5.5: The Move toward Realism in Davis' "Life in the Iron-Mills"
First published anonymously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1861, Rebecca Harding Davis' novella "Life in the Iron-Mills" largely disappeared from American literary history until it was republished in 1972 by the Feminist Press. In the decades since then, however, Davis' short work has been appreciated as an important early description of the moral and social costs of industrialization, a key work bridging the sentimentalism of the mid-nineteenth century and the realism of the latter part of the century, as well as a significant meditation on art and the role of the artist in industrial capitalism". Read this introductory essay to Davis' important novella.
Read Davis' novella. Trace the way that you see Davis bridge sentimentalist fiction with more realist styles, often more visible toward the end of the nineteenth century. Ask yourself the following questions while reading:
- Look at the title. What is the significance of it?
- Who is the "I" or narrative voice in the text?
- Who is the "you" that the narrative voice addresses?
- What is the effect of this direct address of the reader?
- Find descriptions of Hugh and Deb. What do they look like, what do they do, how do they talk? What is their relationship?
- Look at the descriptions of the sculpture of the woman made from korl (waste product of the mills). How is it described? What details are important? How do different characters describe it? What symbolism might be involved here?
- Several men meet Hugh at the mill; among them are Kirby (the overseer and son of a mill owner), Doctor May, and Mitchell (Kirby's brother-in-law). What position(s) do each of these three men take towards Hugh? What do they say to him?
- What has happened to Hugh and to Deb at the end of the story? Did you expect these outcomes for these characters? What do these endings suggest?
- What do you make of the final two paragraphs where the narrator returns? Why is this here? How does it help the ending?
- What additional insight does this give us into the narrator ("I") and the "you" from the earlier part of the story?