INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT Assignment 31: REBECCA HARDING DAVIS Davis's story appeared in the April, 1861, Atlantic Monthly as the industrial labor she described was about to be irrevocably transformed by the Civil War. The provisioning of troops, and the demands for munitions and material, required a dramatically increased and an increasingly organized industrial output. "Life in the Iron Mills" thus has a certain air of prophecy about it, and in the story are troubling fore-glimpses of what American society will look like after the War. Its bluntly realistic style and point-of-view also anticipate the great age of Realism in American literature, from 1865 to 1900. As a story about what happens when a man like Wolfe or a woman like Deborah are denied essential liberties, the lives of the mill workers suggest that bondage and servitude may pervade American society, and that Southern slavery was just the most blatant and painful case of oppression. Thoreau could end Walden with exclamations that "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star"; but would such optimistic claims have meant anything to Hugh Wolfe in his prison cell? Indeed, would Wolfe have even been able to see that morning star through the factory smog? What would Frederick Douglass have advised Wolfe to do? And in any case could he have done it? These are the kinds of questions that readers might well begin to pose after reading Davis' story. Reading Assignment Rebecca Harding Davis, "Life in the Iron Mills" (2531-2560). Writing Assignment During this course, you have learned how to follow such lines of interrogation by addressing, and developing ideas from, the study questions for each assignment. Here, for the last formal assignment of the term, your are on your own. Your assignment is to identify three or four questions or problems raised by "Life in the Iron Mills," to both state them as questions or problems, and then write appropriately organized and developed responses to the questions or problems you yourself have raised. Consider, for example, questions having to do with: the literary style or technique of the story; its content, seen in terms of characters, plot and themes; its ideas, seen in historical context; and its relationships with other texts we've been reading. These are just suggestions. The choice is entirely your own. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT CONTENTS | DESCRIPTION | GUIDELINES | TIMELINE | ASSIGNMENTS | INDEPENDENT STUDY PROGRAM