Life in the Iron-Mills, an analysis
"It is a story of critical exposure by a sympathetic outsider."
Welcome to the Closely Reading book club: a space where we closely read classic literature together and discuss assigned chapters each week.
Today, I’m sharing some more analytical thoughts about Rebecca Harding Davis’s short story, Life in the Iron-Mills from 1861. If you have not read the story, but are joining us for our next reading, Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen, I highly recommend reading this summary to understand the basic story — or to read Davis’s story as you begin Yonnondio this week.
As always, thanks for being here and reading along!
What is life like in the iron mills?
The idea of literature written by, written for, and written about the working class provokes all kinds of gnarled questions. And this week, we take up some of those questions in Rebecca Harding Davis’s story, Life in the Iron-Mills.
This story is written from the perspective of a non-working-class writer (both Harding Davis herself and her narrator—who is presumably Harding Davis—are not working-class individuals but see themselves as deeply empathetic to, and concerned about, the working conditions of people during the burgeoning Industrial Revolution).
“Literary realism intersects with industrial change in Rebecca Harding Davis’s prescient novella, Life in the Iron Mills,” write the coeditors of American Working-Class Literature: An Anthology.1
“Harding Davis’s narrative—written for a middle-class audience—sets the stage for the industrial novels of social realism that would follow decades later. Harding Davis asks her readers to smell, hear, and see, not just the industrial landscape, but the human workers who are more than cogs, who have their own needs for beauty, love, and creative expression. It is a story of critical exposure by a sympathetic outsider.”
The story opens with a series of increasingly adamant questions and appeals to the reader. She wants you to consider the plight, the pain, and the true lived experience of people who perform manual labor before the existence of any real labor laws. She wants you to understand how unlivable these conditions were.
We’re talking 80-hour workweeks. No protections for safety or health. Unlivable wages. Devastatingly difficult work that is physically demanding but intellectually numbing. Exponentially growing wealth, held by a few businessmen; horrifically engrossing poverty, lived by pretty much everyone else.
The story is about Hugh Wolfe, a strong but downtrodden man who works in an iron mill, where plumes of pollution cake his skin and lungs and where he toils every day in the inferno-like temperatures of the factory. Hugh, along with Deborah and Janey, live a limited and painful existence filled with ceaseless labor — and virtually no comforts, leisure time, or rest to soothe them.
Cold, boiled potatoes. Fetid air; wet clothing. Aching bodies, sullen eyes. These are some of the markers flowing throughout Harding Davis’s prose that shine an excruciating light of truth on their circumstance. There are billowing fires and ashen air; one man compares the mill’s setting to Dante’s Inferno and the workers in it to demons; Deb calls the streets of this working town Hell as she makes her way, in soaked clothing and freezing worn-through shoes, to deliver Hugh a dinner that he forgot about in his endless labor.
These are hungry people. But as we learn in the story, they are starved for much more than nutritious food and clean water. They are starved of their own humanity.
One day, a group of observers come to the mill—a doctor, a businessman, and several others. They treat the mill like a carnival attraction, tourists to be entertained by its ceaseless enterprise. As they stroll and sweat through the space, they both denigrate and strangely admire (at a great distance, with a mixture of amusement and disgust) the men and women who toil in the iron-mill.
As they survey the scene of flames and smoke, they’re all stunned by the sudden flashing image of the Korl-Woman: an enormous, “rough and ungainly” figure that Hugh has cut from the “korl” or the waste created by his labor.
Hugh has taken the refuse and waste, and has crafted it into a work of art. He has turned the korl into a kind of rough clay. His statue of a working-class woman is “crude” and imperfect, yet she brims with hunger, longing, and angst.
Hugh has made a work that evokes a deep, if fleeting, emotional response. The visiting men at the mill are stunned by the Korl Woman’s efficacy and emotional presence; something in her wild gaze and reaching hands speaks to them on a soul level.
And yet, they ignore her maker, Hugh. Not a single one of the visiting men—who is in great position to help Hugh—takes it upon himself to help. One even asks if Hugh knows that he has skills that could grow into fine artistry. Hugh does know. He knows another life is possible for himself, but he needs help. Yet the upper-class visitors at the mill disdain him, pushing tiresome “bootstraps” narratives at Hugh and insisting that if he wanted to leave his lot in life, he would and he could.
It is Hugh’s own fault, the men ultimately agree, that he is where he is.
And yet, Harding Davis’s story has made so clear to us, her readers, that they are wrong.
That Hugh deserves better.
That Hugh deserves help.
That Deb and Janey deserve help and compassion, too.
That these people have had their dignity stripped away; have become little more than machines in the great cogs of society. And when faced with an opportunity to help, no one does.
Hugh ends up dying in prison—sentenced to 19 years after money that Deb stole and Hugh planned to return to the upper-class men is found on him.
The narrator takes us to the doctor’s home, where he comes across the story of Hugh’s sentencing in the local paper. Despite having recognized the power of Hugh’s Korl-Woman and despite having seemed to grapple with the opportunity to help, he turns away from Hugh again as he shares the story with his wife. They agree that Hugh is just one of “those people,” those working-class non-humans who do not deserve dignity; who deserve prison, whether it’s behind iron bars or in an iron mill.
After Hugh’s death, Deb protects his body and begs a visiting Quaker woman to find him a happier and sunnier final resting place. The Quaker woman agrees, and also works to help Deb from her situation—it takes years for Deb to slowly begin to heal from the pain and trauma she has endured. It is long, hard work. But it does work. Deb may have a better life. Thanks to Hugh.
In the end, our narrator reveals that she kept the Korl-Woman. The crude statue points toward the dawn behind the curtain of her library window, a reminder always of the “working-woman” Hugh built from the refuse of his labor.
“Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woeful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work.”
This passage is worth closely reading.
The curtain is drawn back — something that is often concealed or is not easy to see is made visible
The arms of the figure reach out — there is a longing in the posture; even in the darkness and unknown, the Korl-Woman reaches for hope
There is an “eager, wolfish face” of the “dead korl-cutter” — there is Hugh, the artist, residing within his work; there is Hugh Wolfe, with his “wolfish face” deeply embedded in the art itself. The art becomes the artist. Or perhaps, the artist has become the art.
There is “thwarted life” — this idea that something with great potential was wrecked or ruined, well before its, or his, time.
There is “mighty hunger” — that kind of hunger, we learn earlier in the story, that is not just about an empty belly but is deeper than that, a kind of soul hunger that aches for beauty and fairness and joy.
There is “unfinished work” — in a story about labor, this phrasing feels especially meaningful. Hugh’s work, that thwarted artistry, remains unfinished; his art was never given a chance to come into the world, except in this crude but memorable form.
“It is such a rough, ungainly thing,” the narrator tells us, “Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master’s hand.”
Now that you’ve finished the story, and as we embark on the modernist novella by Tillie Olsen that was inspired by Life in the Iron-Mills, there are questions worth asking.
How is this story like the Korl-Woman? Is it a work of art meant to make you pause, feel, and reflect on your treatment of the working-class?
Why does Rebecca Harding Davis use the word “you” to point her story at the reader?
When does she do this the most?
Can you identify any patterns in the way Harding Davis uses the word “you”?
Who is the “you” she’s talking to? (Hint: it’s not working-class readers…)
How does Harding Davis use her story to position Hugh? Is Hugh a working-class artist? How so?
What are the responses to working-class art in the story?
What are the responses to working-class people in the story?
Why is there such a difference in response?
What do you think the Korl-Woman looks like?
Keep these questions in mind—especially about working-class artistry and where it comes from—as we embark on Tillie Olsen’s Yonnondio this week. A full schedule is coming out tomorrow morning, so you know which sections to read for each reading guide over the next four weeks.
Thank you, as always, for joining me on these reading experiences.
I am so excited to hear your thoughts on Harding Davis’s remarkable story—and to read Tillie Olsen with you in the coming weeks.
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‘Til next time, happy reading!
I know, I know. This is not a very affordable anthology—mostly because it’s enormous (over 900 pages). If you are interested in studying working-class literature more broadly and can find it used, or a copy at a local university library, I highly recommend it.
Haley, thank you for introducing me to this story and to the concept of working class literature (obvious I'm not a lit major, huh?). And you're correct. Since I don't have the vocabulary and structure for true literary interpretation, my way into a text is through an emotional connection that allows me to seek the truth of another's perspective (whether I agree with it or not!).
I've probably scribbled as many words in my notes as are in this short text itself, and I'll try to post some thoughts after considering the questions you’ve posed. I will say that Silas Marner, Jean Valjean, and Bill Sykes and Nancy kept flickering at the edges of my meditations on Hugh and Deb. I'll have to go back to those novels to see why their authors were trying to break in on my contemplation of Harding Davis's work.
Thank you for introducing me to these two stories. I recently read 'The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s', by Maggie Doherty. It's primarily about Tillie Olsen, Anne Sexton, and Maxine Kumin. I had read Tillie Olsen's 'Silences' and learned a lot more about her political work in Doherty's book. I'm eager to read 'Yonnondio'.
Your questions about working-class artistry are particularly interesting to me. In the U.S., the definition of working class is more slippery since most people work, so it might be worth discussing how to define that term. I'm not sure what we're talking about when we talk about working-class literature. Dalyandot suggests it must be written by working-class people.
I question Davis's presentation of every character besides Hugh (and of course the well-off people) as a dull brute with no artistic impulse. Although I came from a prosperous family, they disowned me after my failed marriage. With no money, health care, or child support, and given the high cost of day care, I had no choice but to go on public assistance to support my family (a baby and another on the way). During those years, I met a wide range of people in poverty or low-wage jobs, and found that each had some creative aspiration and/or outlet: some writers and artists, but also, for example, a prisoner who took special pride in her nails, a man who loved growing vegetables and helped create a community garden, a woman with seven children who started with a cheap aquarium and made their living room feel like an undersea garden.
The tone of the story also bothered me. I wrote a memoir of my years in poverty, mostly to combat the social stigma (Innocent: Confessions of a Welfare Mother). Davis's story likewise seems intended to open a view into a social class that is usually stereotyped and stigmatised, which is great. However, her outsider's view struck me as patronising. We used to say that even a bigot was preferable to a liberal do-gooder determined to tell poor people what they should do and what they should want. The things they wanted for us were usually so out of touch with our lives--and out of reach--as to be useless.
My comment on tone goes back to the question of defining working-class literature. Despite my crack about do-gooders, I think others can write authentically about working-class lives if they do their research. Two excellent nonfiction books I've read reflect the quality of their research: '$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America', by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer; and 'Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America', by Barbara Ehrenreich.
I look forward to reading more comments and to doing a closer reading as I consider your other questions.