The Other Einstein: A novel

The final chapters of The Other Einstein focus on Mileva’s new chance at life, which begins with her meeting Marie Curie, the iconic female scientist who pioneered research on radioactivity. Curie is a heroic figure to Mileva; she is a woman who is famous for her work in the science world, whose husband publicly and ardently supported her research, and whose personal affairs don’t get in the way of her earning respect. Curie is the image Mileva’s father had for her. Implied in Mileva’s meetings with Curie is that she is the renowned scientist Mileva could have been without Albert. Face to face with what could have been, Mileva finally confronts her unhappiness. Curie is crucial to this process. She notes that she and Mileva are the same but made different choices, a reference to their marriages.

Though Mileva can’t outright accuse Albert of suffocating her scientific mind, Curie understands this implicitly. She tells Mileva there is still time to make a different choice, giving her an important push toward regaining her identity. Before meeting Curie, Mileva follows Albert’s lead because she believes she has no other option. As a woman, her reputation cannot withstand a divorce, and she does not know how she will support her children alone. These are high-stakes challenges that keep her under her husband’s thumb. Curie helps Mileva re-imagine her life as a series of choices and see her future as under her control, not Albert’s. Here, Curie plays a similar role to Helene’s in Mileva’s youth. Women are stalwart guides for Mileva who help her reconceptualize her life and personhood, supporting Benedict’s message that women empower one another. Implicit in this is the idea that only women can understand what other women are going through, particularly in an era when men are not encouraged to view women as equals. Curie provides support and a breath of confidence for Mileva that Albert cannot—and doesn’t wish to.

In these chapters, Benedict makes it clear that Albert hasn’t changed; he’s just changed toward Mileva. In public and with friends, he maintains the charismatic and jovial personality that Mileva first fell in love with. People would be shocked at the contrast between Albert’s public persona and his behavior at home. It’s not that his character changed over time, but certain qualities lay dormant while he was dating and charming Mileva. Once she became a necessary burden in his life, he changed toward her. He is unable to deal with other people’s serious emotions and would rather live in his scientific mind, in which all problems have exciting solutions. Realizing that Albert was always this person increases Mileva’s disappointment; it recalls her female friends’ initial hesitation toward him. This issue also increases Mileva’s disappointment, because it leads her to turn against herself. She criticizes her appearance and knows that her reputation among his friends and colleagues is that she is a dark shadow in his life. Mileva searches for reasons to blame herself, much as she used to internalize her parents’ concerns about the way she walks. Albert takes no responsibility for his treatment of Mileva. Instead, he directly blames her for her own unhappiness, adding to her internal and external conflicts. It is impossible for her to find common ground with her husband, but her responsibility to her children ties her to Albert’s maltreatment. When he presents his conditions for staying in their marriage, she finally realizes that he treats her like chattel. This list of requirements was published in Einstein’s real-life correspondence, so his dehumanization of his wife is not a fictional element of the plot. This reveals that Einstein, though a brilliant and world-changing physicist, had layers to his personality that were emotionally abusive toward women. He gaslights Mileva so that she can remain unsure of herself, thus ensuring that she won’t leave him, even though he clearly doesn’t want to be in their marriage either. This reveals that he is controlling and wants separations and unions only on his terms.

Finally, Mileva rejects Einstein's terms and leaves him. The terms of their divorce in the novel parallel those in the historical record. When Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921, the financial prize went to Mileva, per the terms of their divorce. This is a triumphantly symbolic moment. Though Mileva was unable to publicly honor her daughter with her intellectual work, the money she receives from the Nobel Prize that she helped win is still a victory. It is a form of poetic justice that he, despite wanting to keep Mileva’s name away from his professional and personal life, has no choice but to share his award with her and finally compensate her for the ideas she developed.

Mileva starts a new life in Zürich. She finally practices her intellect as a tutor to young female scientists and raises her sons in one of the only countries that avoided war. While Albert went on to legendary fame, Mileva happily retired away from the spotlight. Her life without him was not without struggle, as their son Eduard struggled with schizophrenia and was institutionalized for most of his life. But in Mileva’s post-divorce life, she liberates herself from the emotional abuse and boredom of her life with her husband. She returns to the place and the person that make her happiest. In the Epilogue, Benedict flashes forward to the date of Mileva’s death, August 4, 1948. In her final moments, Mileva experiences her theory of relativity as a metaphorical reality: At the end of her train, she sees her daughter, for whom she has longed for decades. Mileva dies free and discovers the solution to her theory of relativity, another symbol of her liberation.