The Importance of Woman’s Voice

In her short story Life in the Iron Mills, Rebecca Harding Davis stresses the importance of finding one’s voice through Deborah. Although Deborah can be seen as strong and independent, as she acts as a caretaker for Wolfe and is ultimately the one who causes Wolfe’s life to change completely, I see her as merely as shadow of Wolfe and an image depicting how women should be able to have a voice.

After Deborah brings Wolfe dinner, despite the troubles she must go through in order to get it to him including her overbearing tiredness as well as the long, morbid journey through the smoggy city, she goes into a dark corner and is described as “lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag…her thwarted woman’s form, her colorless life…Was there nothing worth reading in this wet, faded thing?…She lay quiet in the dark corner….shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look towards her. She knew…that there was that in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her” (Davis 2768). Here, Deborah is described as “thwarted,” a “thing,” a “limp” and “dirty rag,” and “faded.” She is constantly aware that her deformity makes Wolfe uneasy to look at her, and so she feels that she is required to shrink back into the corner on top of the ashes, as if she were already dead. Also, she is objectified and seen as some useless thing that is there for no greater purpose. The narrator questions sarcastically and offended if there is “anything worth reading” in Deborah. Through this emphasis on how worthless Deborah is on all levels, including her physical deformity as a hunchback, as well as the narrator’s seeming frustration about how she is sent to a corner like some animal, Deborah represents how women felt and were treated in the 1800s.

As Deborah represents the typical stereotype of women in the 1800s, Davis then goes on to show how influential and strong women can be and should be recognized as.  In the beginning descriptions, the narrator describes a “little broken figure of an angel” as “pointing upward from the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black” (2763). This angel parallels Deborah. Its figure is broken and shelved away as well as “clotted and black.” Deborah, too, is deformed and often shelved away both physically and metaphorically. Also, the gloom of the city hovers over her as a burden, as does the smoke here in this description to the angel. Therefore, Deborah is compared to an angel, or guardian. Also, Deborah literally places temptation in Wolfe’s hands. It is because of her that he is able to attempt to gain “his rights” as a human under God’s world. Lastly, Deborah is able to tell when Wolfe is going to die. When she peers into his face in the jail cell, she sees, “that gray shadow—yes, she knew what it meant” (2783). As his guardian angel, Deborah knows when it is his time to finally rest. She then proceeds to ask the Quaker  if he can rest on the other side of the hill. She is able to give Wolfe his dying wish, which is to be able to see the other side and live life out of the mills. Overall, Deborah is used as a metaphor of how women were perceived and then how influential and important they actually are.