LIFE IN THE IRON MILLS

This volume, consisting of three examples of short fiction by almost-forgotten 19th-century author Davis along with Olsen's biographical essay about her, first appeared in 1972 at the height of second-wave feminism.

Born in 1831, Davis spent most of her first 30 years as an obedient member of her wealthy Wheeling, West Virginia, family, though she was deeply affected by her “acquaintance with” radical reformer Francis LeMoyne while at finishing school in Washington, Pennsylvania. Then, in 1861, she published the title novella, about Hugh Wolfe, a lowly ironworker who possesses natural artistic talent, and his hunchbacked cousin, Deb, who silently loves him and inadvertently causes his ruin after misunderstanding some thoughtless words from wealthy visitors to the mill. Harding (not yet Mrs. Davis) became a literary darling for her realistic portrayal of the proletariat. Olsen makes clear that while Davis continued publishing fiction after she married until her death at 79, her embrace of her position in society as subservient wife and devoted mother battled against her literary ambitions. The two other stories here concern women facing that struggle. “The Wife’s Story,” written during Davis’ first pregnancy, concerns a woman deciding whether or not to leave her marriage to pursue her musical talent; Davis concocts an unsatisfactory double ending of tragedy and happy complacency that exposes her own ambivalence. In a later story, “Anne,” an older woman, outwardly successful in business and at home, briefly leaves her family to seek the creative dreams of her youth; the sense of the vibrant girl she once was becomes all the more moving when she returns home with her illusions about artists and intellectuals shattered. Davis was no Louisa May Alcott, but Olsen argues that her writing about women’s needs for both love and self-fulfillment was groundbreaking. The stories themselves are less noteworthy than Olsen’s biography of a writer grappling with issues she’d still face today.

A thought-provoking volume for anyone interested in the evolution of women’s fiction.