Time and the Fates Sundial

See it at the fair

Mrs. Hattie Levine went to the New York World's Fair in 1939, and wrote this in her diary about Paul Manship's Time and the Fates Sundial:

At the end of the pool, right before the T and P [Trylon and Perisphere] is a giant sundial-yes, the biggest sundial in the world. It can only be described as bizarre. There is a tree growing up the underside of the huge pointer. A lady stands upright beneath it and, in front of her, beneath the pointer's tip, another lady stands on another tough, tubby little cloud . . . the second lady leans forward like a ship's figurehead and holds a tall pointy spool of yarn, or maybe it is cotton candy. There is a third huddled-up lady facing in the other direction, holding what looks like poultry shears. The loose classical dress of the upright woman is slipping down her shoulders, and the leaning-forward woman is naked to the waist, which perhaps accounts for their terribly somber frowns. (Gelernter, David 1939, The Lost World of the Fair)

What information is Hattie Levine missing that might have helped her understand why Manship dressed the Fates the way he did?