Sexism and Antisemitism Theme Analysis

Photograph 51 centers on Rosalind Franklin, a 20th-century scientist whose infamous “Photograph 51” (an X-ray image of crystallized DNA) was crucial in discovering DNA’s double-helix structure. Throughout the play, Rosalind (who’s female and Jewish) works in a lab at King’s College London as a male scientist’s research assistant, and her white male colleagues treat her with relentless sexism and antisemitism that prevent her from being taken seriously in her career. As such, the play highlights just how common these discriminatory attitudes were in the 1950s and suggests that sexism and antisemitism derailed Rosalind Franklin’s career.

Throughout the play, Rosalind’s colleague Maurice Wilkins undermines and belittles her because she’s a woman. For instance, even though Wilkins insists on being called Dr. Wilkins in the lab, he calls Rosalind “Miss Franklin”—undermining the fact that she has the same qualifications he does, having earned her doctorate from the University of Cambridge. While Wilkins possibly believes that he’s being polite by calling Rosalind “Miss Franklin,” his decision to ignore her professional title highlights the fact that he sees her as inferior to him simply because she’s a woman. Wilkins later nicknames her “Rosy”—a patronizing name that he uses to invalidate Rosalind’s personality. By making fun of how un-“rosy” she is, he implies that he has certain expectations of how women should behave, and he’s determined to belittle “Rosy” until she acts the way he expects her to. Wilkins begins to refer to Rosalind as “Rosy” behind her back as he buddies up with two other male scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson, exploiting his professional relationship with Rosalind to get closer to them. The men delight in privately denigrating “Rosy,” poking fun at her serious demeanor as Watson and Crick plot to profit off her hard work. The men’s disrespectful treatment of Rosalind more broadly speaks to how female professionals in the 20th century were often undermined and taken advantage of.

There are also several instances when Rosalind is overtly discriminated against and excluded because of her gender. Firstly, Rosalind isn’t allowed to eat in the senior lunchroom with Wilkins, which prevents her from forming meaningful relationships with her colleagues—and from participating in the important conversations that take place over lunch. “Scientists make discoveries over lunch,” says Rosalind. She knows that in being barred from the lunchroom, she’s not just missing out on the social component work—she’s missing out on the chance to engage in serious discourse with likeminded colleagues, simply because she’s a woman. Furthermore, Rosalind knows that opportunities for female scientists in the 1950s are few and far between—and she remembers that during World War II, they were even scarcer. The play implies that Rosalind suffers through being excluded, underestimated, and disrespected because she knows that refusing to put up with these things would effectively mean the end of her career.

Rosalind faces antisemitism in the laboratory as well, as her religious identity signals her as “other” to her colleagues. When Rosalind remarks that she disapproves of Wilkins’s work on the Manhattan Project (the U.S.’s nuclear bomb development during World War II), Wilkins suggests “without apology” that the world—Jewish people especially—should be “grateful” for the fact that nuclear warfare “save[d]” them. Though not overtly antisemitic, the way Wilkins phrases this comment makes it sound like he’s lumping all Jewish people, including Rosalind, together. He sees Jewish people as other, and he callously remarks that Jewish people should be more “grateful” to have been rescued from the German Nazi regime in World War II—seemingly not realizing (or not caring) that his comment might make Rosalind uncomfortable. Later on, Watson uses antisemitic tropes of Jewish people as “ornery” and power-hungry while talking with Wilkins and Crick about how much he dislikes Rosalind. Watson specifically invokes the antisemitic stereotype that Jewish women are unfeminine and demanding, asking if Rosalind is “the kind of woman who barrels over you with the force of a train.” Wilkins doesn’t stick up for Rosalind, failing to defend her when other men in their profession denigrate her, and thereby demonstrating his own complicity in sexism and antisemitism. The frequency and casual nature of sexist and antisemitic treatment in the play suggest that these two toxic forces were commonplace in 1950s society; Rosalind Franklin’s struggles speak more generally to how women and minorities were mistreated at this time. Rosalind is taken advantage of because, as a woman and a Jewish person, she exists in the margins of wider society—and within her own male-dominated profession, she’s even more of a target for prejudice.

“I don’t like others to analyze my data, my work. I work best when I work alone,” says Rosalind at the start of her work alongside Wilkins. It’s not that she doesn’t trust her research partner—it’s that she’s developed methods for “work[ing] alone” out of necessity, because the sexist and antisemitic society in which she lives is prejudiced against her. Though Wilkins bristles at Rosalind’s prickly nature at first, over the course of the play, his and his fellow colleagues’ actions confirm her suspicions: women, especially Jewish women, are not treated as equals at King’s College.