Félicitte represent what can and cannot be observed. Félicitte symbolizes uncertainty because for much of the novel, Levi does not believe she exists; only Bee has seen her. This mirrors the way that Bee disbelieves Levi’s true feelings for her; because Bee cannot see Levi’s feelings for her, she does not believe they exist. In proving Félicitte’s existence, Levi leads Bee to evidence of someone tampering with BLINK and with her Twitter account, which breaks open the plot. It is the kitten’s arrival that allows Bee to escape Guy, leading to his eventual capture and the truth about his tampering with BLINK. Schrödinger represents what Bee cannot see about Levi because until Bee meets Schrödinger, she has an incorrect belief about Levi’s character. The cat clears up Bee’s uncertainty and helps her see Levi in a new light.
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