Rosalind Franklin Character Analysis

ROSALIND. […] We were so powerful. Our instruments felt like extensions of our own bodies. We could see everything, really see it—except, sometimes, what was right in front of us.

ROSALIND. (Writing the letter, cold and formal.) I require an X-ray generating tube. And a camera specially made so that the temperature inside it can be carefully controlled. Otherwise, the solution will change during its exposure, and, Dr. Wilkins, you know as well as I do that that just won’t do. Finally, if at all possible, I’d like to know when this order will be placed so that, if need be, I can request a few minor modifications. Yours sincerely, Dr. Rosalind Franklin.

WILKINS. Dear Miss Franklin, you are ever so ... …cordial.

ROSALIND. Dr. Wilkins, I will not be anyone’s assistant. (Beat.)

WILKINS. What was that?

ROSALIND. I don’t like others to analyze my data, my work. I work best when I work alone. If, for whatever reason, I am forced into a different situation, I should feel that I came here under false pretenses.

WILKINS. I see… […] Then perhaps we could think of our work together as a kind of partnership. Surely that will suit you?

ROSALIND. I don’t suppose it matters whether or not it suits me, does it?

ROSALIND. I’ll have you know that nuclear force is not something of which I approve.

WILKINS. Then I suppose it’s good no one asked you to work on it. […] At any rate, you lot never do seem to approve of it.

ROSALIND. I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at. […]

WILKINS. Just that ... people ... worked hard to ... come up with these ways to save ... well, the Jews, and then all you hear back from them is how they don’t approve. It feels a little ...

ROSALIND. You’re absolutely right that the Jews should be in a more grateful frame of mind these days.

WILKINS. All right, Rosy.

ROSALIND. It’s absurd, isn’t it? Archaic! […] This business of the senior common room…

GOSLING. I suppose. But ... you can’t worry about it. […] It’s not like biophysicists have such great conversations at meals anyway. They tend just to talk about the work. They never take a break.

ROSALIND. But those are precisely the conversations I need to have. Scientists make discoveries over lunch.

WILKINS. I almost went to see the very same performance. […] Our paths so nearly crossed. (Beat.) Was it any good?

ROSALIND. Oh yes. Very.

WILKINS. The great difference, you know, between The Winter’s Tale and the story on which it’s based—Pandosto—is that in Shakespeare’s version the heroine survives.

ROSALIND. John Gielgud played Leontes. He really was very good. Very lifelike. Very good. When Hermione died, even though it was his fault, I felt for him. I truly did.

WILKINS. And who played Hermione?

ROSALIND. I don’t remember. She didn’t stand out, I suppose.

WATSON. But she wasn’t [in the laboratory,] was she. She was too busy snow-shoeing and ... enjoying things like ... nature and small woodland creatures.
CRICK. I mean, didn’t she feel that something was at her back, a force greater than she was ...
WATSON. You mean us?
CRICK. No. I mean fate.
WATSON. What’s the difference?

ROSALIND. (Condescendingly.) Flushed with pride, are we?

WILKINS. I beg your pardon?

ROSALIND. X-ray patterns you made?

WILKINS. It was just a manner of speaking. Everyone knows who’s on the team, that there is a team.

ROSALIND. Well, I don’t know which X-ray patterns you were looking at, but in the ones I took, it’s certainly not clear that there is a helix.

WILKINS. It’s like you’re unwilling to see it.

CRICK. She’s really that bad?

WILKINS. Worse.

WATSON. The Jews really can be very ornery.

WILKINS. You’re telling me.

WATSON. Is she quite overweight?

WILKINS. Why do you ask?

CRICK. James is many things but subtle is not one of them. […] You see, he imagines that she’s overweight. The kind of woman who barrels over you with the force of a train. […]

CASPAR. (To the audience.) To Watson and Crick, the shape of something suggested the most detailed analysis of its interior workings. As though, by looking at something you could determine how it came to be ... how it gets through each day.

ROSALIND. As a girl, I prided myself on always being right. Because I was always right. I drove my family near mad by relentlessly proposing games to play that I’d win every time. […] And when I was at university, and it was becoming as clear to my parents as it always had been for me that I would pursue science, I left Cambridge to meet my father for a hiking weekend. (Staring again at the image.) And atop a mountain in the Lake District, when I was eighteen years old, he said to me, “Rosa­lind, if you go forward with this life… you must never be wrong…”

WILKINS. But what are we celebrating??

GOSLING. It’s amazing, really—

ROSALIND. Have some faith in me. There is something to celebrate. Take a leap of faith.

WILKINS. (Bitterly.) As though you would ever do that. […] I mean, my God, can you even hear yourself? The irony?

ROSALIND. (Slowly.) I take a leap of faith every day, Maurice, just by walking through that door in the morning ... I take a leap of faith that it’ll all be worth it, that it will all ultimately mean something.

WILKINS. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

ROSALIND. No, you wouldn’t.

CRICK. And what is a race anyway? And who wins? If life is the ultimate race to the finish line, then really we don’t want to win it. Shouldn’t want to win it. Should we? […] Or maybe the race is for something else entirely. Maybe none of us really knew what we were searching for. What we wanted. Maybe success is as illusory and elusive as ... well, Rosalind was to us.

WATSON. Do tell us what our little ray of sunshine is keeping busy with these days.

CRICK. (Actually worried.) Wilkins, old boy. Are you sure you’re quite all right?

WATSON. Anything new on her docket? If you don’t mind sharing, that is.

WILKINS. I honestly couldn’t give two damns. I’m happy to tell you all I can remember.

CASPAR. Watson and Crick got hold of the paper Rosalind had written. It was confidential.

CRICK. It wasn’t confidential. Another scientist at Cambridge gave it to us. […]

WILKINS. Well it wasn’t published, that’s for sure. And it included [….] information that became critical to your work.

WATSON. I’m sure we would have gotten there sooner or later, even without it.

WILKINS. So would we have done, with the benefit of your work. You had ours but we didn’t have yours!

WATSON. There was no “we” where you were concerned. […]

GOSLING. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how they got the paper, only that they got it.

CASPAR. And that Rosalind didn’t know she should be in a hurry.

ROSALIND. I think I’m thinking about how I’ve come to the end of thinking. […]

WILKINS. We could talk it through. It might help. […]

GOSLING. For a moment, everything stopped. Different ways our lives could go hovered in the air around us. […]

ROSALIND. You know, I think I am going to call it a night. I haven’t been home before midnight for a fortnight and really what’s the point of being here and not getting anywhere? […]

GOSLING. And then there was only one way everything would go.

GOSLING. There’s no science that can explain it. Loneliness. […]

CASPAR. Rosalind? (She clutches her stomach.)

WATSON. It works, Francis. It works. (A very long beat.)

CRICK. It’s ...

WATSON. I can’t believe it.

CRICK. It’s life unfolding, right in front of us. (Rosalind doubles over in her chair, and gasps.)

CASPAR. Rosalind?

WILKINS. It’s the loneliest pursuit in the world. Science. Because there either are answers or there aren’t.

ROSALIND. We lose. In the end, we lose. The work is never finished and in the meantime our bodies wind down, tick slower, sputter out.

WILKINS. Like grandfather clocks.

ROSALIND. If I’d only ...

GOSLING. Been more careful around the beam.

WATSON. Collaborated.

CRICK. Been more open, less wary. Less self-protective.

CASPAR. Or more wary, more self-protective.

WATSON. Been a better scientist.

CASPAR. Been willing to take more risks, make models, go forward without the certainty of proof.

CRICK. Been friendlier.

GOSLING. Or born at another time.

CRICK. Or born a man.

WILKINS. And they do. I love that Hermione wasn’t really dead. That she comes back.

ROSALIND. (Sympathetically.) No, Maurice. She doesn’t. Not really.

WILKINS. Of course she does.

ROSALIND. No.

WILKINS. Then how do you explain the statue coming to life?

ROSALIND. Hope. They all project it. Leontes projects life where there is none, so he can be forgiven.

ROSALIND. […] We were so powerful. Our instruments felt like extensions of our own bodies. We could see everything, really see it—except, sometimes, what was right in front of us.

ROSALIND. (Writing the letter, cold and formal.) I require an X-ray generating tube. And a camera specially made so that the temperature inside it can be carefully controlled. Otherwise, the solution will change during its exposure, and, Dr. Wilkins, you know as well as I do that that just won’t do. Finally, if at all possible, I’d like to know when this order will be placed so that, if need be, I can request a few minor modifications. Yours sincerely, Dr. Rosalind Franklin.

WILKINS. Dear Miss Franklin, you are ever so ... …cordial.

ROSALIND. Dr. Wilkins, I will not be anyone’s assistant. (Beat.)

WILKINS. What was that?

ROSALIND. I don’t like others to analyze my data, my work. I work best when I work alone. If, for whatever reason, I am forced into a different situation, I should feel that I came here under false pretenses.

WILKINS. I see… […] Then perhaps we could think of our work together as a kind of partnership. Surely that will suit you?

ROSALIND. I don’t suppose it matters whether or not it suits me, does it?

ROSALIND. I’ll have you know that nuclear force is not something of which I approve.

WILKINS. Then I suppose it’s good no one asked you to work on it. […] At any rate, you lot never do seem to approve of it.

ROSALIND. I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at. […]

WILKINS. Just that ... people ... worked hard to ... come up with these ways to save ... well, the Jews, and then all you hear back from them is how they don’t approve. It feels a little ...

ROSALIND. You’re absolutely right that the Jews should be in a more grateful frame of mind these days.

WILKINS. All right, Rosy.

ROSALIND. It’s absurd, isn’t it? Archaic! […] This business of the senior common room…

GOSLING. I suppose. But ... you can’t worry about it. […] It’s not like biophysicists have such great conversations at meals anyway. They tend just to talk about the work. They never take a break.

ROSALIND. But those are precisely the conversations I need to have. Scientists make discoveries over lunch.

WILKINS. I almost went to see the very same performance. […] Our paths so nearly crossed. (Beat.) Was it any good?

ROSALIND. Oh yes. Very.

WILKINS. The great difference, you know, between The Winter’s Tale and the story on which it’s based—Pandosto—is that in Shakespeare’s version the heroine survives.

ROSALIND. John Gielgud played Leontes. He really was very good. Very lifelike. Very good. When Hermione died, even though it was his fault, I felt for him. I truly did.

WILKINS. And who played Hermione?

ROSALIND. I don’t remember. She didn’t stand out, I suppose.

WATSON. But she wasn’t [in the laboratory,] was she. She was too busy snow-shoeing and ... enjoying things like ... nature and small woodland creatures.
CRICK. I mean, didn’t she feel that something was at her back, a force greater than she was ...
WATSON. You mean us?
CRICK. No. I mean fate.
WATSON. What’s the difference?

ROSALIND. (Condescendingly.) Flushed with pride, are we?

WILKINS. I beg your pardon?

ROSALIND. X-ray patterns you made?

WILKINS. It was just a manner of speaking. Everyone knows who’s on the team, that there is a team.

ROSALIND. Well, I don’t know which X-ray patterns you were looking at, but in the ones I took, it’s certainly not clear that there is a helix.

WILKINS. It’s like you’re unwilling to see it.

CRICK. She’s really that bad?

WILKINS. Worse.

WATSON. The Jews really can be very ornery.

WILKINS. You’re telling me.

WATSON. Is she quite overweight?

WILKINS. Why do you ask?

CRICK. James is many things but subtle is not one of them. […] You see, he imagines that she’s overweight. The kind of woman who barrels over you with the force of a train. […]

CASPAR. (To the audience.) To Watson and Crick, the shape of something suggested the most detailed analysis of its interior workings. As though, by looking at something you could determine how it came to be ... how it gets through each day.

ROSALIND. As a girl, I prided myself on always being right. Because I was always right. I drove my family near mad by relentlessly proposing games to play that I’d win every time. […] And when I was at university, and it was becoming as clear to my parents as it always had been for me that I would pursue science, I left Cambridge to meet my father for a hiking weekend. (Staring again at the image.) And atop a mountain in the Lake District, when I was eighteen years old, he said to me, “Rosa­lind, if you go forward with this life… you must never be wrong…”

WILKINS. But what are we celebrating??

GOSLING. It’s amazing, really—

ROSALIND. Have some faith in me. There is something to celebrate. Take a leap of faith.

WILKINS. (Bitterly.) As though you would ever do that. […] I mean, my God, can you even hear yourself? The irony?

ROSALIND. (Slowly.) I take a leap of faith every day, Maurice, just by walking through that door in the morning ... I take a leap of faith that it’ll all be worth it, that it will all ultimately mean something.

WILKINS. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

ROSALIND. No, you wouldn’t.

CRICK. And what is a race anyway? And who wins? If life is the ultimate race to the finish line, then really we don’t want to win it. Shouldn’t want to win it. Should we? […] Or maybe the race is for something else entirely. Maybe none of us really knew what we were searching for. What we wanted. Maybe success is as illusory and elusive as ... well, Rosalind was to us.

WATSON. Do tell us what our little ray of sunshine is keeping busy with these days.

CRICK. (Actually worried.) Wilkins, old boy. Are you sure you’re quite all right?

WATSON. Anything new on her docket? If you don’t mind sharing, that is.

WILKINS. I honestly couldn’t give two damns. I’m happy to tell you all I can remember.

CASPAR. Watson and Crick got hold of the paper Rosalind had written. It was confidential.

CRICK. It wasn’t confidential. Another scientist at Cambridge gave it to us. […]

WILKINS. Well it wasn’t published, that’s for sure. And it included [….] information that became critical to your work.

WATSON. I’m sure we would have gotten there sooner or later, even without it.

WILKINS. So would we have done, with the benefit of your work. You had ours but we didn’t have yours!

WATSON. There was no “we” where you were concerned. […]

GOSLING. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how they got the paper, only that they got it.

CASPAR. And that Rosalind didn’t know she should be in a hurry.

ROSALIND. I think I’m thinking about how I’ve come to the end of thinking. […]

WILKINS. We could talk it through. It might help. […]

GOSLING. For a moment, everything stopped. Different ways our lives could go hovered in the air around us. […]

ROSALIND. You know, I think I am going to call it a night. I haven’t been home before midnight for a fortnight and really what’s the point of being here and not getting anywhere? […]

GOSLING. And then there was only one way everything would go.

GOSLING. There’s no science that can explain it. Loneliness. […]

CASPAR. Rosalind? (She clutches her stomach.)

WATSON. It works, Francis. It works. (A very long beat.)

CRICK. It’s ...

WATSON. I can’t believe it.

CRICK. It’s life unfolding, right in front of us. (Rosalind doubles over in her chair, and gasps.)

CASPAR. Rosalind?

WILKINS. It’s the loneliest pursuit in the world. Science. Because there either are answers or there aren’t.

ROSALIND. We lose. In the end, we lose. The work is never finished and in the meantime our bodies wind down, tick slower, sputter out.

WILKINS. Like grandfather clocks.

ROSALIND. If I’d only ...

GOSLING. Been more careful around the beam.

WATSON. Collaborated.

CRICK. Been more open, less wary. Less self-protective.

CASPAR. Or more wary, more self-protective.

WATSON. Been a better scientist.

CASPAR. Been willing to take more risks, make models, go forward without the certainty of proof.

CRICK. Been friendlier.

GOSLING. Or born at another time.

CRICK. Or born a man.

WILKINS. And they do. I love that Hermione wasn’t really dead. That she comes back.

ROSALIND. (Sympathetically.) No, Maurice. She doesn’t. Not really.

WILKINS. Of course she does.

ROSALIND. No.

WILKINS. Then how do you explain the statue coming to life?

ROSALIND. Hope. They all project it. Leontes projects life where there is none, so he can be forgiven.