The Iron Mills By Rebecca Harding Davis Essay - 1831 Words

Throughout Cultural Perspectives, many influential texts have been read, analyzed, and discussed. One text, Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis, integrates the thoughts of quite a few authors that have been discussed this semester. Through employing a Marxist view of history—there are always the â€Å"haves† and the â€Å"have-nots†Ã¢â‚¬â€one can see that Life in the Iron Mills exemplifies the struggles that face many â€Å"have-not† citizens throughout history. One can then see the clear connections to various authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, W.E.B. DuBois, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, and Adam Smith. Life in the Iron Mills is a tragic yet poignant story of the effects of a man’s socioeconomic status. Although set in the nineteenth century, the story is all too familiar. The short story begins with a reflective narrator begging the audience to read the story with an open mind not tainted by the ideals of high society (Davis). The narrator suggests the story be read from the perspective of the protagonist, Hugh Wolfe, a lowly puddler at the iron mill (Davis). Hugh works long, hard hours at the mill for little to no pay in attempts to provide not only for himself but also for his cousin, Deborah, and a young girl, Janey (Davis). In Hugh’s spare time at the mill, he carves sculptures out of korl (Davis). Hugh leads a typical life of a working class citizen. One night, the owner and a few other upper class men visited the mill to examine the furnaces (Davis). As theyShow MoreRelatedThe Iron Mill By Rebecca Harding Davis997 Words   |  4 PagesIn Life in the Iron Mills, Rebecca Harding Davis tells the story of Hugh Wolfe, a lower-class man whose love of beauty and desire to move up in the world ultimately leads to his mental decline and demise. Wolfe lives in a town of smothering grey smog and works in an iron mill reminiscent of Hell, places that induce hopelessness and despair by appearance. In contrast to his surroundings, Wolfe possesses a fierce love of beauty and a talent of sculpting with korl, both of which are frequently associatedRead MoreLife in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis797 Words   |  3 PagesSimilar to other critics, â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills† by Rebecca Harding Davis, is a sentimental story with an ending that changes the tone of the story. As suggested by the majority of this text, there was n ot to be a favorable ending for the characters as the narrator portrays them so pessimistically; the very first passage begins â€Å"Is this the end? O Life, as futile, then, as frail! What hope of answer is redress?† (p.51). The text might have had a more completed ending with the protagonist, HughRead MoreThe Industrial Revolution Of The Iron Mill By Rebecca Harding Davis1070 Words   |  5 PagesThe industrial revolution was a time of invention, progress and opportunity. However, there was also a darker side to it all. Rebecca Harding Davis, author of Life in the Iron Mills, tells the story of ironworker Hugh Wolfe from a first-person narrator’s point of view. This unnamed narrator of an unspecified gender is part of the more privileged class of society. This person resides in the house that the two protagonists of the story, Hugh and Debora Wolfe, used to live in. The higher-ups of thisRead MoreThis essay is an analysis of the story the Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis.1820 Words   |  8 PagesIn Life in the Iron Mills Rebecca Harding Davis reveals a growing industrial America in the nineteenth century, where an unbelievable level of poverty and limited opportunities of achieving success can cause individuals to take extreme risks to attain a descent lifestyle. Through the novella, Davis illustrates the distinct differences between upper and lower class lifestyles. Immigrant workers, Debora (lovingly called Deb) and Hugh, take the reader to a time when people were used as productionRead MoreLiterary Realism Of The Iron Mills And The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1388 Words   |  6 Pagesthe reader, social injustice may be dealt with. Two examples that use form to reach the end goal of compassion are Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills uses an embedded narrative to tell the story of Deb and Hugh, and the daily struggles of Deb’s life. Life in the Iron Mills was written in 1861, two years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. The goal of this story is to feel compassionRead MoreSusan Glaspell s A Jury Of Her Peers And Flannery O Connor s Good Country People Essay1696 Words   |  7 Pagesoppression of women, there is much that can be learned by looking back at problematic situations portrayed by women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Out of all of the texts written by women only three will be discussed; Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron-Mills, Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers and Flannery O’Connor’s Good Country People, in which specific symbols are used as representations of the ways in which women were oppressed and how important it is to study these texts todayRead MoreThe Reception And Influence Of Rebe cca Harding Davis2118 Words   |  9 Pagesthe need to speak out for others, especially the lower classes. However, Rebecca Harding Davis observed the suffering of all humanity and decided to give everyone a voice through her writings. Throughout her career, Davis wrote an innumerable amount of works advocating for equal rights among all people, right up until her death in 1910. The following paper will analyze and discuss the reception and influence that Rebecca Harding Davis’s works of literary realism had on the hierarchy of society, in relationRead MoreFeminism During 19th Century American Short Stories4097 Words   |  17 PagesShort Stories Research Question: How is feminism revealed through the divergence of women’s roles in society and their own personal desires in the American short stories â€Å"The Yellow Wall-Paper,† â€Å"The Story of an Hour,† â€Å"The Storm,† and â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills†? Introduction Literature changes as current events change and as the structure of society begins to shift. American feminist literature started to become prevalent during the Victorian era, or around the latter part of the 19th century. This isRead MoreRealism In Life In The Iron Mills1604 Words   |  7 PagesLife in the Iron Mills is a novella that is hard to classify as a specific genre. The genre that fits the most into this novella is realism, because of the separation of classes, the hard work that a person has to put into their every day life to try and make a difference, and the way society influences the actions of people and their relationships. However, no matter what genre is specifically chosen, there will be other genres present that contradict the genre of choice. While the novella showsRead MoreEssay on The Taint of Money in â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills†1653 Words   |  7 PagesRebecca Harding Davis wrote â€Å"Life in the Iron Mills† in the mid-nineteenth centur y in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that