Hugh Wolfe
Hugh is the complicated protagonist: teenaged son of an immigrant father from Wales working in the hell of an iron mill and living the hell of a somewhat androgynous artistic soul born into the wrong circumstances. His talent for sculpting goes unrecognized and unappreciated until the day when a doctor accompanying a reporter and the son of the mill owner shows up and offhandedly offers encourage to the young man about the possibility of one day leaving the foundry and becoming an artist. That visit turns out to be the start of his tragically quick downfall.
Deborah
Hugh’s hunchbacked cousin, who works in the nearby cotton mill and loves Hugh with all her heart. Although he responds with affection, Deborah is under no delusion that his preferred company is the much prettier Janey. She is instrumental in Hugh’s tragedy by stealing money from the visiting reporter.
Mitchell
Reporter, gymnast, boxing aficionado and considered a gentleman in every way that Hugh alone considers himself to be, arrives at the mill with his brother-in-law: Kirby, son of the owner. Rather than feeling envious toward Mitchell, however, Hugh respects him is moved by the fact that the reporter alone seems to “get” the sculpture he has made. When Deborah hands him the money she stole from Mitchell, then, his first reaction is gentlemanly: to return it.
Clarke Kirby
The opposite of his brother-in-law in nearly every way. A total capitalist who sees the mill workers as no different from the machinery. He is scornful both of Hugh’s art and the suggestion that he might be able to make a living from it.
Doctor May
It is Doctor May as he accompanies Mitchel on his reportorial visit to the iron mill who becomes grist for the story of Hugh Wolfe becoming a tragedy when he recognizes the extent to which the young man is wasting his life as an iron worker. May is impressed enough with the little statue of a woman made by Hugh to become the first person to ever tell him that he could make a living off his talent.
The Narrator
The narrator currently occupies the house which previously had been a rental property shared by the Wolfe family with several other immigrant families and frames the story as a flashback. His living conditions are significantly different than theirs as mention is made of a personal library and the narration itself reveals a person of significant education, though no clear indication of gender. In keeping with what were two narrative conventions broadly employed throughout 19th century literature, Davis employs a framing device to introduce the story and an “intrusive narrator” who occasionally halts the simple observational technique of relating events and dialogue to directly address the reader to consider various social, political or philosophical implications of the text. Although widely hailed as a progenitor of the naturalistic and realistic fiction that would dominate American literature a few decades hence, this technique is often pointed to as one of the reasons that “Life in the Iron Mills” had fallen into virtual anonymity in the opening decades of the 20th century.
