Peer’s post (Through the story Life in the Iron-Mills written by Rebecca Harding Davis, Rebeca exposes the terrible conditions that the workers of the industrial and textile factories of the United States of the nineteenth century had. The story is told by an anonymous narrator, a resident of the town. Perched on his window, the narrator looks out over the town, watching the drunken workers smoking tobacco, the muddy river, and the workers going to and from work in the mills.
In my opinion, the boldest character in this story is Deborah Wolfe, the novel’s protagonist, who works as a cotton picker in an unnamed industrial town in the American South. Deborah lives with her cousin, her alcoholic father, and six other families in a very small house. Deborah’s life is full of pain and suffering. In the story, she is in love with Hugh, but he does not share her feelings for her. Despite this, Deborah always acts with love and selflessness. Deborah is aware of her physical deformity (a slight hunchback) of hers and knows that this is one of the reasons why no man notices her and mainly Hugh does not love her. Out of love, she does the impossible, from bringing Hugh food to work to finally stealing money from Mitchell to give to Hugh. She did all this for the love she had for Hugh, even without being reciprocated by him and that is why she Deborah ends up serving three years in prison for robbery. She had the courage to defend her act of love and served her sentence in prison, all because of her act of love.
Another bold character in the story is Mitchell, Kirby’s brother-in-law, who is in town to study the institutions of a slave state. He is one of the men who visits the mill and is the man Deborah steals money from. Hugh meeting Mitchell is immediately fascinated by him, as he appears to be the kind of wealthy intellectual gentleman Hugh has always dreamed of being. Despite his artistic eye, Mitchell comes across as cold, emotionally distant, and arrogant. It is Mitchell who compares burning factory fires to the “squinting eyes of beasts.” Through this is that he compares the contamination that exists in the industry with the diseases that workers suffer. Mitchell is the most open-minded of the mill’s visitors and takes pride in his anatomical eye. Ultimately, he distances himself from social issues, firmly stating that workers must stand on their own without outside help. Mitchell is the first to correctly interpret the meaning of the sculpture’s facial expression. He has the courage to express his views in his own way and shows no fear of anything.)
write based on the post above (Do you agree with your classmate’s perspective? Why or why not? Be specific. What is the most convincing part of your classmate’s post? Why? )
