Life In The Iron Mills

“I dare make my meaning no clearer, but will only tell you my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death, but if your eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come.”

This passage shows the nature of the narrator’s moral convictions, which are closely bound with her artistic ones. She believes that looking closely at difficult realities leads to truthfulness, which in turn leads to beauty.

“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 separateness of the working class from the upper class is a central subject in this story. The lack of knowledge among the leisure class about the working conditions at the town mill is especially striking because the industry is so central to the town and contributes so much to the town’s atmosphere.

“A reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the besotted faces on the street,—I can paint nothing of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life of one man: whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath you can read according to the eyes God has given you.”

While the narrator of the story makes an effort to imagine the lives of the disadvantaged characters, she also acknowledges the limits of her efforts. She suggests that her story is only a small part of a larger world of pain and suffering, and that reading is an imaginative effort, to which we bring our own capacities for empathy. The passage shows the degree of self-consciousness around storytelling that exists in this story.

“These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.”

This passage alludes most obviously to Hugh Wolfe, whose fate is changed overnight through a random encounter. As a disadvantaged character, Wolfe is less in control of his fate than the more privileged men in the story, who remain untouched by their encounter with Wolfe. Wolfe’s story is nevertheless intended as a reminder that no one, however privileged, can control their fate completely. The story suggests that in paying more attention to lives like Wolfe’s, we also pay more attention to our own lives.

“He was an amateur gymnast,—hence his anatomical eye; a patron, in a blasé way, of the prize ring; a man who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent, gentlemanly way […] accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven, earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States.”

Mitchell is an intelligent, sophisticated, and perceptive man who lacks conviction and empathy. Although readers meant to see him as a common type, he is anything but common to Huge Wolfe, who is taken in by his superficially dazzling qualities and perceives him as—in all ways—noble. It is partly out of a wish to be in Mitchell’s world that Wolfe accepts Deb's actions and becomes complicit in her crime.

“Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there.”

This passage shows the degree of quiet religious feeling that exists in this story. It suggests that religious grace is both omnipresent and difficult to attain because of its very humility and quietness. The more disadvantaged characters are blinded from seeing it because of their desperate circumstances, while the wealthier characters are blinded by the ease and comfort of their lives.

“One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a starving wolf’s.”

This passage—which describes Wolfe’s sculpture, and also echoes an earlier passage about Mitchell’s dislike of “one-idead men” (29)—suggests that great art has nothing to do with coolness, reasonableness, or moderation. This is why Wolfe’s sculpture, and Wolfe himself, is disconcerting to the visiting men at the mill.

“He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a vague idea possessed the Doctor’s brain that much good was to be done here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life by a waited-on sun-beam. Here it was; he had brought it.”

This passage shows the unconscious arrogance that can exist behind the token charitable gestures of the wealthy. The Doctor believes that his simple acknowledgement of Wolfe’s talent should be sufficient, equivalent to a “sun-beam” shining on Wolfe. It is uncomfortable for him to see that a man like Wolfe needs far more concrete help; in fact, needs money.

“The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way, telling him to ‘take care of himself, and to remember it was his right to rise.’ Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money, which she found, and clutched eagerly enough.” 

The ways in which these men take their leave of Wolfe is an indication of their different characters and attitudes. The Doctor is superficially friendly, but ultimately evasive and cold; Mitchell is more respectful and less effusive than the Doctor, but no less indifferent to Wolfe’s plight; Kirby is the only man among them to perform a charitable gesture but does so in a blunt and contemptuous way. All men are lacking something in their actions and understanding. 

“‘Home,—and back to the mill!’ He went on saying this over to himself, as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.”

Wolfe’s encounter with the men at the mill has made him see the repetitiveness and drudgery of his days in a different light, as if from the outside. One result of his desperate circumstances is that he lacks the language to describe his own pain. He can only repeat this simple phrase over and over.

“Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his face grew a shade paler,—that was all. But, somehow, the man’s soul, as God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.” 

Wolfe is regarding Janey, a poor girl whom he has long loved from a distance, and deciding that they will never be together. The narrator is unclear—perhaps because Wolfe himself is unclear—about why he decides this, but it is evident that his decision has something to do with the encounter that he has had at the mill that night. The passage shows the degree of privacy that the narrator gives the characters, even while she is attempting to understand their souls.

“He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor strychnine whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler he had failed.”

This passage describes the preacher at the church where Wolfe has briefly taken shelter, and where he fails to find solace. The passage shows that even high-minded preachers can be blinded by their own privilege. It also shows that poverty is often a “distorting” state, rather than an ennobling one, which is why men like Wolfe are often hard to reach.

“Doctor May, a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper: an unusual thing,—these police-reports not being, in general, choice reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.”

This passage marks a sudden leap in time and shift of perspective in the story. The narrative shifts from Wolfe experiencing a dark night of the soul to Doctor May, a month later, reading about Wolfe in the paper. The effect is jarring, showing how suddenly and easily lives like Wolfe’s can be erased, and how rich, tormented perspectives like Wolfe’s can be subsumed to impoverished and complacent perspectives like the Doctor’s.