Life In The Iron Mill

Rebecca Harding Davis: The Pioneer of the Realism Movement In the 19th century the transition from romanticism to realism was one of the most important time pieces in American literature, Rebecca Harding Davis pieces led the realism movement by exposing real and daily life events in American society. Rebecca Harding Davis pioneered the realism movement with her work “Life in The Iron Mills”. Davis influenced many woman and men thereafter to get involved in the realism literary movement. She paved the way for women to have voices in a time were men were the famous authors. Many of Davis`s pieces wrote to inform the country of the actuality that was happening in everyday life in America. What makes her so unique is that woman’s` roles in 19th
century society was the housewife, Maid, Caregiver, she was the first woman to break those boundaries in the realism movement.

Davis is considered the pioneer of the realism movement for being the first to expose and explore the reality of industrialization in America. She opened up the mind of American readers all over the country way before works like Upton Sinclair`s “The Jungle”. Davis was fascinated with the realist idea which led to her being one of the most revered women in realism. Davis didn’t hold back in her pieces and told the grim reality of life before and after the civil war. Many call Davis the first American Industrial Muckraker. Which in this time period are todays modern day CNN, without the bias.
Davis`s most memorable piece “Life in the iron mills” was a short story published in 1861 to inform the public of the life of Blue collar workers and Women’s rights issues right before the civil war.
Which primarily is the characteristic that sets her apart from other authors in this time period. Davis wrote to give the American people an insight to women’s issues, rough labor conditions, and African American struggles at the plight of the Abolitionist movement. Most of Davis`s pieces featured issues pertaining to the underrepresented class in America. Her reoccurring themes are: American Civil war, Women’s issues, and African American hardships. In Davis`s autobiography “Bits of Gossip” she stated that “every person should write "not the story of his own life, but of the time in which he lived, —; as he saw it, —; its creed, its purpose, its queer habits, and the work which it did or left undone in the world. Taken singly, these accounts might be weak and trivial, but together, they would make history live and breathe". She explained this is why she wrote about the political and social issues before and after the civil war, which came to be known as the realism
movement.
Davis was the first women to be known in the realism movement and known for her pioneering in it. The realism movement was a period after the civil war that involved authors speaking real life accounts and including everyday reality into literary pieces. The authors of this movement didn’t romanticize life like before. Davis especially did not in her pieces. Davis spoke of how American life wasn’t as vibrant for all American’s. Davis stated in Life in the Iron Mills, that “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; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dense of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body”. Davis`s works are compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Davis noticed that Mill Life wasn’t the only issue in the country.
It is stated “While she critiqued the industrialism she saw consume her hometown of Wheeling, she also explored various other 19th-century social causes, such as Abolition, Woman’s rights, and Temperance movement becoming a so called “parlor radical.” Davis`s beliefs shaped the way for realists. Her writing “In the Market” highlighted women’s issues in the 19th century. In this piece she tells of sexual discrimination and unfair forced marriage upon American women. It lets American society hear a side of women that was never available to them before. She states that “She felt that the social conditions for Victorian women were “...a tragedy more real than...any other in life.” Her story “Waiting for the Verdict” theme is based upon interracial relationships. Which were very uncommon at the time, racism and the systematic oppression of African Americans and their plight unto American life after the emancipation proclamation. Stated in her bibliography “Davis was also among the first to write realistically about the Civil War and racial prejudice, as well as incorporate African-American characters as
protagonists.”
Rebecca Harding Davis led the Realism Movement with a style that no other presented at the time. She went above and beyond to let America know that everyone isn’t living so well and many citizens are still struggling to make it. In a time where the American people were questioning society more and more she exposed the truth. Davis opened the door for reformers and helped paved the Progressive movement. She wrote in a time where as quoted by Donald Miller “American people were seeing, Years of whole plethora of inventions coming on line that dramatically changed the very nature and quality of life -- the telephone, the telegraph, all of Edison's inventions, culminating in the phonograph and the movies and I mean it's all happening at the same time.” Davis came about in a time period where many Americans were blinded by the industrial superpower that the US became they didn’t know that their neighbors were suffering. She let American readers know that many of their neighbors and peers are still treated as second class citizens and that something needs to change.