A Display of Class: Hugh’s Life – Could it Ever Have Been Out of the Iron Mills? Sonia J. Buck College

The late 1800’s marked a shift in the views of life from a religious outlook to a secular outlook. Many scholars were turning their attention to financial and political force in their attempts to explain the world. For example, Karl Marx theorized that economic relations and class structures are the driving forces in our lives. Marx believed that society pre-shapes a person’s fate; ideological elements such as religion, culture, and even the individual human being, play a very little role in determining one’s destiny. Embedded within Rebecca Harding Davis’ short story, Life in the Iron Mills, are some of Marxist theories about the significance of economics and class relations at work in this society, particularly that the power of class structures undermines agency, or freewill. Through its protagonist, Hugh Wolfe, the story poses the question of whether a person’s prospects are restricted by outside forces (i.e., capitalism and the resulting class distinctions), or whether he actually does have a chance at upward mobility. Hugh’s tragic fate answers this question within a Marxist frame: economics and class relations control his destiny; his humanistic abilities and special talents are no match for determinism. As a result of...