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Life in the Iron Mills is a short story written by Rebecca Harding Davis in 1861, set in the factory world of the nineteenth century. It is one of the earliest American realist works, and is an important text for those who study labor and women's issues. Life in the Iron Mills was initially published in The Atlantic Monthly in April 1861. After being published anonymously, both Emily Dickinson and Nathaniel Hawthorne praised the work. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward was also greatly influenced by Davis's Life in the Iron Mills and in 1868 published in The Atlantic Monthly "The Tenth of January", based on the 1860 fire at the Pemberton Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Rebecca Harding Davis was considered one of the nation's first social historians and pioneering literary artists. She wrote to find social change for Black people, women, immigrants, and the working class throughout the Civil War. Throughout her long career, Davis challenged traditional subjects and older styles of writing. During her early childhood, her family lived in Florence, Alabama, before moving in 1837 to Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), on the Ohio River. Its iron mills and immigrant populations inspired the setting of Life in the Iron Mills. Rebecca Harding Davis wrote Life in the Iron Mills and other short stories to represent the events going on around her during the era of the American Civil War. The short story was published by The Atlantic Monthly. Davis was paid well for her story and continued to publish short stories for The Atlantic Monthly.

Life in the Iron Mills begins with an omniscient narrator who looks out a window and sees smog and ironworkers. The gender of the narrator is never known, but it is evident that the narrator is a middle class observer. As the narrator looks out the windowpane, an old story comes to mind; a story of the house that the narrator is living in. The narrator cautions the reader to have an objective mind and to not be quick to judge the character in the story they are about to tell the reader. The narrator begins to introduce Deborah, Wolfe's cousin. She is described as a meek woman who works hard and has a hump on her back. Deborah finds out from Janey, that Hugh did not take lunch to work, and she decides to walk many miles in the rain to take a lunch for Wolfe. As she walks up to the mills, Deborah begins to describe it as if it were hell, but she keeps going for Wolfe. When she arrives Wolfe is talking among friends and he recognizes her. The narrator explains his affection for her, but also describes his affection as loveless and sympathetic. Hugh finds no time to eat his dinner and goes back to do a day of labor in the mills. Deborah, who is exhausted, stays with Hugh and rests until his shift is over. In the meantime, the narrator further explains that Wolfe does not belong in the environment of the iron mill workers. He is known as "Molly Wolfe" by other workers because of his manner and background in education. When Wolfe is working he spots men that do not look like workers. He sees Clarke, the son of Kirby, Doctor May who is a physician, and two other men that he does not recognize. These men stop by to look at the working men, and as they are talking and observing, they spot a weird object that has the shape of a human. As they get closer, they see that it is an odd shaped statue built with korl. They begin to analyze it and wonder who created such a statue, one of the workers points at Wolfe and the men go to him. They ask him why he built such a statue and what it represents. All Hugh says is that "She be hungry". The men begin to talk about the injustice of the labor force, and one goes as far as to say that Hugh can get out of the meager job he is in, but that he unfortunately cannot help. The men leave, but not before Deborah steals one of their wallets, which has a check for a substantial amount inside. They go back home and Wolfe feels like he is a failure and feels anger towards his economic situation. She or he possesses the korl woman statue as the only remaining evidence of Hugh's existence. The Korl Woman. A sculpture that was created by Hugh, which showcases Hugh's artistic talent. She is made out of korl. The Korl woman represents industrialism's effect on the working class.

Life in the Iron Mills must be considered a central text in the origins of American realism, American proletarian literature, and American feminism, according to Jean Pfaelzer. The story was revolutionary in its compelling portrait of the working class's powerlessness to break the oppressive chains of industrial capitalism. Author of The Utopian Novel in America, 1886 1896 (1984) and many articles on Davis, Pfaelzer edits the volume's literary selections and supplies the substantial critical introduction, which maintains that Davis inherited the sentimental literary tradition but nonetheless wrote "common stories" that "exposed the tension between sentimentalism, a genre predicated on the repression of the self, and realism, a genre predicated on the search for individual identity." Davis's realistic depiction of the gritty, hellish mills and the impoverished workers' lives is far removed from the material advantages of the upper classes often portrayed in domestic fiction. She also uses the vernacular and dialect skillfully to depict realistically her uneducated immigrant characters and to emphasize their lower class status. Davis counteracts positive images of healthy, wholesome mill girls and mills as ideal places of work. Life in the Iron Mills challenges the optimism of transcendentalism by showing how industrialism fueled by greedy capitalists destroys the natural environment and the human spirit.

Life in the Iron Mills is one of the earliest American Realist stories published. Anticipating post Darwinian naturalism, Davis's most famous depiction of the redundant, dehumanizing servitude of American labor in Life in the Iron Mills (initially an anonymous publication) may be American literature's first industrial muckraker. Its graphic probe into ethnicity, vocation, and class also encompasses, according to Pfaelzer, what became Davis's most characteristic subject and theme: strong women and powerlessness. Nevertheless, the authorial decision to use dual protagonists highlights even more greatly the sexual division of labor, the social relations between working men and workingwomen that is produced, and the very nature of the female work character. Davis's story comes to life not as a work which is admirable because it is almost realistic, but as a work which astonishes and informs its past and present readers because it shares in and extends the accomplishments of the romance. As Davis shows, the Industrial Revolution also brought with it class distinctions clearly exhibited by the material wealth of capitalists and industrialists who possessed the means to build lavish homes with elaborate architecture. In contrast, factory workers and other unskilled laborers often lived in crowded boardinghouses and small apartments. Because they lived in such deplorable and disorderly conditions, held such lower class status, and faced the stress and uncertainty of work, many wage earners indulged in alcohol consumption. Davis effectively captures these conflicts in Life in the Iron Mills. As far as the country was concerned, immigrants saw America as a place with many job opportunities due to industrialization and urbanization. In the 1840s the nation received 1.7 million immigrants, and then 2.6 million in the 1850s. Many owners of industrial plants and mills became rich by exploiting the immigrant workers in order to provide cheap goods. Davis was said to have, "sought to make her readers aware that their material comfort was enabled neither by palliative classical gods nor by cheap coal and river barges but by real human beings, who ate, slept, and toiled in unspeakable conditions" (4). In this short story, Davis is allowing the readers to not only experience the true reality of what work was like during this time, but she is also encouraging the readers to become social activists and take action towards change in the real world. During the beginning times of industrialization, the working conditions were terrible. All of the characters in the story lived in a town that was overtaken by pollution due to the iron mills; therefore, their town had no clean air for the residents to enjoy and the town always seemed “dirty.” Since all of these different characters had to work long hours in terrible conditions, the extreme pollution put into perspective how damaging it actually was to their health. In one scholarly journal about Life in the Iron Mills, Jill Gatlin explains that, “She [Davis] portrays pollution not as a source of awe or a sign of wealth, nor as simply a nuisance or an annoyance, but rather as a lethal hazard to laborers”. Davis helps put into perspective how deadly the pollution can be when it is inhaled in large quantities all of the time. Life in the Iron Mills helps bring awareness to all of the waste that is acquired through the pollution and shows that, for some, this is part of their daily lives. Most upper class people think they are better than others no matter what, and ultimately, they end up stepping all over the working class people. Because of this, the upper class men see the mill workers more as objects than as humans during this beginning time of industrialization. This still happens in today’s society as well. Davis wrote this story because she wanted to see change in the world. She also wanted to create people who would stand up, demand change, and do something about the horrible conditions that mill workers had to endure during the nineteenth century. Life in the Iron Mills took readers away from abolitionist and Civil War conflicts, and reminded them of the community of iron workers going through injustice as well. Davis also had strong literary supporters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many others. Rebecca Harding Davis disappeared from the literary world after ending her publications in The Atlantic Monthly. Life in the Iron Mills regained critical reception with the help of Tillie Olsen. In the 1970s many feminist supporters wrote about the power of Rebecca Harding Davis's short story. Norma Rosen, the author of "Joy to Revine" explains her first experience when reading Life in the Iron Mills:
"With this book, Life in the Iron Mills in my hand, I feel I am standing in corridor of echoes". Another critic, Federick Whittacker, describes Rebecca Harding Davis as a writer who takes part in the concept "Knight of labor", which too Whittacker represents writers who create literary fiction concerning the iron mill labor force in the 1800s. Life in the Iron Mills, was considered by most critics during the 1970s and 1980s, as one of the first works representing the iron mill labor force through realism. Many critics explore the different themes that can be interpreted in the short story and its relation to the authors environment and historical context. Sheila Hassle Hughes exemplifies the conflicts that arise among critics about the themes Life in the Iron Mills represents:

Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, was recognized as a significant short story by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne among many others. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward was also inspired to write the short story "The Tenth of January", which dealt with a mill that collapsed in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1868, after reading the story. Tillie Olsen's work on Life in the Iron Mills in her book Silences also brought new attention to the work; it is now also recognized as the starting point for the use of realism in literature representing the labor force.