Journal #22

Michelle Romero
Dr. Scott Lankford:
English 48A

Author: Rebecca Harding Davis

Life in the Iron Mills
"With all this groping, this mad desire, a great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and words you would blush to name" (2606).

In this passage, Davis introduces the character of Mr. Wolfe.
Davis' language in this quote illustrates the stark contrast between the innate character of Mr. Wolfe and the persona he has taken on. The contrastive language pits good against bad, tenderness against hardness. In doing so, Davis shows the reader how the reality of living such a hard, cruel, laborious life as that in the iron mills really changes a person. It takes their spirit away.

This passage actually reminded me of similar parts in Douglass' Narrative that aim to describe the same message: oppression can steal a person's soul. In Douglass' Narrative the oppression comes in the form of slavery, while in Davis' Life in the Iron Mills the oppressor is sort of an unseen monster...money perhaps, or the owners of factories, the price of progress. In both stories, the victims are considered less worthy than their oppressors.

Davis represents the lower class as being incredibly worn, tired, and starving. They have to become machine-like to go on. In this particular passage, she shows the change in Mr. Wolfe. At some point, he was a man with "a loving poet's heart" and now he is part of the vulgar, dirty scene of the hard life in the iron mills. Through this contrast of images, Davis shows how life in the iron mills sucks the life out of someone. The environment is not conducive for self-expression. It does not allow a person to be even themselves. Instead, they have to harden themselves. They must become part of the machinery of progress.