With the exception of Stella and Ruth, Baker disparages the girls in her care, thinking of them as “low-class degenerates” and “promiscuous, diseased, and immoral.” Why do you feel she is unable to find value in more of her charges?

BookBrowse Book Club Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart
1

With the exception of Stella and Ruth, Baker disparages the girls in her care, thinking of them as “low-class degenerates” and “promiscuous, diseased, and immoral.” Why do you feel she is unable to find value in more of her charges?

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Sometimes insecure persons who suddenly find themselves in a position with a little power become tyrannical. By acting self-righteous and indignant and constantly repeating the same lies that the “others” are repugnant and unworthy, people like Baker maintain their power. Power is new, exhilarating, their drug of choice.

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I think by viewing the women as “other” and “less than” it is easier to punish them and treat them inhumanely.

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I agree it’s easier for Baker to exercise her control over the women if she views them as “other” and “less than”. Maybe she also loathes herself so much that for each girl she disdains and claims to want to reform, she sees herself.

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I agree with the other posted comments. I also think Baker is insecure due to her own trauma. If she recognized the traumas of those in her care she would have to acknowledge her own past. She’s protecting her injured self

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Yikes, it seems that the first thing a person who mistreats others does is to no longer see those individuals as people of value. They ridicule them, use derogatory names for them and then remove their individuality. When someone is not an individual of value it is acceptable to cause physical and emotional abuse, because in your mind they “deserve” it. I am sorry to say but I think Baker really did see the girls at the colony as beneath her. Ugh.