Life in the Iron Mills: An Analysis of Hugh Wolfe

“For all sad words of tongue and men, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.” (John Greenleaf Whittier) These are the words that echo throughout the book with regards to Hugh Wolfe. Hugh is a furnace tender at Kirby and John’s Rolling mills. He lives a life of constantly working and wretched life at the mill and coming home to sleep, a life that does not satisfy him. He wants something better, a life filled with beauty and art. This leads him to keep money stolen by his cousin Deborah, which eventually leads to a life sentence of nineteen years in jail. He runs mad while in prison resulting in him committing suicide. Hugh is a highly creative, intelligent and hardworking recluse thirty-two-year-old man, who seems defeated and resigned to the life he has (Rebecca Harding Davis).

Hugh is highly creative. He moulds beautiful figures from the korl in his off time from work. The narrator states that even the other people working in the mill saw that the molded figures were “hideous, fantastic enough and sometimes strangely beautiful” despite jeering at him. (Rebecca Harding Davis)The figures get the attention of Kirby and his team when they make rounds in the mill, and spark a long interesting conversion on Hugh’s genius and what to do about it. The narrator also implores us to think of Hugh as though “God put into this man’s soul a fierce thirst for beauty –to know it, to create it, to be something he knows not what- other than he is.” (Rebecca Harding Davis)

Hugh is also very intelligent. When Kirby, Mitchell and the team came to visit the mills, they saw one of Hugh’s figurines in a corner-“a nude woman’s form, muscular, grown, a course with labour, with powerful limbs…” (Rebecca Harding Davis)When asked as to what he meant by making the figure like that, Hugh replies that the woman is hungry. The doctor suggests that he was wrong in making the limbs strong to which Hugh replies that the woman is hungry for something to make her live like Kirby and the team. This was a highly profound and illuminating answer which showed his intelligent and thinking nature. Kirby also stated that “Suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches,” while referring to Hugh. (Rebecca Harding Davis) He in this way acknowledged Hugh’s genius. Moreover, the narrator mentions that Hugh was not popular in the mill because “he had the taint of school-learning on him” and because “though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered” his foreign thoughts and wants to show themselves in many curious ways. He asked himself many pertinent questions, especially when he was in jail. For instance, he asked himself, “Was there right and wrong for such as he? What was right?” (Rebecca Harding Davis)

Hugh extremely hardworking nature is visible in how much effort he puts in at the mills. When Deborah went to take supper to Hugh, she found him heaping coal on the furnace. He was very busy that he did not have time to eat and Deborah had to wait for him. He ate quickly and went back to work. Hugh also molded the korl during his off time for hours at a time and kept at it for many months using a blunt knife. This shows his deliberate and hardworking nature. The narrator also indulges us to consider “the heavy years he has groped through, as a boy and as a man,-the slow heavy years of constant, hot work.” (Rebecca Harding Davis)

Hugh was changed by circumstances into a defeatist. He was resigned to the life he was living and did not see any hope of it getting better. The narrator mentions that Hugh has worked in the mills for such a long time. He states that there seems no hope that this situation will ever change. Hugh embodies this sentiment. When he has finished working on his molding for months, he breaks it into pieces in a fit of disappointment with his life. When he heads home to Janey, he gives up any left hope that he had that things in the future would change for the better. This is also seen when he takes his own life in jail after being sentenced to nineteen years in prison. (Rebecca Harding Davis)

Hugh has reclusive tendencies. When he took his off time to mold figurines, he never spoke to his workmates, until his time of duty came up again. He did this for months as he worked on one figure. He did his work by himself as well, not indulging other workers in conversations. When Deborah had visited she saw him “bent over the furnace with his iron pole, only stopping to receive orders.” (Rebecca Harding Davis) He seemed to have preferred his own company.

In light of the above text, it can be seen that Hugh possesses the characteristics of an individual who would have done well in life if he had been given a different set of circumstances. He seeks more in life, of beauty, and art as compared to the life he lived of endless unchanging hard work. He possesses great intelligence as seen by the works he creates and how he reasons. He is also extremely hard working and highly creative. He enjoys beauty and love in life and it is saddening that innocent wants like this would lead to his death.

Work Cited

Whittier, John Greenleaf. “Quotes.” n.d. Brainy Quote. Document. 10 7 2020.

Davis, Rebecca Harding. Life in the Iron Mills. Boston: The Atlantic Magazine, 1861. Document.