Davis Journal

"The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimmeneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the face of the passers-by...Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the  mantel -shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black."(Norton, 2599).



"She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the April 1861 edition of the Atlantic Monthly. Throughout her lifetime, Harding Davis sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalised groups in the 19th century." (Wikipedia)


Davis gives a clear image of the underworld as she takes her readers down to explore the mill workers. She makes it seem as they know no world outside of this hellish slavery. However, as the story starts, I get a surface image of what the world about the mill workers looked like; and it is identical--minus the fire and soot. After reading the story once over, and going back to the description in the beginning; it is as if the workers really are above the surface in some form or another. They have, in other words, left their remains to be remembered by. When Davis describes the structure that is " a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the  mantel -shelf," it could symbolize the angel who banished Adam and Eve from The Garden of Eden--only this one sent the lower class in a place where they never saw the light of day.