The Iron Mill By Rebecca Harding Davis

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

“Is it not good to make a society full of beautiful people?” (p.1), the first line of the text Uglies foreshadows exactly what the main theme of the book

Abby Brewster - Abby Brewster is the sister of Martha Brewster, they are the dynamic homicidal duo. She lives with her sister in Brooklyn.

James M. McPherson sets out to discover what motivated the Confederate and Union soldiers to continue fighting in the Civil War in his book What They Fought For. McPherson analyses nearly a thousand letters, journals, and diary of Union and Confederate soldiers to determine what urged them to fight is this defining American Conflict. McPherson reads and groups together the common thoughts of the everyday soldier, from their letters and journals that none of which had been subjected to any sort of censorship, in that time period. He then generalizes the motivations that they used to fight for their country. Whether it be for slavery or for the Union, the author views both sides of the fighting to analysis their ideological issues, how deep their belief coursed through their veins to continue fighting, and how the soldiers held their convictions close to heart in the time of war.

As hard work goes, attitude is also extremely important to have when trying to achieve something. If someone’s demeanor is off, they don’t believe they can achieve something greater than them, which in turn leads to failure. However, Jeannette wasn’t one of those people who didn’t believe in themselves, she tried to do everything that she could with a positive outlook regarding her life. Even when she didn’t concur with her parents, she didn’t give up her optimism when she moved to Welch, “Seeing as how Welch was our new home, Brian and I figured we’d make the best of it,” (Part 3 Chapter 7). While Jeannette tried to make everything special for the family by including teamwork, “If we all work together, we can get it done in a day or or two,”

Storming Heaven is Denise Giardina’s second and award winning novel, published in 1987. The historical novel is a fiction-based recount of the bitter labor conflict that took place in southern West Virginia during the early 1920s, otherwise known as the West Virginia Coal Wars. The author tells the story of the real conflict faced by miners through the eyes of four main characters, each from different walks of life, with their own different point of view. The story told about the real life hardship faced by coal miners and the ensuing conflict is a subject narrowly covered by The American Journey. Although the story that is told through the main characters is fictionalized, it provides a historically accurate portrayal of the events that

Arsenic and Old Lace, written by Joseph Kesselring, is a play that takes place in Brooklyn New York. The opening scene takes place in September of 1942, in the Brewster living room. It is the home of Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha Brewster they both may seem perfectly sane, but we find out they are both crazy murderers. Together, they have 12 dead bodies in their home. The women think they are doing their victims favors, because all of their victims were lonely and death would be better than that. In the Brewster house, with the two aunts, lives Teddy, Teddy believes he is the president of the United States (Teddy Roosevelt) and provides comedic relief during the show through his “presidential behavior”. Also living in

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl allows Harriet Jacobs, speaking through the narrator, Linda Brent, to reveal her reasons for making public her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. Although originally ignored by critics, who often dismissed Jacobs ' story as a fictional account of slavery, today it is reported as the first novel narrative by an ex-slave that reveals the unique brutalities inflicted on enslaved women. Gabby Reyes

Let the Circle be Unbroken portrays an african american family’s hardships against powerful white landowners and family tragedies. All in the perception of the strong-willed Cassie Logan. Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor is an enjoyable book with engaging characters, unpredictable plots, and an amusing genre.

Take everything you know about racism, sexism, and religionism and toss it out the window, because there’s an impediment to prosperity that is often underlooked: Classism. Classism is a suppression which always has and always will continue to affect our everyday lives. The disparities that presently exist between the lower and higher classes form a condition where it is unlikely to allow for equality for anyone. The short stories “A Rose of Emily,” written by William Faulkner, and “Desiree’s Baby,” written by Kate Chopin, offered several depictions of classism within a society. “A Rose for Emily” recounts the life of an isolated, aristocratic woman named Emily Grierson who symbolically represents the demise of the old Southern society. Similarly, “Désirée’s Baby” portrays classism present in mid-nineteenth century Southern society in conjunction with the inequalities that exist between race. Class prejudice plays an important role as it was behind the emergence of the characters’ unspeakable actions. In “A Rose for Emily” and “Desiree’s Baby,” classism is emphasized and provokes arrogance, denial, and the demise of others.

Similar to other critics, “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis, is a sentimental story with an ending that changes the tone of the story. As suggested by the majority of this text, there was not to be a favorable ending for the characters as the narrator portrays them so pessimistically; the very first passage begins “Is this the end? O Life, as futile, then, as frail! What hope of answer is redress?” (p.51). The text might have had a more completed ending with the protagonist, Hugh, in jail because at this point the reader acknowledges how hard he worked and how worn and exhausted he was, but before he stole the money, he at least still had his freedom, arguably this could be the moral of the story for the reader. It is difficult to understand why a Quaker came to the jail after Hugh’s death to bury him in a better place than he had been-- not exactly the appropriate fate for a thief. The Quaker character had no depth since she was not in the story until the very end, and it is not easily understood as to what the connection was when she helped Deborah. Perhaps this was the writer’s attempt to create an ending that makes a reader believe there is fortune after working in the iron mills or being part of the working-class; maybe you can be saved after all, but even that argument, is a stretch.

Life in the Iron Mills is a novella that is hard to classify as a specific genre. The genre that fits the most into this novella is realism, because of the separation of classes, the hard work that a person has to put into their every day life to try and make a difference, and the way society influences the actions of people and their relationships. However, no matter what genre is specifically chosen, there will be other genres present that contradict the genre of choice. While the novella shows romanticism, naturalism, and realism, this essay is specifically centered around realism. The ultimate theme in Rebecca Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills is the separation of classes and gender. It is the separation of classes when the people in the

Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, factory work, particularly in textiles, in the Colombian city of Medellin, shifted as being almost exclusively women's work to almost exclusively men's work. The book Dulcinea in the Factory traces this transition, putting it in context by going through the full history of factories in Medellin. From the establishment of factories, the early hiring practices, strikes and their effects on factory work, and the gradual transition of men becoming the primary workers. The author, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, argues her thesis that the transition from a primarily female workforce to a primarily male workforce is due to changes in what was seen as proper or improper work for women as opposed to

The following describes a scenario of a short story entitled “Dancing in the Moonlight”: “She must have thought I was one of those rich jerks ruining the neighborhood” (Moshfegh 28). The main character has developed a negative stereotype about upper class people. He thinks people related bad behavior with money. Furthermore, literature has always portrayed characters of upper class as demeaning to other classes. In a short story “Duty,” Patrick Rigg says “I am young rich, handsome, unmarried, and often broodingly withdrawn into my thoughts, an irresistible combination for female Homo sapiens” (Schickler 113). Patrick praises himself for being rich and feels due to his money he can get any women he likes. But deep down, Patrick with all his money is looking for his one true love. He respects every women and shows them how beautiful they are and says to value their beauty. Images are indeed not always accurately portrayed. Furthermore, upper class people portrayal is in need of accurate

To begin, Gaskell frequently uses conflict to demonstrate the segregation of the upper class from the working class, based on the hostile demeanor of the wealthy to expose the selfishness and vanity of the higher class. For instance, a continuous conflict between person against person is present between masters and workers, indicating a disconnection of both classes from a perspective of the upper class. At a meeting among the mill owners and the workers, “Mr Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of [the employees] - lank, ragged, dispirited and famine-stricken” (Gaskell 184). As a more privileged and wealthy man, Harry Carson clearly demonstrates the dissociation of the upper class and the working class, seeing as he mocks and ridicules their lack of wealth through their skinny bones and ripped-up clothes. In other words, shaming them for their lack of money to provide food and clothes for their families. Therefore, this nonchalant act of ridicule only further emphasizes the conflict between the rich and the factory labourers as it exposes their uncaring and superior attitudes towards the lower class. In David Ellison’s, Glazed Expressions : Mary Barton, Ghosts and Glass, he describes “Carson’s caricature [to] exaggerate the bodies of the deputation, adding and subtracting flesh according to aesthetic rather than anatomical demands, by which their very emanciation becomes perversely, fuel” (Ellison). Ellison’s interpretation