Life in the Iron Mills is a novella written by Rebecca Harding Davis. It was first published anonymously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1861 and was later reprinted as a part of a story collection by The Feminist Press in 1985. At the time of its first publication, audiences assumed the unnamed author was male. This collection is called Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories and contains notes and a short biography of Davis by Tillie Olsen.

Life in the Iron Mills is set in an unnamed Virginia mill town that is similar to Wheeling, where Davis grew up. The story begins with an unnamed narrator—perhaps an authorial stand-in—who is also not named in gender but later presumed to be female, describing the scene outside the window of her house, which is one of fog and desolation. From her window, she can see the mill workers trudging to their jobs: “Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes” (12). The narrator then states her intention to tell the story of one of these workers, Hugh Wolfe. She tells us that Wolfe, along with several other mill workers, once lived in her house, which was at the time a boarding house. The reader therefore has an understanding that the narrator herself is upper-class and detached from her grimy surroundings. Her relating Wolfe’s story is an attempt to enter into this life and to try to imagine the circumstances of people like him. 

The story then shifts focus to the character of Deborah. The narrator relates the thoughts and feelings of other characters, similar to third person omniscient yet with occasional direct addresses to the reader. Deborah is a mill worker and is also hunchbacked. She is on her way home from a grueling long day at work, along with several of her female co-workers. Her co-workers implore her to go out for a drink with them, but Deborah demurs, as she must feed the other boarders in her household. Once home, she finds Janey, a frail young girl, and Mr. Wolfe, a sleeping elderly man, but not Hugh Wolfe, who also works at the mill. Janey tells Deborah that she is staying at the house temporarily, as her own father has just entered “the stone house” (18), that is, prison. She also tells Deborah that Hugo has still not returned home from work.

After feeding Janey, Deborah returns to the mill with food for Hugo. We understand her to be in love with Hugo, although she realizes that he can never love her back due to her unsightly physical condition; she also realizes that he is slightly in love with Janey. Our introduction to Hugo—the story’s main character—comes with the sight of him standing at work, heaping coal on top of a furnace. His job title is what is called a “puddler.” He is described as a loner, from whom his co-workers keep a distance, sensing a mysterious otherness in his nature. His separateness has to do with his identity as an artist; in his spare time, he creates sculptures out of “korl,” the malleable and light colored “refuse from the ore” (24).

Hugo greets Deborah with his usual kindly detachment, accepts the pail of food from her and urges her to lie down on a bed of iron refuse: “[I]t was not a hard bed; the half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and cold shiver” (21). She watches him standing at his furnace, brooding over his evident lack of love for her. The story then switches to Hugo’s point of view, as a group of upper-class male visitors appear at the mill. These are Clark Kirby, the mill owner’s son; Doctor May, the town physician; a “Yankee” reporter accompanying Kirby; and Mitchell, Kirby’s brother-in-law and a cultivated, aristocratic fop. The flippant detachment of these men from their surroundings is evidenced by their bemused banter about how the scene resembles hell, and the workers a bunch of wraiths.

As the men are touring the mill, they come upon a sculpted figure of Wolfe’s, whom they at first take to be human: an impoverished and desperate-looking woman, throwing out her arms. The men are all stirred by the sculpture and acknowledge Wolfe’s talent as an artist, while still dismissing Wolfe himself. The men’s indifference to Wolfe’s plight—and the plight of other men like him—manifests itself in different ways. Kirby remarks that democracy is useless and that men must rise of their own free will, while Dr. May attempts to hide his indifference behind a mask of avuncular concern. He tells Wolfe that a man as gifted as he must find a way to better himself; when Wolfe directly appeals to him for help, however, he dismisses him. Mitchell, a more complex and perceptive figure than either one of his companions, sees Dr. May’s hypocrisy and sneers at him about it, while doing nothing to help Wolfe himself. He simply says goodbye to Wolfe “as to an equal, with a quiet look of thorough recognition” (39).

Mitchell’s tacit acknowledgement is more frustrating than encouraging to Wolfe. It causes him only to perceive the limits of his life, and to realize—as he walks home with Deborah that night—how trapped he is in his identity and circumstances. Once they are home, Deborah reveals to him that she pickpocketed Mitchell at the mill and shows him a handful of coins and a check for a large amount of money. Wolfe initially resolves to give the money back to Mitchell at the first opportunity; however, as he broods over the unfairness of his circumstances, his resolve weakens. He wanders through town at night, past his “old haunts” (48), and at one point goes into a church. Although stirred by the somber beauty of the church, he is unmoved by the words of the preacher: “His words passed far over the furnace-tender’s grasp, toned to suit another class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown tongue” (49).

The story then shifts briefly to Dr. May, sitting with his wife at their breakfast table and reading aloud the news of Wolfe’s arrest. Wolfe has been sentenced to 19 years in prison; Deborah, whose cell is next to his, for only 3 years. The scene shifts to Deborah visiting Wolfe in his cell, as she is allowed to do for brief intervals. Seeing him sharpening a piece of tin on the iron window bars, she becomes alarmed, correctly guessing that he intends to commit suicide. She attempts to dissuade him, but Haley the jailer takes her back to her cell before she can do so.

Among the visitors to Wolfe’s deathbed, the following day, is a Quaker woman, a quiet and compassionate presence. This same woman takes Deborah into her community upon Deborah’s release from prison. The story ends with the narrator revealing that she now owns Wolfe’s sculpture, along with more cultivated artworks. It invokes this sculpture, along with Deborah’s peaceful new existence among the Quakers, as a tentative sign of hope.