59 pages • 1 hour read
Marie BenedictThe Other Einstein: A novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 9-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1898. Mileva returns to Zürich, where her friends at the pension welcome her warmly. She worries about returning to the Polytechnic and facing Einstein again because, “My reputation as a serious student was everything. Women scientists didn’t get second chances” (95-96). She attends her first class of the term with the same group of men from her prior term there. Professor Weber is dismissive of her time in Germany. After class, Einstein approaches Mileva. He apologizes for not responding to her letter and is happy to see that she wants to put the past behind them and start anew. He walks her to the library, where he passes on his notes from the term she missed so she can catch up on her missed classes. He assures Mileva that he won’t pursue her romantically again, but he’ll be waiting for her if she ever changes her mind.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
Albert joins Mileva at her pension for one of their concerts, but the other girls are absent. Mileva finds Helene with a gentleman caller, Milivoje Savic, a Serbian chemical engineer. Mileva is astonished by his presence because Helene always vowed not to marry and was disappointed by Mileva’s burgeoning relationship. Now, Helene is the one distracted by romance: She forgot about the concert, thanks to her caller, and ignores Mileva to return to her conversation with Mr. Savic.
Privately, Helene asks Mileva if she’s annoyed with her. She met Mr. Savic the day before, and she wants to figure out if he is worth referring to as a “caller.” Mileva assures her that everything is all right but inwardly worries that the pact she shared with Helene is over, leaving their futures undefined.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1899. Mileva spent the last few months trying to clamp down on her feelings for Einstein, but she finds herself thinking of and longing for him often. Helene is spending more time with Mr. Savic, and Milana and Ružica avoid spending time with only Mileva and Einstein. Mileva is hurt that her other female friends avoid her, especially because she and Helene tried to nurture their friendship while Helene dates Mr. Savic.
Mileva avoided dating Einstein because she worried she would lose her friends and her sense of self. Now that she’s losing her friends regardless, Mileva decides to embrace her feelings for him and approaches him for a kiss. He confesses his love for her and promises her that marrying him will not interfere with her career.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1900. Mileva now refers to Einstein by his first name. He and Mileva are lab partners, but they keep their relationship private because Mileva is worried she won’t be taken seriously as a scientist if people see her as his love interest. When Albert skips yet another class at the Polytechnic, Mileva defends him to their professors.
Albert skips classes because of an ambitious plan: Mileva will take notes on the formal study of physics at school while he studies newer, more progressive theories independently. The two will combine their knowledge and work together to discover new theories.
Milana and Ružica now outright avoid Mileva unless Helene is with them. Helene recently became engaged to Mr. Savic.
Mileva flips through one of Albert’s books and finds a letter written in unfamiliar handwriting. She worries it’s from his mother. Mileva met Albert’s family when they were in town visiting. She instantly connected with his sister, Maja, but his mother’s ire for Mileva was obvious. Mileva opens the letter and sees that it’s not from his mother but from a woman named Julia Niggli, who writes that she hopes to see Albert in August to help him “idle away the hours.” Mileva confronts him, but he insists that Julia is only a family friend with whom he is in contact because he’s helping her find a job as a governess. Mileva believes him but worries that Julia is the type of woman Albert’s mother would rather see him with.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary
Albert and Mileva separate to visit their families during the holidays. Back in Serbia, Mileva receives an upsetting letter from Albert, who details his mother’s tantrum about Mileva. As she suspected, Albert’s mother disapproves of her because she is not German and not Jewish.
Mileva’s father asks her about her relationship with Albert. She reveals that he will look for work before he formally proposes, but marriage is their goal. Mileva assures her father that marriage won’t get in the way of her own career. Her father is happy for her but concerned; he hasn’t yet met Albert, and Albert is still a foreign Jewish stranger to him.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1901. Albert faces one job rejection after another. He blames Professor Weber for not providing him with a good recommendation. Mileva knows that if only Albert followed the rules a little more, Weber and other professors would write him glowing recommendations. She can’t push Professor Weber too hard on Albert’s behalf because she still needs to sit for her exams and will need Weber’s goodwill for her own upcoming job search. Albert insinuates that he would have more success finding a job if Mileva weren’t tying him to Switzerland. They’re interrupted by their former classmate Mr. Grossman, who proposes that Albert apply for a job evaluating patent applications for his family friend.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary
Albert gets a temporary job teaching mathematics at a high school. He moves to Winterthur for the job but writes to Mileva about a romantic getaway to Lake Como. She is lonely without Albert, and all her friends from the pension have moved away; Helene got married and left, and the other girls graduated and returned home. Traveling alone with Albert could stigmatize Mileva by giving the appearance that she is no longer a virgin, which would bring dishonor upon her and her family.
Mileva vacillates between her two choices. She loves Albert and wants to be with him, but she always plays by the rules of propriety. Finally, she decides to leave the conservative norms of her Serbian upbringing behind.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
Mileva meets Albert in Lake Como, Italy. The city is beautiful and full of art. When Albert tries to check them in as a married couple at a hotel, he is turned away for being Jewish. They find another hotel and have sex for the first time.
Albert proposes that they show Professor Weber one of their papers. Mileva and Albert
had researched and written a paper theorizing that each atom related to a molecular attraction field that is separate from the temperature and the way in which the atom is chemically bound to other atoms; we left open the question of whether and how the fields are related to gravitational forces (158).
Albert wants to put only his name on the paper to try to secure a better job. Despite not wanting her name to be erased from her intellectual property, Mileva believes that Albert has her best interests in mind.
Part 2, Chapters 9-16 Analysis
In the first chapters of Part 2, Benedict demonstrates how detrimental a relationship with a man can be to an ambitious woman in the early 20th century.
The first signs of Einstein’s changing behavior toward Mileva are evident in her friends’ reactions to his increasing presence. When Helene meets a man who becomes her husband, none of the other girls at the pension are resentful or keep Helene at a distance. But Mileva’s friends avoid her, especially when Einstein is around. In these chapters, no reason is provided for this new distance. Einstein tells Mileva that her friends are just jealous that she found a man. However, this perspective directly defies the spirit of the pension; these are not women who are prone to envy, particularly envy over a man. Einstein’s assumption that the other girls are jealous of Mileva because of a man demonstrates that he doesn’t know or understand her friends. When his possessive personality traits are revealed in later chapters, it becomes clear that the early chapters of Part 2 foreshadow others’ observation of these qualities. Mileva’s friends reject Einstein because they can see what Mileva can’t: Einstein is crowding her, doesn’t respect her space, and will become overbearing.
When Mileva and Einstein start dating, they must keep their relationship a secret. She can’t be known to be dating Einstein because it would jeopardize the respect she’s earned at the university. This highlights Mileva’s difficult position and dehumanization at the hands of her rigidly conservative society that views a woman’s being amorous as antithetical to her being a good physicist. There is no space for Mileva to be viewed as both a good physicist and a woman who is involved in a romantic relationship. That Einstein can both date and be a respected student of physics emphasizes the differences in gender norms. Einstein can seize everything he wants in the world, but Mileva must hide her desires and think actively about how she presents herself to other men. Any reminders that she is in possession of a female body and has desires beyond physics can ruin her career. This injustice is shouldered only by Mileva and foreshadows conflicts in her relationship with Einstein.
Starting in Chapter 12, Benedict calls Einstein by his first name, Albert. This signifies a new intimacy between him and Mileva. Benedict refers to most men in this novel by their last names, in keeping with the norms of the historical period. She identifies only historical figures, such as Michele Besso, by their full names to draw the reader’s attention to key figures in Einstein’s life. Another example of this symbolic structure of naming is the introduction of Julia Niggli through Einstein’s hidden correspondence. She was a real-life family friend of Einstein, and published letters reveal that he did have a friendship with her, although the extent of it is not known. Benedict insinuates that Einstein courts Julia at the same time as Mileva, demonstrating his lack of commitment to her and his lack of understanding of—or concern for—the damage his relationship with Mileva can inflict upon her career and her personal life.
One of the conflicts Mileva faces in her relationship with Einstein is their attraction to one another. At stake in this conflict is Mileva’s virginity. In the late 19th century, having sex before marriage brought a stain of dishonor upon a woman and her family. For Mileva, this conflict is exacerbated by the constant pressure she feels to desexualize herself for her academic career. When Mileva has sex with Einstein before marriage, she places an enormous amount of trust in their relationship. By that point, she is in love with him and believes that they are in a partnership. When they travel to Lake Como, their bond does seem solid because they both endure certain risks to be with one another. Both Einstein and Mileva are at risk of acquiring bad reputations by traveling together unmarried. When a hotel turns him away for being Jewish, Benedict establishes both the historical context of increasing European antisemitism and the ways that society marginalizes both characters. The partnership is immediately challenged when Einstein proposes submitting one of their co-researched papers to Professor Weber with only his own name. He presents his appropriation of Mileva’s intellectual property as a way of protecting their relationship and ensuring that he finds employment that is sufficient to permit their marriage. In reality, this is the first example of Einstein’s using Mileva’s brilliance for his own gain. How much of Einstein’s early work was also Mileva’s is still debated. It has been proven that her name was left off his earlier papers, but how much influence she truly had over the research has been censored. Experts agree that Mileva was very much involved in the papers Einstein later claimed as his own. Even in the early 20th century, people were questioning how independent Einstein was in his research. In these chapters, Benedict establishes the confluence of love, trust, and sexism that silenced Mileva’s historical presence.
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