Essay Questions

What evidence supports the contention that Hugh Wolfe is intended to symbolically represent the author, Rebecca Harding Davis?

Like Hugh, the author was a teenager with an artistic spirit living in a working class town. She pursued her dream of writing primarily through employment with the local paper; although hardly the same environment as the hellish iron mill, a newspaper is essentially commerce while Davis dreamed of writing fiction. Within the actual text, evidence is plentiful: Hugh is made fun by the other workers as being one of the “girl-men.” The statue which draws so much attention, on the other hand, is a recognizable as a woman only by virtue of being nude; otherwise, her muscular form and powerful limbs might well be mistaken for a man. In addition, the statue of the korl woman is said to feature a face like that of a “wolf’s.” The overall theme of frustrated artistic dreams were doubtlessly inspired at least partially by the fact that the author was a 30-year-old unpublished author of fiction who might well have thought that, like Hugh, no one was ever going to recognize her talent.

What is the complexity of the symbolism of the smoke-stained canary singing in its cage next to the narrator as he prepares to tell the story of Hugh and Deborah?

A canary is not just a songbird; the species became useful with the growth of coal mining as an early warning sentinel of dangerous gases which would kill the bird and thus warn of the threat to humans before it became too great. For the modern reader, therefore, the presence of the canary by the narrator allows it to be interpreted as a symbol related to the unseen dangers of industrialization; in this case the symbol could be applied to Hugh either in reference to his artistic spirit being threatened or his health already suffering. Unfortunately for those looking to implicate the canary as an intentional symbol by the author, the use of canaries as industrial sentinels did not even commence until the 20th century. Under these circumstances, however, the canary actually carries greater symbolic weight as an example literary theory which argues that one should avoid trying to determine what the “author intended” and instead focus on what the “text contains.” For readers at the time, the canary could not have been symbol of warning or threat; for the modern reader, however, it is perfectly justifiable as long as one understands it was not premeditated.

The narrator never reveals personal information; not even gender. Theories have ranged as far out as the narrator being Deborah, but Mitchell seems the most likely. Why?

The narrator calls the story being told simple, comprising “only what I remember of the life of one of these men,—a furnace-tender.” It turns out that this is not entirely true; the narrator is equally penetrating into the mind and thoughts of Deborah as he is of Hugh. Even more tellingly, however, there is just one other character whom the reader can piece together fairly complex idea of aside from those two members of the Wolfe clan. Kirby remains essentially a one-dimensional Philistine, seeing the world only through the eyes of capitalist ownership. Dr. May receives slightly better treatment, but ultimately also bears the brunt of Mitchell’s scorn after all three men come across the statue of the korl woman. The narrator describes Mitchell, by contrast, as “a man who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent, gentlemanly way.” In addition, the loft philosophical prose engaged by the narrator resembles the unlikely dialogue he puts into the mouth of Mitchell: “Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people’s has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep—thieves, Magdalens, negroes—do with the light filtered through ponderous Church creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes?” Finally, only three men who saw the statue made of korl seemed to recognize its genius. One of them is certainly dead, one very likely dead and the other seems to be the only person on planet who might have any reason or access to keep the statue in his library.