Before she is sent to the Colony, the 15-year-old Stella is a social outcast, though she enjoys school and respects authority. Her mother, Alice, has been ill for many years, and her father, Cordell, has been raping his daughter for three years. When she gets pregnant, her parents take her to a doctor who insists on “restoring” her virtue and sends her to the State Industrial Farm Colony for an abortion, sterilization, and character rehabilitation. Stella immediately begins to curry favor with the Colony’s superintendent, Baker, and develops a dislike for her housemother, the sadistic Mrs. Maynard. Isolated once again, she doesn’t make any friends among the women—most of whom are significantly older than she is. Lucy, Stella’s coworker in the laundry, immediately identifies Stella’s relative innocence, and Baker recognizes Stella’s intelligence and motivation.

In fact, Baker identifies many similarities between Stella and herself. Stella’s eagerness to ingratiate herself to Baker spurs the girl to spy on the other residents and report on their misbehavior. This pattern leads to the residents’ suspicion of her and gives rise to Maynard’s dislike as well; the housemother believes that Stella exaggerates her reports in order to gain Baker’s favor. In some ways, Stella looks up to Ruth, but when Baker points out that both she and Stella have made a grave “mistake” in life and have paid a “permanent” price for their errors, Stella comes to believe that the superintendent truly has her best interests at heart. She longs to feel cared for and loved, and Baker provides her with the best chance of that regard, especially when Stella learns that she has been sterilized and can no longer have children of her own.

While Stella does investigate the “purpose” of the Colony, especially after her mistreatment by the doctors and her group punishment experience, she ultimately allies herself with Baker, who gives her special treatment and additional responsibilities, even taking the girl with her to Alabama to begin anew after the fire. The narrative thus implies that Stella will grow up to be just like Baker, attempting to “reform” other women and blaming them for the problems that are caused by society’s systemic misogyny.

Ruth begins the novel as an independent, working, unmarried woman, confident in her abilities and self-reliance, and she finishes the same way, even though the system threatens to break her a number of times. Her father always cautioned her against embracing her autonomy, suggesting that her beauty and her independence could negatively affect her reputation. This combination of traits prompts the sheriff to view her as a threat and pick her up to be “tested” for venereal diseases. Intelligent and discerning, Ruth views the world with a critical eye and quickly concludes that the Colony is a “sham.” She asks Nurse Crawford if similar facilities exist for men with venereal diseases, and she cannot understand why infected women are incarcerated while men in a similar situation are not. 

From her first moment at the Colony, Ruth rebels. She declares that she is not in need of reform, and she tries to run away when the sheriff drops her off. Though she says what Baker wants to hear in order to escape the abuses of “Meditation,” she gathers information about the Colony and its goals, listening to the other women’s stories and building a rapport that helps her to withstand the horrors of her “treatment.” 

Ruth dreams of working with the lawyer, Stanley Newell, to bring people like Baker and Maynard to justice for their abuses of the women in their care. When she is expected to participate in Stella’s group punishment, she refuses and is returned to “Meditation.” Then, when she has an opportunity to escape her situation, she refuses to participate in Frances’s punishment, making it clear that she would rather die than inflict harm on another innocent woman. Ruth sees all of the women as equals, no matter their pasts, and she refuses to shame anyone. Her integrity allows her to walk away from the Colony with the strength to tell the truth about her experiences.

During Ruth’s final stint in “Meditation,” Nurse Crawford reveals that she was once an inhabitant of a facility similar to the Colony. In her youth, she became another victim of a harsh society, for as the oldest child in her family, she was compelled to help support her mother and siblings after her father was laid off and later died. To do this, she often stole food, and she also performed sex acts with men in exchange for the money to feed her family. The novel implies that had her father not been laid off, Crawford would never have turned to criminal activity. However, her desperation-fueled actions led to her incarceration, where she learned about the opportunity to become a public health nurse. She tells Ruth that she is proof that the system can work, but she also advises Ruth to do and say whatever she must in order to be discharged. Nurse Crawford is the only staff member who is authentically devoted to the well-being of the Colony’s residents. She often sneaks food to residents who need it and treats them with compassion and concern even when they break the rules. She is a powerful foil for the other women who work at the Colony, showing just how selfish their motives are.