Life In The Iron-Mills By Rebecca Harding Davis

The short story Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis revolves around a lower-classed American citizen named Hugh Wolfe in the mid-1800s, who cannot be blamed and prosecuted for his decision to keep the money and try to make a better life for himself. Rebecca Harding Davis sets the story up to show the early struggles of Hugh’s life: “A morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness and crime, and hard, grinding labor” (Davis 10). Davis uses Hugh’s life as a representation of how society functioned at the time. Unfortunately for Hugh, the class system is set up in a way where it is nearly impossible to reach a higher social status, leaving Hugh confined in his lugubrious, lower-class life. Davis also reveals

There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a passion of pain,—when his nature starts up with a mad cry of rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile, slimy life upon him” (Davis 10). Because Hugh has always yearned for more in his life, he has become more and more desperate, especially from being an outcast in his own class by having some sort of education the other workers loathed. However, when the higher class members come to the iron mill, they see his potential from his statue of korl and give him a sense of hope to improve his

Hugh realizes that even if the people of the higher class are given the knowledge that he and some other lower class people have the potential to have a way better life, they do not care enough to assist them. It makes Hugh realize that there is no hope for him unless he somehow finds a way to get one thing: ‘“Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He said it true! It is money!’ ‘I know. Go back! I do not want you here’”(Davis 21). Hugh agrees with Deb, but he does not think that there is any way that he can somehow get enough money to affect his life until Deb reveals that she stole a large check from Mitchell(one of the men from the mill). Hugh, being the kind of person that he is, initially thinks there is no other choice than to return the money, but he begins to really think about what he should do. He realizes that if he gives the money back, then he will be saying goodbye to any chance of turning his life around. He tries to convince himself that keeping the money is the right thing to do, saying, “God made this money—the fresh air, too—for his children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich” (Davis 23). He also thinks about how much his life would improve if he keeps the money: “A man,—he thought, stretching out his hands,—free to work, to live, to love! Free!