Dramatic Action and Idea

Near and far. Human and Celestial. 

Perspective. Relativity.

Moving forward while looking back.

The play is about how we wrestle with things close to us and things far away---the science of the distant stars and the mysteries of the human heart.

Henrietta spends the first half of the play denying herself a human experience as the world keeps trying to insinuate itself into her life. While Henrietta obsesses on the faraway stars, the real human world keeps tempting her to come back to it---to participate with people, life, romance, and things close to her. Henrietta rebuffs each attempt. She even removes her hearing aid when examining the stars so that she can give herself over to the heavens and isolate herself from the human world. Henrietta sees romantic love, traditional values, etc. as restrictive and possibly frightening--- and she instinctively pulls away. She is not like her sister, Margaret, who is happily in touch with a traditional role: mother, church pianist, homemaker. Henrietta wants more out of life than the times currently offer women.  Ironically, it is her time at home and her sister’s music which provides Henrietta with the means to make her most important scientific discovery. This relationship between music and science and between sisters, one a pianist and one an astronomer, plants the seed for the direction of act 2. 

The second half of the play shows Henrietta trying to integrate the “near” and the “far”.  Although her romance with Peter never goes anywhere, the immediacy of Henrietta’s feelings for Peter have changed her forever. That, and the sudden realization of her life’s work leaves her rattled and on the verge of a change at the top of the act. On page 82 she wonders aloud “I may have forgotten to live” and this realization propels her into the next section of the play determined to experience the life she has denied herself in act 1. Months later, alone at sea under a blanket of stars, Henrietta writes to Margaret and confesses that “I used to think that to be truly alive I needed answers. I needed to know. But all this [the stars] does not in fact need to be known. We do.” Henrietta has finally come to the conclusion that understanding the mysteries close to her is just as important as understanding the faraway. 

The last section and the very end of the play is about the human need to leave something behind. Henrietta returns from her trip abroad with a cancer diagnosis and a fierce determination to complete her life’s work before time runs out. It is her only hope of leaving a legacy. Despite her accomplishments and acclaim she is still held at arms length by the male dominated scientific community and burdened by her failing body. In the last moments of the play Henrietta’s is taken to the great refractor telescope and the two worlds she has wrestled with throughout the play are brought together. The distant stars are presented to her failing body and time rightly bends. In the play, as in science, time becomes relative, elastic, and in the last few moments we are offered a glimpse of the far future where all of Henrietta’s efforts are affirmed and her legacy fulfilled.

Image Research

Given Circumstances

Time

• “Late evening 1900.” 
• Night turns into day implying Henri has been out all night.
• “Dressed warmly” for Winter or late Autumn. p. 2
• Henrietta has been sitting on the news for weeks---leaving in a matter of days. p.4
• Women wore bloomers---not an enlightened age. p.5
• The idea of women wearing pants is shocking to Margaret. p. 6
• Samuel proposed to Margaret that morning and has been awaiting answer all day. p. 8
• The photometry office is empty. Early or in-between work hours
• Peter refers to watch says “10 o’clock”.
• Peter is in a hurry. “ We’ll make it quick.” p. 11
• Peter keeps regular rounds---a set schedule. P. 13
• Henrietta had an appointment to meet Dr. Pickering at 10. P. 14
• It is Henrietta’s first day at Harvard. P. 15
• Peter hurries when Annie and Williamina return to the office. P. 17
• “Women’s work” is an outdated and sexist expression. P. 18
• “ Girl hours or kilo-girl hours”  implies the hours are long.
• “ Good morning, Mr. Shaw, back again?” suggests Peter’s rounds are more frequent. 27
• Thanksgiving- Time is passing in Margaret’s letters.
• Margaret’s pregnant- Time passes again. P. 28
• Henrietta’s been working half year and Peter keeps coming around for silly reasons. 29
• Easter- Time passes in Margaret’s letter. P. 30
• Margaret gives birth. Nine months have passes since pregnancy announcement.
• “It’s April.” p. 31
• Peter is visiting more often just to see Henrietta.  P. 35
• Annie allows Henrietta to stay late to work on her Cepheids. P. 38
• Margie asks Henri to come home for Christmas. Time passes in letters.
• 1905- Five years have passed between Scene 1 and 3.
• Henrietta spent all night at her desk. P. 40
• Henrietta can find and count  two hundred stars in one evening.
• Peter calls it an “age of defiance.” p. 42
• Peter says they are living in a “modern age”
• Einstein’s theory of special relativity was published in 1905. P. 43
• Henrietta is working alone at night. P. 48
• Henrietta has spent many nights alone counting Cepheids. P. 49
• Peter is leaving for the next day for a trip to Europe. 
• Peter wants Henrietta to come with him for a month long trip. 
• Henrietta has to make decision right away.
• Henrietta is on the verge of a huge discovery. P. 54
• Peter has been trying for three years to make the move on Henrietta.
• Space and time. Time apart from Peter. Time away from work. Time.
• Henrietta’s father had a stroke the Sunday before. They couldn’t reach Henrietta. P. 59
• Margaret exhausted after only tending to her father for a few days. Stroke was Sunday. 59
• The doctor is coming to see Henri’s father in an hour. P. 60
• Peter has been gone for months and Henrietta has been gone as long with her family 
• Henrietta assures Peter she will be “coming back soon.”
• Henrietta has been hearing bits of Margie’s symphony for months.
• The pattern of the blinking stars. Brightest takes longest to blink.
• Time it takes light to travel from place to place.
• Act 2 begins in 1910. Henrietta has been home nearly five years.
• Night on the dream ship. P. 72
• Henrietta acknowledges it took a long time for her to make her discovery. 74
• Peter has to go to teach his class soon.
• It has been a long time since Peter and Henrietta have talked. Years.
• “Years of complications” p. 76
• Brightness of Cepheids and time periods.
• Peter hardly knew his bride when the married. P. 84
• Henrietta plans an impromptu trip to Europe and is leaving tomorrow. P. 85
• Henrietta has been gone a while. “ “Misses Margie” p. 87
• Henrietta is in a hurry to get back to work. Urgent. Sick. P. 88
• Henrietta is dying. P. 88
• Margie’s son is nearly as tall as his father. Grown up. 89
• 1918- Henrietta has lived several years with her illness. 
• Census in 1918.
• World War 1
• Henrietta is going to die first.
• Margaret doesn’t approve of the pants/women’s lib changing times.
• Annie has trouble with changing times/shoes.
• Dinner time. Family time. P. 97
• There is a March on Washington next month and Annie is going.
• Henrietta is running out of time.
• Annie says “ time is...persistent.”
• Peter just received Henrietta’s forwarded letters this very day.
• Henrietta’s death takes us into the future narratively.

Time

Henrietta Leavitt is described as “spilling over her own traditionalism.” 1900 was a time of defiance, of change and great scientific discovery, but for women the options were few. Women were wives and mothers, not scientists or professors. They were expected to live traditional lives in this “modern” age. Time and society create an almost insurmountable obstacle for the passionate and brilliant Henrietta Leavitt. Because of the time period she is denied the opportunities that were available to less qualified men and as a result she must work harder to achieve her goals.

When Annie says on page 101 that “time is...persistent” it cuts to the very heart of the play. Henrietta’s drive and determination is never squelched but the world works on her in so many ways and so relentlessly that she simply runs out of time. Years are spent working diligently while waiting for an opportunity to distinguish herself--- and on the cusp of discovery, Henrietta’s duty to family pulls her away and five years of work are seemingly lost. The time spent away from Harvard arguably ruins her hopes of a romance with Peter as well. Circumstances of time prevent Henrietta from fully embracing her work for years. Upon learning of her illness she pushes harder, urgently trying to make the most of her remaining time. However, her illness prevents her from working away from home and her frustration builds as time slowly runs out.

Place

• Rural Massachusetts church. Does she mean Wisconsin? 2
• Harvard in Cambridge, MA has offered Henrietta a job. 3
• Radcliffe is in Cambridge
• Margaret is focused on home in Wisconsin. 
• Henrietta talks of the universe. 7
• Henri is outside in the cold looking at stars.
• Margie wants Henrietta to come inside the church where it is warm.
• The photometry office is a vacant attic room with desks and file drawers.
• The telescope is on a hill across campus from the office, visible from the windows.
• The workroom is for the girls. The telescope if for the men.
• There is an area where Annie & Will can observe Peter and Henri without being in the room 1
• Williamina Fleming is Scottish.17
• Henrietta has her own station to work from.
• Annie disappears to another part of the office to get plates. 24
• The universe. How big? Where are we? Henrietta is obsessed.
• The Milky Way might be the universe for all they know.
• The stars as they are named. Afar but not apart.
• Margaret writes letters from home while distant stars are being named.
• Margaret wants Henri to come home.
• Henrietta hears Margaret’s letters while working on the distant stars.
• Out there. (the universe)
• Home.
• Home. 32
• Henri calls their home “a farm.” 33
• Harvard is a men’s school. Peter comes into the only women’s area for his “rounds.”
• Magellanic clouds.
• Cepheid stars. 37
• Henrietta virtually lives at her desk. She sleeps there. 40
• Henrietta goes to the file room to nap. 42
• Henrietta has an apartment that she hardly uses. 42
• Relativity suggests space is elastic and there are other galaxies as big as ours. 43
• Henrietta grew up in Lancaster
• Henrietta’s family is in Wisconsin. 52
• Peter has a trip planned to Europe and invites Henrietta.
• Peter mentions Spain.
• A romantic ocean voyage by ship. 54
• Peter offers Henrietta the “widest world” in exchange for her stars.
• A dream boat. The fantasy dance aboard the ship. Stars overhead.
• Margaret intrudes with a telegram from home in Wisconsin.
• Space and time. Afar but not apart. They part but make promises.
• Henrietta returns to the Leavitt home in Wisconsin instead of Europe or Harvard. 58
• All that Henrietta has from Harvard is a box of star plates.
• Margaret wrote fake letters from Henri so she’d have a home to come back to.
• From home Henrietta writes to Harvard. A reversal of earlier in Act 1.
• Peter is on a ship. Henrietta writes to him from home.
• Peter mentions the most exciting and romantic places he has been in Europe.
• England. Oxford. Paris.
• They reiterate “afar but not apart” meaning only separate in space.
• The Leavitt home is not adequate for Henrietta’s work---not enough light.  64
• Margaret acknowledges their home is too small to accommodate Henri’s work. 65
• Margaret suggests Henrietta “going back” to Harvard after father’s death.
• Margaret marvels at the entire sky on one small plate.
• Margaret marvels at “worlds in the sky”. Her world is broadened via Henri’s work.
• Princeton astronomer has heard of Henrietta.
• Henrietta’s big discovery is made at home in Wisconsin and could not have been made elsewhere. 71
• Henrietta and Peter on a dream boat again. The sky. The sea. The stars. The dream. 72
• Henrietta returns to Harvard at top of Act 2.
• Space and Time
• Will saw Henri earlier on the path to the observatory.
• “Big and bright or just close by” as a way to put Peter into perspective. 80
• Peter in the lecture hall. 82
• “Stuck on this planet.”
• Peter has a very small minded view of the universe. How large?
• Peter cannot comprehend the idea of thousands of light years.
• Henrietta abruptly plans a trip to Europe for herself.
• Henrietta on the ocean liner. Alone.
• Henrietta writes home and Harvard. The ship gives her perspective on her life. 86
• A dock in Boston. Henrietta comes back to work. 87
• Henrietta has gone to the places Peter has gone. London. Paris.
• Henrietta plans to go straight back to work from the harbor as she returns to the states.
• Margaret intends to take an ailing Henri back to Wisconsin.
• Princeton is collaborating with Henrietta and the computers.
• Henrietta finally declares “ My works is here!” [Harvard] 90
• Henrietta is too sick to return to the photometry room at Harvard so Annie brings plates to her.
• Henrietta works from her home in Cambridge, near the school. 
• Margaret wonders where heaven goes? 95
• March in Washington for women’s vote. Shit’s getting real.
• Henrietta has not been into the photometry room in ages.
• Hertzsprung uses Henri’s discovery to measure the distance from Earth to the Cepheids. 102
• Universe is vast---much bigger than anyone ever imagined.
• “Thousands and thousands of light years away.”
• Finally! The observatory! The great refractor telescope! 
• Henrietta describes the journey to the telescope in great detail. On a hill. Blocks away. 110
• The Ocean Liner/The afterlife.
• Deep space.
• Distance measured in light.

Place

Place forces action in several significant ways. The Leavitt home is located in rural Wisconsin, halfway across the country from Henrietta’s work and career in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The distance alone forces Henrietta to choose between family and career. She cannot have both in her life at the same time. When her father has a stroke, Henrietta is forced to leave the bulk of her life and work behind and travel back home to help her sister care for her father. This interrupts her work just as she is near a big discovery, her routine hampered by the inadequacy of the Leavitt farm as a workroom. Ironically, Henrietta’s biggest discovery comes (and could have only come) while she was at home with her sister. Margaret’s piano composition triggers the breakthrough in Henrietta’s work, the realization that the blinking of the stars she has been studying has a pattern that is tied to music and rhythm.

Henrietta is crestfallen when she first arrives at Harvard early in the play and is shown her workspace---a tiny attic far from the real scientific work she had imagined. Outside the window of the photometry room, the great refractor telescope sits atop a hill on campus---visible but always out of reach for Henrietta. The separation of the workroom for the girls and the telescope for the men drives home the struggle at the heart of the play---Henrietta’s determination to participate in the world of scientific discovery at Harvard. It can be argued that from the moment Henrietta arrives her goal is to get her hands on the nearby but off limits telescope. By the end of the play and very near the end of her life she achieves this goal.

The other most significant place in the world of the play is the sky, the heavens, and more specifically the Cepheids that Henrietta studies. The night sky is an ever present fixture in the world of the play. It is mysterious, beckoning, and uncooperative---all of which makes Henrietta determined to explore and know its secrets. She is willing to leave family and forsake conventional happiness for the night sky, but through much of the play she is rebuffed. In Henrietta’s final speech, the sky is finally revealed to her. The beauty and spectacle of the heavens via the Hubble images is a slow burn reveal---elegantly teased throughout the play often one star at a time and made fully and fittingly clear as Henrietta transcends the earthly plain.

Society

• Margaret wants to discuss Henri’s job as a family.
• Margaret worries that a job will lead to Henri ending up a spinster. 6
• Margaret refers to Henrietta’s temperament---how she doesn’t fit with most other women.
• Margaret and Henrietta view life differently.
• Margaret is the lady of the house. Runs the home for her father.
• Margaret has a marriage proposal. 8
• Peter makes a point of establishing his status over Henrietta.
• Peter went to Harvard---a big ivy league school. 12
• Harvard is a men’s university. There is a clear and unequal division between the sexes.
• Peter notices Henrietta is unmarried. 14
• Peter wanted to be an actor but his father wanted something more respectable.
• Peter refers to the work as “women’s work.” 18
• Annie and Williamina run the computers together but Annie is really in charge.
• Henrietta is the new girl and has to prove herself.
• Williamina freely teases Annie about her authority. “ Mr. President.” 25
• Women have supported men from the shadows for centuries. 25
• Henrietta has become an aunt. Her sister’s family is growing.
• Henrietta is one of the few women who have a profession.
• Margaret is influenced by Henri and begins to work at her music.
• Annie and Peter are unspoken peers. Technically he has status in society because he is a man.
• Annie & Williamina speak plainly to Peter and with little concern.
• Williamina advises Henri that Peter wouldn’t be so bad to marry.
• Annie & Williamina are romantically involved.
• Henrietta presses Annie to ask for a promotion and set an example.
• The reluctance to embrace new scientific theories (relativity) mirror society’s reluctance to abandon tradition. 43
• Williamina asks Henrietta if Peter has proposed. 45
  None of the computers are married.
• Williamina was married but her husband abandoned her. 46
• Henrietta thinks Peter wouldn’t be so bad to marry.
• Henrietta’s entire life is about the Cepheids---like a husband or children.
• Henrietta’s family needs her. She feels a sense of duty.
• Margaret and Henri quarrel about work and family. 60
• Margaret gently pushes Henrietta to get out and find a man---to follow convention. 66
• Margaret acknowledges she and Henri upset tradition in varying degrees. 68
• When Henrietta comes back Peter now calls her Miss Leavitt.
• Peter has advanced in his career---a teacher now.
• Henrietta is now published and has achieved some acclaim.
• Peter still diminishes her work by suggesting her discoveries will help real scientists. 77
• Henrietta is dismissed because she doesn’t have a degree.
• Williamina disagrees about who has status between herself and Peter.
• Social views of women shift to politics in the form of the suffrage movement.
• Annie has become a suffragette.
• Peter is a married man---submitted to his father’s conformist ideas.
• The computers are getting new chairs---moving up!
• Henrietta’s work on Cepheids is taken away from her and given to men.
• Peter’s father chose his bride and forced him to marry.
• Peter and Annie resolve their power struggle and are briefly equals. 92
• Men use Henrietta’s research but shut her out of the process.
• Legacy means children or what you leave behind after you are gone. Children vs. Cepheids
• Margaret doesn’t approve of Annie’s pants.
• Annie, Will, and eventually Peter are invited for (family) dinner.
• Henrietta gets a promotion at Harvard.
• Annie gets a promotion. Views about women are changing.
• Annie is the beginning of a model for feminism and women’s rights.
• Henrietta has established a standard---a legacy.

Society

All the characters in the play, to varying degree, are bucking against society. The expectation to conform to a traditional lifestyle is strong and the pushing back against convention becomes the basis for the central conflict of the play: the need to discover versus the need to embrace tradition. Is it possible to move forward while looking back? The play elegantly presents these ideas---never more clearly than in the story of the protagonist. Henrietta. As determined as Henrietta is to break free and make a new kind of life for herself, society throws up a steady stream of obstacles---sexism, romantic entanglements, and duty to family to name a few. Ironically, the job she is promised---her big break at Harvard--- is the most oppressive. Instead of gaining access to the universe through the telescope, she is cloistered with other women and relegated to doing glorified “housekeeping”. Peter calls it “women’s work” and that sets the tone for Henrietta’s struggle up until the very end of the play. Harvard is a man’s world, as is the scientific community at the turn of the century---and all the Harvard computers feel the weight of this. Likewise, Peter is a victim in his own way. The expectation to perform and excel at Harvard, as a man of birth and importance, traps him in a life, career, and eventually a marriage he doesn’t really want. It is important to note that Henrietta is the impetus for change in the world of the play. Although the others likely feel the rub of tradition like an itchy collar or shoes that are too small, they can’t name it until Henrietta comes on the scene. She provides the collective “Ah!” for everyone. On page 37 Henrietta urges Annie to ask for a faculty position for herself and the sake of all the other women like herself. “ I want a model, Miss Cannon, if they won’t give you what you deserve then they’re never going to give it to any of us.” Annie seems capable, stern, and completely stuck until that point in the play. This exchange sets in motion her journey to independence and instigates her political work as a suffragette. Henrietta’s sister Margaret is similarly influenced and declares her music [isn’t just a hobby, it’s work]. Likewise, it is Henrietta who shakes up Peter’s life at Harvard. He is a charming if somewhat insufferable dud when we first see him, self-important and stuck in an empty career chosen by his father. By middle of the play, after falling for Henrietta, he begins to hope for a better more fulfilling life---and by the very end we see a changed man--- engaged, humbled, and thoughtful.

There is a faint but important thread of tension between Peter, Annie, and Williamina in regards to social status. Who’s the boss? Both Annie and Williamina are clearly older, more experienced, and more valuable to Dr. Pickering while Peter has unspecified duties and seems less vital. But Peter is a man and has status because of his gender and Harvard’s sexist politics at the turn of the century.  Peter’s function in the play is largely (but not only) to fall in love with Henrietta and there is a playfulness associated with that that tempers the language. Annie snaps at Peter for interfering with their work but after he leaves Williamina teases Henrietta and asks if Peter has proposed yet. The reference to a power struggle is noteworthy because it is resolved so nicely in the moment on page 92: “Annie takes his hand and shakes it. They are equals for a moment at least.” This suggests a thread of action that runs through the entire length of the play and resolved in a clear and hopeful way.

Margaret pushes Henrietta to follow a traditional path that was once widely accepted in society---to stay at home, focus on family, and find a man. The letters from Margaret urging Henrietta to come home deliberately overlap Henrietta’s discoveries and invade her work at Harvard. The pull between family and career and the need for Henrietta to choose between the two is never clearer than in this relationship at this point in the play. Henrietta does find family, though, in her own way. The family dinner in the last scene with Margaret, Annie, Williamina, and Peter illustrates that---and Henrietta has a legacy as well. Like Margaret’s children and grandchildren, Henrietta has her Cepheids---her stars---and the standard for measuring the universe is the legacy she leaves behind.

Politics

• Whisky and suffragettes- women are trying to get the vote.
• Annie seems complacent when Henri suggests she ask for a faculty position.
• Women do not have equal rights in law or science---not even close.
• Henri urges Annie to fight and lead her fellow computers for a better future. 37
• Annie becomes a suffragette.
• Annie wears a sash.
• Annie is “making trouble” for the university.
• Annie goes to marches and demonstrations.
• Democracy
• Annie is a patriot/suffragette.
• Annie passes out pamphlets.

Politics

The political world of the play is almost entirely represented by Annie’s work as a suffragette. In the 1900s gender inequality was simply a way of life and people were conditioned by society to accept this. Even Annie, arguably the most practical and intelligent character in the play, accepts the flawed system. Until Henrietta questions the status quo Annie never contemplates fighting for a change. Politics come into the world of the play in the second act as a promise of social change. We see the first nascent inklings of change in Annie’s and Henrietta’s promotions, Henrietta’s raise, and  Henrietta’s inclusion in the Cepheid study that comes in the form of the mis-directed letters from male colleagues that Peter presents to her at the end of the play.

Religion

• Henrietta’s father is a pastor.
• Henrietta and Margaret are outside church in scene 1.
• Margaret plays piano in her father’s church and plays hymns throughout the play.
• Margaret urges Henri to take a Bible when she goes to Harvard.
• Margaret plays For The Beauty of the Earth, a traditional Methodist hymn.
• Henrietta tells Peter her father is a pastor. 16
• Henrietta’s father is planning a sermon on family. 29
• Henrietta’s father sends her a book and she assumes it is a Bible.
• Margaret sings For the Beauty of the Earth. 39
• Williamina gently criticizes Catholics for being scattered or fickle in their beliefs. 43
• Henrietta’s father’s town suffers from the lack of a spiritual leader. 60
• Margaret practices hymns for Sunday service.
• Henrietta speaks of her ideas about souls and the afterlife. 94
• Henri & Margie discuss God and belief. 96
• For the Beauty of the Earth plays when Henrietta sees [her] heaven. 111

Religion

Religion is part of the traditional world that Henrietta is forever fighting in the play. The fact that her father is a pastor and her beloved sister is a church pianist who fully embraces that belief system makes Henrietta’s relationship to religion complicated. Henrietta openly rejects the traditional path as it relates to her career and her rights as a woman. Society is flawed and she doesn’t buy into that system. Completely denying her religious upbringing means denying her entire family, though, and Henrietta never does that. For the entire middle section of the play Henrietta compartmentalizes and focuses on her work. References to religion virtually disappear from the play. The word “heaven” holds a purely scientific connotation.

Around page 94 the thread of religion is picked up again and Henrietta and Margaret begin to discuss souls and whether life has meaning. The sisters gently debate the existence of God and they bridge the gap between their own belief systems---science and religion.

Money

• Henri has been offered a job.
• Henrietta wants her dowry to go to Harvard and work.
• Henrietta’s work pays 25 cents an hour. 
• The glass plates are very expensive.
• Henrietta calls her wage “volunteering.”
• Annie says no to a raise for Henri & Williamina. 37
• Dr. Pickering doesn’t pay well. 39
• Henrietta spent her dowry to get to Harvard.
• Computers are getting new office chairs. 79
• Henrietta has enough money saved to afford a ocean voyage and trip to Europe.
• Peter offers his personal physician for Henrietta.
• Henrietta gets a quarter raise.

Money

Money forces action in a couple of important ways. Henrietta uses her dowry to move to Harvard and go to work. The money that could have been used to secure a good marriage has now been spent on her shot at a career at Harvard. She tells Peter on page 52 “ I used my dowry to get here and that’s why I’m a bit zealous about all of this.” The stakes are very high and Henrietta can’t fool around---she must succeed at Harvard. 

The computers---Henrietta, Annie, and Williamina---are not paid well. The hours are long, the work is tedious, and it’s a thankless job. Henrietta calls it “volunteering” and exaggerates on page 39 “ Dr. Pickering doesn’t pay me at all”. This reinforces what we already know about the world of the play---that there is an inherent and consistent inequality between the way women and men are valued. Although there is no mention of the salary the men earn, there is the assurance of prestige, status, and the possibility of career advancement that is not a part of the lives of the women in the play. Henrietta must work twice as hard to distinguish herself---for what we imagine is far less pay than her male counterparts. In the last half of the play there appears to be some progress financially for the women computers. Annie gets a promotion, Henrietta gets a raise of a quarter, and brand new chairs are purchased for the photometry department. As the social and political climate slowly changes for the women, so do their financial prospects.