Life in the Iron Mills: Narrative style in capturing realism

Rebecca Harding Davis's narrator is a middle class female who tells the story of the mill workers from her home, as she watches the workers through her window. The home is also her only connection to the protagonists of the story, Hugh and Deb. Her gender and class place her apart from the mill workers. Yet, she succeeds in depicting the lives of the mill workers and their families and the class structure of the industrial society she lives in and observes. A key reason for the effectiveness of the message in Life in the Iron-Mills is Harding Davis's narrative style. How does the particular narrative strategy employed by the author aid in capturing the inter-personal and social tensions in the lives of the mill workers? How does the narrator convey these tensions by employing realism in the written language and imagery (symbolic and artistic representation)? How does the work of Harding Davis compare against the style and imagery of the other works in 19th century American Literature that we have read in class, (ie), what are the similarities and differences?

-Anu