"Life in the Iron Mills" is a short story written in 1861 by Rebecca Harding Davis. Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, it is an early example of American realist fiction and is considered an important work in class and labor studies.
The story is told by an anonymous narrator about a former occupant of the house she lives in: Hugh Wolfe, a Welsh immigrant employed as a "puddler" at a Virginia Steel Mill in the 1830s, for grueling hours at little pay. Despite his circumstances, Hugh has the soul of an artist and spends his rest hours carving figures from slag at the mill. One night his talent is noticed by a group of higher-class men visiting the mill, and events begin unfolding that might change his life . . . for better or for worse.
The work examines themes of class oppression, morality, personal agency, and religion.
Tropes appearing in this story:
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Hugh cuts his wrists in jail, preferring to die quickly and at his own hand rather than be slowly worn down by years of prison life.
- Eccentric Artist: Hugh is regarded as different by the other mill workers, who derogatorily call him "Molly Wolfe" and consider him unfit for the hard work they do.
- Hope Spot: Happens twice to Hugh.
- First, his latent dream of becoming a free man and an artist is encouraged by Doctor May, only to be bitterly crushed when the Doctor refuses to help him achieve it.
- Then, Deborah reveals that she has stolen money from one of the visiting men—enough for them to leave the mill and become who they want to be. Hugh agonizes over whether to return it but ultimately decides not to, again nurturing his dream of self-determination. But then he is arrested for theft.
- Nightmarish Factory: The Steel Mill is described as a nigh infernal environment, slowly killing all its workers.Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only for a day in the week, in half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh, breathless vigor, the engines sob and shriek like “gods in pain.”
- Oblivious to Love: Hugh is described as being unable to recognize love, even when Deborah declares her adoration of him in prison.
- Short Story: The story is about an hour and a half, read aloud.
- Steel Mill: The setting of the story, where Hugh works as a puddler turning pig iron into wrought iron in hellish conditions.
