What future do you see for Baker, Ruth, and Stella?
Personally, I hope Baker has to pay for her sins. I think Ruth is well on her way establishing her life and hopefully she’ll find love and success. Stella I worry about. She is under Baker’s tutelage and she was horribly abused by her father and then the abuse she suffered under Baker’s misguided control. She needs a lot of therapy and kindness to heal.
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I hope that eventually Baker gets what’s coming to her. But given her determination that she is right in what she does, she may not see it coming. Ruth will survive, if not with the same zest for life that she once had. I liked the way she decided to respond to the newspaper article about what happened. I think she may continue to be an advocate in her own way. Stella is the one that will always be under the thumb of Baker and given her need for a “safe place” she may learn too late that her willingness to live in that “safe place” will mean she is always abused.
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One in which they go from institution to “save” women and be extension, society from themselves. WWII is on the horizon. Perhaps they’ll end up in factories as part of the war effort.
I am perhaps naive, but I envision better futures for all three. Ruth is returning to living on her own and working as she so chooses. Having written that rebuttal to the news story, I can imagine her becoming the face of and the spokesperson against these horrific institutions. I think Baker is coming to recognize her sins of commission and omission (not stopping Maynard)and in virtually adopting Stella and finding a potential path for her, she is softening and will supervise less harshly. I think being loved, or something like it, by Stella, is enormously important to her. And we leave Stella in the process of discovering her own strengths and convictions, so I trust (or at least hope) she is going to find her footing and work and a life that she’s proud of.
Baker will continue to thrive until questions surface about her past. Ruth will live a life of independence with family and friends who truly care about her, Stella will not fare well considering the nurturing she will receive and the environment she will constantly be exposed to.
Ruth will be ok, although always haunted by her experience at the Colony.
Baker will eventually fall.
Unfortunately, Stella’s need for love and approval will override her intellectual abilities.
Baker will probably continue to function in some capacity at one institution after another until a savvy administrator or possibly a detective begins to delve deeper into her background and interview people who were under her care in the past.
Ruth seems to have a resilient nature and she may at some point be able to put this trauma behind her and use what has happened to her to help others. Or, she may suffer from PTSD after the horror she experienced and end up as a recluse.
Poor Stella. I just hope that under Ms. Baker’s tutelage she doesn’t become like her until all of these institutions were closed.
All three have survived traumatic experiences, even Baker. When she realizes what she had done, and she will, it will be a horrific awakening. Stella will grow up traumatized and will, hopefully, pull away from Baker. I think Ruth will be the most traumatized of the 3. She knows what her free life was like. Then her life crashed into a wall so shocking, I don’t think she will ever fully recover.