Family, Kinship and Identity

Given that Fern is not revealed to be a chimpanzee until well into the novel, it is apparent that Fowler’s intention was for the reader to assume her similarities with the members of Rosemary’s family before progressing the plot. In this way, the reader is able to bring their own preconceived notions and understanding of what constitutes a family and, more broadly, kinship connections, into their interpretation of the narrative.

Rosemary’s early childhood is presented as the time when critical attachments are formed within the family. Fern becomes ‘sister’ to Rosemary and Lowell, and ‘daughter’ to Rosemary’s mother, and the family grow through their common socialisation and identify in every sense as a two parent, three child home. Only Rosemary’s father appears to conceptualise Fern in terms of her animal status; an object of study. That Rosemary is similarly objectified by her father speaks more to his preference for projecting his scientific lens on the world than on his performance as ‘father’, evidenced when Rosemary breaks her arm and he fails to notice, occupied instead with observing Fern’s laughter in response to Rosemary’s fall. The sibling rivalry Rosemary feels towards Fern is a natural family dynamic, perceiving as she did a bias toward Fern in the attention of her parents, the graduate students, and especially her brother, whose protective nature towards Fern is a picture of the archetypal, older brother.

Rosemary’s family unit is greatly disrupted when Fern leaves; there is less cohesion and the family stop communicating, and its members are mostly left to work through the confusion as independent units. Rosemary’s grandmothers step in and play caregiving roles during this time, both practical and through preserving family memories, which speaks to the kinship networks of extended family members that exist in many cultures. Some of the family members are able to salvage their relationships, particularly Rosemary and her mother, but for others like Rosemary’s parents and Lowell, it is too late. This highlights the notion of family as a living organism that requires valued, two-way input between its members if it is to be healthy and function effectively into the future.

Rosemary and Lowell’s individual identities are profoundly affected with Fern’s departure and the resultant breakdown of the family, their common experience of having lost a sibling, in Rosemary’s case a sibling she perceived as a twin, forming an intrinsic part of the individual self-images they take into adulthood. This reinforces how the environment in which one is raised plays an important role in human development. Fern’s teaching of sign language to her daughter suggests that environment may play a role in nonhuman primate development.

Family, Kinship and Identity Quotes

It’s a story I’ve told often, my go-to story when I’m being asked about my family. It’s meant to look intimate, meant to look like me opening up and digging deep. Part 1 Chapter 5

Bed-hopping was an established custom in the house – Fern and I had rarely ended the night in the bed where we’d started. Our parents felt that it was natural and mammalian not to want to sleep alone, and though they would have preferred we stay in our own beds, because we kicked and thrashed, they’d never insisted on it. Part 2 Chapter 4

Fern was not the family dog. She was Lowell’s little sister, his shadow, his faithful sidekick. Part 2 Chapter 5

Our parents had promised to love her like a daughter … I began to pay better attention to the stories they read me … looking to learn how much parents love their daughters. (Rosemary, about her parents after Fern has gone) Part 2 Chapter 5

No one knew Fern better than I; I knew every twitch. I was attuned to her. (Rosemary, about Fern) Part 2 Chapter 7

I came to UC Davis both to find my past (my brother) and to leave it (the monkey girl) behind. By monkey girl, I mean me, of course, not Fern, who is not now and never has been a monkey. Part 3 Chapter 5

But as far back as I could remember, I’d also been jealous of her. I’d been jealous again, not fifteen minutes past, learning that Lowell’s visit had been for her and not me. But maybe this was the way sisters usually felt about each other. (Rosemary jealous of Fern) 5 Chapter 1

Mom’s notebooks are not scientific journals. Although they do include a graph or two, some numbers and some measurements, they’re not the dispassionate, careful observations from the field that I expected.
They appeared to be our baby books. (Rosemary) Part 6 Chapter 4

‘… I worried about what being Fern’s sister would do to you, but I wanted it for you, too.’… ‘I wanted you to have an extraordinary life,’ she said. (Rosemary’s mother to Rosemary) Part 6 Chapter 5

Once upon a time, there was a happy family – a mother, a father, a son, and two daughters. The older daughter was smart and agile, covered in hair and very beautiful. The younger was ordinary. Still, their parents and their brother loved them both. (Madame Defarge performing Fern’s life) Part 6 Chapter 6

Animals, Animals in Research and Animal Activism

Animal themes feature prominently in the novel, with protagonist Rosemary’s observations and interactions in the world often framed with reference to animal behaviours. She notices wildlife such as birds and is drawn to Harlow’s reckless, wild behaviour which reflects her own chimp-like behaviours. Lowell’s affection for animals leads him to rehome rats from his father’s laboratory, which he names after cheeses, and to build a ‘snow ant’ rather than a snowman.

The novel introduces the topics of research using animals and the animal rights movement that evolved in response. Rosemary’s brother Lowell directly departs from his father’s scientific views and is representative of the latter. While he takes part in several direct actions to free animals and is hunted by the FBI, he also raises the less radical line of raising public awareness around animal use. The suggested argument here is that people should have a legal right to see how animals used in fields such as biomedical research, food production and entertainment, from which humans derive benefits, are treated.

Rosemary’s distinction that ‘… Fern … has never been a monkey’, her surprise at learning Fern was able to be ‘bought and sold’ and her objections to Fern being ‘treated like some animal’ at the lab, speak to the non-human rights movement which seeks legal rights for animals able to demonstrate self-awareness, such as chimpanzees, including granting them the right to life and freedom from captivity.

Animals, Animals in Research and Animal Activism Quotes

I felt … a little migratory myself, just a little wild. (Rosemary, viewing crows) Part 1 Chapter 1

The bars went all the way to the top of the cell. I checked to be sure; I’m a pretty good climber, for a girl. (Rosemary at the police station) Part 1 Chapter 2

I felt my worries slipping from me like skin from snake. My father often had this effect on me. The more irritated he was, the more I became smooth and amused, which, of course, irritated him all the more. It would anyone, let’s be fair. (Rosemary speaking to her father from the police station) Part 2 Chapter 2

Crows were rioting in the trees. Part 1 Chapter 5

There was no one I could reasonably be expected to play with.
Instead I got acquainted with the neighbourhood animals. (Rosemary) Part 2 Chapter 3

Lowell’s room smelled of damp cedar from the cage where three rats, washouts from our father’s lab, would chirp and creak in their spinning wheel all night long. In retrospect, there was something incomprehensibly strange about the way any of the laboratory rats could transform from data point to pet, with names and privileges and vet appointments, in a single afternoon. (about Lowell’s rats) Part 2 Chapter 4

Surrounded as she was by humans, Fern believed she was human. Part 2 Chapter 7

Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. Part 2 Chapter 7

Most of the rats Lowell had released were recaptured, but not all. Despite our father’s dire predictions, some survived that winter and the next one, too. They went on to have full lives – sex, travel, and adventure. (the rats Lowell set free from his father’ s lab) Part 3 Chapter 2

Matt said they treated Fern like some animal. (Matt, graduate student, about Fern at the lab) Part 3 Chapter 4

I didn’t want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that’s the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me. I handled the situation by not reading more. Part 3 Chapter 6

‘You can train any animal into any behaviour on cue if it’s a natural behaviour to begin with. Racism, sexism, speciesism – all natural human behaviours. They can be triggered any time by any unscrupulous yahoo with a pulpit. A child could do it.’ (Rosemary to Harlow’s boyfriend, Reg) Part 4 Chapter 3

Empathy is also a natural human behaviour, and natural to chimps as well. (Rosemary) Part 4 Chapter 3

‘The world runs,’ Lowell said, ‘on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.’ (Lowell, on the use of animals by humans) Part 5 Chapter 3

Loss and Grief

The main characters in the novel each struggle with some degree of loss and grief – loss of a sister and daughter, loss of a brother and son, loss of a mother (Fern) – and ultimately have to navigate through these issues in their individual ways. Rosemary struggles with the loss of her sister and carries a confused sense of self-blame. Rosemary’s mother has a nervous breakdown when Fern leaves, and is again emotionally devastated at losing Lowell. For a time, Rosemary and Lowell’s sibling relationship appears to serve them in a healthy manner in that they help each other through their losses, though ultimately it is too traumatising for Lowell and he is compelled to leave. Rosemary’s father suffers the loss of his reputation and professional standing at the end of the family project, and is only able to work with the graduate students other professors didn’t want. Fern suffers the loss of her mother, then the removal of her two children.

While Rosemary rejected any talk in the initial stages of Fern having left her family, revisiting the event with openness and non-judgment at a later time when Rosemary was older may have profoundly supported the family’s processing of the grief and helped them find healing. Lowell may have been able to pursue his college degree, as intended, and pursued his strong support of animal welfare without having to separate from the family.

Instead, Rosemary’s father numbs his loss with alcohol, while other family members processed their grief differently, some in life-changing ways. Rosemary’s mother finds solace in her journals and, later, in sharing these with Rosemary. Rosemary’s lonely childhood and difficult college years give way to a fresh start when communication with her parents about Fern is reinstated, and she dedicates the publishing of her mother’s journals to her brother and sister. Lowell, as the protective, older brother, ultimately martyrs himself to a life fighting for the welfare of those who represent the sister he was unable to protect, showing that grief can ultimately be so profound so as direct a life toward a higher cause, such as in service to those suffering injustice.

Loss and Grief Quotes

The middle of my story is all about their absence, though if I hadn’t told you that, you might not have known. (Rosemary, about her brother and sister) Part 1 Chapter 1

And I just didn’t think I could do it anymore, this business of being my parents’ only child. (Rosemary happy at the idea her brother has returned) Part 1 Chapter 6

We each carried the weight of Fern’s disappearance and our mother’s collapse, and occasionally, for short periods, we carried it together. (Rosemary, about her and Lowell) Part 2 Chapter 4

I’ve read that no loss compares to the loss of a twin, that survivors describe themselves as feeling less like singles and more like the crippled remainder of something once whole. (after Fern’s disappearance) Part 3 Chapter 1

… Mom took Lowell’s disappearance had, worse even than when we lost Fern … I don’t have the words for what it did to her. She’s never even pretended to recover. (Rosemary) Part 3 Chapter 2

My brother and my sister have led extraordinary lives, but I wasn’t there, and I can’t tell you that part. I’ve stuck here to the part I can tell, the part that’s mine, and still everything I’ve said is all about them, a chalk outline around the space where they should have been. Three children, one story.
The only reason I’m the one telling it is that I’m the one not currently in a cage. Part 6 Chapter 7

Language and Communication

In an interview, Fowler shares of exploring the role of language in the novel, in terms of who gets to speak and when, and it is evident that communication, in general, is a major contributor to the plot. In particular, Rosemary’s memory formation and thus her recollection of events as they take place is affected by a large absence of meaningful communication at a critical time.

While being studied as a child alongside Fern, Rosemary talks excessively, finding it to be valued, however when Fern leaves, Rosemary stops talking, recognising the opposite to be true. Likewise, her family stops communicating and Rosemary describes being raised in an ‘odd silence’ as an ‘only child’.

The distinction between language and communication is made evident in that the family continue speaking per se, but communication, meaningful sharing about important issues affecting the family, for example, Rosemary’s arrest at college, no longer take place. Rosemary’s adoption of a go-to family story is another example of how language is different to communication. That is, language can function to order events in such a way so that the accuracy of the actual event becomes unclear and is replaced in one’s memory with the narrative one tells about the event, like a photograph.

While communication is valued by Rosemary’s father, it seems this is the case for the purposes of scientific study only. When Rosemary is at college, he still uses every interaction with her as a ‘teaching moment’ seeming to suggest his lack of interest in any other aspects of her life.

Rosemary’s mother’s retention of valuable communication in her journals helps Rosemary deal with some of the trauma from her childhood. After years of suppressing her family memories and never speaking of Fern, by the end of the novel Rosemary is able to speak the words that tell the story of both Fern and Lowell. Using the journals, which contain amongst other things Rosemary and Fern’s baby books, Rosemary is able to communicate the story as she experienced it: a family life lived, rather than data from a psychological experiment.

Fern’s communication is valued by Rosemary’s father and the graduate students but ignored by the laboratory to which she is sent. That not all scientists value this development in nonhuman primates speaks to Rosemary’s suspicions as a child that Fern was not the actual subject of the study. This begs the question as to what real world application there is in taking a chimpanzee from the wild and teaching it to communicate through sign language.

Lowell’s choice to remain silent when he is arrested at the end of the text is positioned as his desire to be tried as nonhuman. Through subordinating the language ability that could alter his legal outcome, he voices his identification with the nonhuman animals for whose plight he is fighting. It is ironic that Rosemary’s father’s life’s work was in studying the communication of a nonhuman child, while the human son who grew up in that environment chose to stop talking.

Language and Communication Quotes

When you think of two things to say, pick your favourite and only say that, my mother suggested once, as a tip to polite social behaviour, and the rule was later modified to one in three. (Rosemary, about her mother) Prologue

I don’t remember most of what we talked about that year. But I can, with confidence, provide a partial list of things not talked about:
Missing family members. Gone was gone. Part 1 Chapter 3

Touched as I was, there was nothing I wanted less than my mother’s journals. What’s the point of never talking about the past if you wrote it all down and you know where those pages are? Part 1 Chapter 4

Sometimes you best avoid talking by being quiet, but sometimes you best avoid talking by talking. I can still talk when I need to. I haven’t forgotten how to talk. Part 1 Chapter 5

It’s a story I’ve told often, my go-to story when I’m being asked about my family. It’s meant to look intimate, meant to look like me opening up and digging deep. Part 1 Chapter 5

Language does this to our memories – simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. Part 1 Chapter 7

Before, the more I talked the happier our parents seemed. After, they joined the rest of the world in asking me to be quiet. I finally became so. (after Fern left) Part 2 Chapter 1

Please assume that I am talking continuously in all the scenes that follow until I tell you that I’m not.
Our parents, on the other hand, had shut their mouths and the rest of my childhood took place in that odd silence. (Rosemary) Part 2 Chapter 1

… at some point, I’d mostly stopped talking altogether. … First I eliminated the big words. They were getting me nowhere. Then I quit correcting other people when they used the wrong words. I raised the ratio of things I thought to things I said from three to one, to four to one, to five, to six, to seven. (Rosemary at school) Part 3 Chapter 2