The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Knowledge”

Chapter 1 Summary

It is 1917, and 14-year-old Katherine Schaub is on her way to her new job at the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation’s watch-dial factory in Newark, New Jersey, where she will paint numbers on watch faces in luminous, radium-based paint after a brief apprenticeship in quality control. The studio almost exclusively employs young women, whose work is considered “glamorous,” and pays better than most other work available to young women at the time. The workers are eagerly recruiting their friends and family members to work at the factory.

Katherine has seen the many advertisements for products that include radium and is enchanted by the substance. When scientists discovered radium’s power to treat cancer, its reputation as a miraculous substance grew, and it has made its way into countless consumer products and is featured in cartoons and songs.

It is the height of World War I, and business is booming at the factory as radium is used to make paint for watch-faces, gunsights, and other war-time products. The job of painting dials on watch faces is precise, demanding, and important, as most of the watches will be used by soldiers on the front lines. To create the extremely thin lines required for the watch faces, the girls “lip-point” their brushes, putting them in their mouths to form the bristles into a sharp point. Some of the girls worry about the safety of this method, but their overseers assure them it is harmless.

Chapter 2 Summary

After the United States declared its full involvement in WWI, demand at the factory has skyrocketed. The company opens a new factory to house radium extraction and processing facilities in the next town over, Orange. New workers are hired, including politically-minded Grace Fryer. They are taught to carefully mix the paint to avoid wasting the precious material and to “lip-point” their brushes.

The factory is a flurry of activity, operating nights and seven days a week to keep up with demand. Despite this, the girls mostly enjoy their work and socialize with the other employees in the factory. This includes the company’s founder, Austrian doctor Sabin von Sochocky. Sochocky fears radium but is transfixed by it, and he takes few precautions in handling it. Despite his fears, the girls are provided with no protective equipment as the amount of radium in the paint is considered inconsequential.

Chapter 3 Summary

As the company increases production, conserving the material becomes a major concern. The girls are forbidden from rinsing their brushes, and they are brushed down at the end of the day to collect the paint dust that has accumulated. Still, the paint lingers on their bodies and they become known for their “unearthly” glow—as well as the expensive clothes they can afford thanks to their high wages.

Katherine Schaub suddenly breaks out in pimples and goes to the doctor, who observes “changes” in her blood. When he asks if she works with phosphorus, Katherine is frightened and demands to know what is in the paint. Company executives assure the girls that the paint is safe. However, on another occasion, von Sochocky passes through the studio and warns painter Grace Fryer that lip-pointing will make her sick.

Others are hired, including Katherine’s orphaned cousin Irene, single mother Sarah Maillefer, and the company’s new treasurer Arthur Roeder, a successful businessman.

Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The transition from the Prologue to Chapter 1 cuts from the scientist’s agony to young Katherine Schaub, walking with a “spring in her step” (17) to her new job at the watch-dial factory. The transition juxtaposes pain and danger with innocence and naïve excitement, which casts a lingering shadow over Katherine’s excitement. Additionally, since the Prologue is set in 1901 and Chapter 1 is set in 1917, the reader can assume that more of the dangers and benefits of radium are known when Katherine begins her job, and that perhaps the workers are being put at risk out of neglect, not ignorance.

Moore includes significant biographical details about the girls, which emphasizes that they were real, distinctive people. This contrasts with their repetitive work, in which they are valued above all for their productivity. Still the factory is depicted as friendly and familial, as employees picnic together and socialize across employment strata. The suffering of the dial-painters that is to come casts a shadow over this overall happy time. Similarly, Moore foreshadows the revelation of the girls’ radiation poisoning through early warning signs, such as Katherine’s pimples and von Sochocky’s reaction to the lip-pointing he observes.

In these early chapters, we also see the introduction of the extended metaphor of the girls as living ghosts. The radium paint dust that settles on their skin, hair, and clothes and does not easily come off suggests that the effects of the paint will go deeper, and will be similarly difficult to remove. The ghostliness of the girls also nods to their deaths, suggesting that they are already walking dead, with their fates sealed, despite their liveliness and youth.