24 apr 1861 anni - "Will Susan please lend Emily..." JL231

Descrizione:

The same month of its publication in the Atlantic Monthly, Emily wrote to Susan requesting Rebecca Harding Davis' "Life in the Iron Mills". This short story introduced readers to "the bleak lives of industrial workers in the mills and factories of the nation." The horrific conditions portrayed were "absolute News... in the consciousness of literary America" (Olsen, “A Biographical Interpretation.” Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories).
Emily was aware of the hardships endured by many workers, however directly she connected it to the factory smoke visible from her own window. Yet, according to critic Amy Schrager Lang, "...class stands as irreducible to the end in 'Life in the Iron Mills,'" and perhaps also in the poet's social consciousness (The Syntax of Class: Writing Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America).