Rebecca Harding Davis

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Rebecca Harding Davis bigraphy, stories - American journalist

Rebecca Harding Davis : biography

1831 – 1910

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (June 24, 1831–September 29, 1910; born Rebecca Blaine Harding) was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills, published in the April 1861 edition of the Atlantic Monthly which quickly made her an established female writer. Throughout her lifetime, Davis sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalized groups in the 19th century.

Major works

Life in the Iron Mills

Life in the Iron Mills; or, The Korl Woman is widely considered Rebecca Harding Davis’ most significant work. Published in 1861 in Atlantic Monthly, Life in the Iron Mills was one of the first works to explore industrialization in American literature. The novella saw its publication around the dawn of the American Civil War, and is one of Davis’ earliest published works. It has become an important text not only for its artistic merit, but for its historical implications. Both its form and content were ground breaking at the time of its publication, being a narrative that follows the lives of laborers and the consequences of industrialization, in a traditionally realistic style.

Life in the Iron Mills is set in a small village whose center is industrial work, especially that of the iron mills. It is described as a polluted and oppressive village, inhabited by laborers, mostly “masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes”. The novella’s protagonist is Hugh Wolfe, an iron mill laborer who possesses artistic talent and a spiritual desire for higher forms of pleasure and fulfillment. Despite the hopefulness of Wolfe’s artistic drive, he becomes the story’s tragic hero, as his yearning for a better life leads to his imprisonment and ultimate death.

Though the novella is concerned with larger themes such as industrialization and the working class, Davis’ depiction of Hugh Wolfe, and her command of realism allows the reader to focus on the individual within the labor class, and the consequences of its realities upon his heart and soul. In Life in the Iron Mills, "Harding reveals what, historically was done to workers and suggests what could be done for them, moral education and social uplift."

Education

During the earlier part of Davis’ childhood, public schools in her hometown were not yet available. Her education was mainly undertaken by her mother, with occasional instruction from tutors. While being home-schooled, Rebecca read such authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe, sisters Anna and Susan Warner, and Maria Cummins, which initiated her interest in literature. When Davis was fourteen, she was sent to Washington, Pennsylvania to live with her mother’s sister, and attend the Washington Female Seminary. She graduated as class valedictorian in 1848, at the age of seventeen. Rebecca described the school as "enough math to do accounts, enough astronomy to point out constellations, a little music and drawing, and French, history, literature at discretion". After returning to Wheeling, she joined the staff of the local newspaper, the Intelligencer, submitting reviews, stories, poems, and editorials, and also serving briefly as an editor in 1859.

Notes

Style

Rebecca Harding Davis’ literary style is most commonly labeled as realism. Her literary works mark a transition from romanticism to literary realism. For instance, "Life on the Iron Mills" utilizes a realistic style comparable to writers in the height of American literary realism, which came two decades after the text was published. Although realism is the genre most prominently attached to Davis’ collective works, naturalism is also prevalent in her writing style. Naturalism is thematically linked to realism. Where realists, like Davis, endeavor to depict reality, naturalists expand on that reality by approaching the scientific and or psychological influences on characters due to their environments. In Life in the Iron Mills, the two genres are blended to create a realistic depiction of the everyday life of iron mill worker Hugh Wolfe, as well as illustrate the effects of that environment on him. In addition to realism and naturalism, Davis also published works employing such literary genres as the gothic and folklore.