Journal for Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis - "Life in the Iron Mills"


"Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,-even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with madly tonight." Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, p.2608

"There have been a number of commentaries written on the life of Rebecca Harding Davis, but it is remarkable that few make mention of her Christian faith, and none have recognized the considerable influence that her faith has had in the formation of her stories. Raised in a middle-class Christian family, educated in a conservative women’s seminary, and influenced by the social conscious coming from the Second Great Awakening, Rebecca Harding Davis’ works are clearly address with the problems that Christians of her day were concerned with: Slavery, worker exploitation, equal education, and justice for women locked in the bondage of prostitution or sexual discrimination. "

http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~hadley/publication/rhd/RHD.htm

The influence of Rebecca Harding Davis's Christian faith is very difficult to miss in this story. "Life in the Iron Mills"is full of Biblical quotations and references, both by the narrator, and ironically also by the factory owner's son and his companions who visit the mill on the fateful night the story describes. The iron mill is depicted as the very picture of hell, with its ranging inferno and the pale multitudes who toil there day and night. The author takes on directly and head-on the contradiction between the profession of Christian faith and the inhuman conditions suffered by the miserable workers.

This is a picture of capitalism and progress that is very grim indeed. Davis takes the reader firmly by the hand right from the beginning of the story. She points out the horrors and the contradictions of class inequality and exploitation in a very direct way, making sure that she does not allow the reader to turn away from disturbing contraditions between the reality she is depicting and the teachings of Christianity as well the principles of American Democracy. The consciousness of the terrible wrongness of the social order is also perceptible to Hugh Wolfe, dimly and vaguely at first, but increasingly clearly and in religious terms as the story reaches its climax. The fact that Hugh has unfulfilled spiritual longings is expressed by the fact that he makes sculptures out of the korl, a by-product of the iron-milling process. He is isolated from the community of the workers because of his artistic stirrings, and is troubled wordlessly at first, but the sight of the rich gentlemen begins to clarify the issue in his mind.

The gentlemen are affected by the sight of Hugh's sculpture,and they sit down and have an extensive discussion about class and equality and social mobility, both in political terms and religious. The owner's son is even compared to Pontius Pilate, and the condemned figure becomes a martyr whose similarity to Christ is underlined by the author, who points out that Hugh's was the social class the carpenter's son belonged to. The story ends with a very clear religious message, with the Quaker woman who takes under her care both Hugh's body and Deborah's soul.