Life in the Iron Mill and Maggie: a Girl of the Streets

Rebecca Davis and Stephen Crane portray the darker side of humanity by making the reader feel they are observing the social environments of animals. In Life in the Iron Mill and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the animals are penniless products of the America’s Industrial Revolution. Through realistic and naturalistic lenses, Davis and Crane are connected through their abilities to create a unique spectator-to-subject relationship between the audience and characters. To speak to a broader issue of course, the authors used what is possibly the most effective method to arouse a necessary disturbance in the hearts of their readers. In Life in the Iron Mill and Maggie: Girl of the Streets, the tragic lives of the lowest of the low are put so plainly in order to achieve a truthful representation of society’s most oppressive force: class. For Maggie Johnson and Hugh Wolfe, social class determines the courses of their lives. The authors show a sad truth about America’s impermeable social boundaries through the environments the characters were brought into, their relationship to the rest of the world, and ultimately, the prices they have to pay in order to escape class confines. At birth, Maggie and Hugh were automatically put on a slippery slope. Hugh Wolfe, a Welsh puddler, was born in Kirby and John’s Iron Mill and remains there for the rest of his life. Harding describes his family background and the culture of his people. “They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not so brawny; they stoop more” (Davis 1708). Years of brutal labor turned the Welsh puddlers into a group that can be distinguished from the way they “neither yell nor shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds” (Davis, 1708). The bleak description of Wolfe’s social stimulations from birth, makes it hard to fathom any sense of hope for him. Maggie, who is also born straight into poverty, is bogged down by her environment. While the description of the “dark region,” “gruesome

Cited: Crane, Stephen. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 946-989. Print. Davis, Harding Rebecca. Life in the Iron Mill. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 1706-1732. Print.