Jim Cullen's Life In The Iron-Mills

Jim Cullen believes that “the most common form” of the American Dream “was cast in terms of commercial success” (Cullen, 60). In “Life in the Iron-Mills”, Rebecca Harding Davis implies that people in the Iron-Mills are stuck in poverty, and religion is the poor’s hope of getting a better life. The move-up chance for men in the Iron-Mills is little. Most workers do not even think of improving their living condition. Davis points out that “masses of men” are “with dull, besotted faces” even though their “skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes” and they breathe “an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body” (Davis, 1221). The terrible working condition, which is “horrible to angels” (Davis, 1221), should arouse workers’ dissatisfaction and desire of attaining a better life, but workers in fact are so meek to accept the current situation. In addition, the isolation that Hugh is exposed to indicates mill workers’ consent to their wage slave role. Hugh “was known as one of the girl-men” because “his muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his face (a meek, woman’s face) haggard, yellow with consumption” (Davis, 1227) and his creation of Korl appears to be weird and foreign to other workers. Mill workers do not feel like Hugh one of them because they unconsciously agree that a mill worker’s life should

Comparing Doctor May with the Quaker woman, Doctor May is a feeling person but he is not willing to do what he presently can do but wants someone else to absolutely resolve the poverty issue. He is not driven and patient enough to start the journey of eliminating poverty from small but practical steps. Nevertheless, the Quaker woman initiates actions within the bound of her abilities. Through the changed genre of language, from gloomy to lively, Davis shows her preference of helping the poor right away and doing what each individual can