Beyond Regions: Iron, Mobility, and the Toxic Imaginary in <i>Life in the Iron-Mills</i>

The Nevada Test Site downwinders, the Love Canal tragedy, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Louisiana's “Cancer Alley,” the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, or the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Toxic disasters in the United States are primarily lived, witnessed, and remembered as regional events. The Environmental Protection Agency designates Superfund sites and closes them down until they become safe again, hoping disasters can be contained in a confined place and time. News reports of toxic disasters also tend to be place-based, telling the story of the affected land and community. Local narratives of crisis, however, can obscure the fact that toxicity is rarely a regional problem. For when toxins are generated in a global capitalist economy, they move invisibly and sometimes incredibly quickly far beyond “ground zero” through networks of commerce, challenging our normative temporal and geographical scales for understanding disasters. Moreover, just as toxic materials spread, people and animals from the region flee at various speeds, some swiftly evacuating through airways, railways, highways, and waterways while others are left behind amid toxic waste. The toxicity generated by environmental disasters thus demands not a regional but rather a transregional imagination.If regions are often misconstrued as a repository for toxic events, regional writing is also where we can start to recalibrate the toxic imaginary. Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron-Mills (1861), I argue, captures the often-neglected nodal point between commodities, infrastructure, mobility, and toxic risks in a global capitalist economy. As Davis’ hometown and setting of the novella, Wheeling, Virginia, newly integrated into the world-market through iron, readers encounter a localized city of iron negotiating the transregional problem of toxic smoke. In the novella, the narrator invites readers to hear the story of those who used to live in the house she currently occupies: Hugh Wolfe, a puddler at a railroad-iron mill who likes to sculpt figures out of korl (the wasted material from ore during iron production) in his off-hours, and his cousin Deb, a cotton-mill worker with a hunchback.1 Yearning to escape their horrid working conditions, Deb steals money for Hugh from the group of gentlemen who visit the mill. When the theft is discovered, Hugh ends up behind iron bars with a nineteen-year sentence and kills himself in despair.Since its anonymous publication in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861, scholars have examined Davis’ regional portrayal of Wheeling and the local manifestations of environmental harm.2 Yet in light of recent scholarship on infrastructure, I revisit Davis’ regionalist concerns in the early stages of industrialization and the market revolution. Rather than reading Wheeling as a city of smoke, I aim to bring the spotlight back to the titular concern of the novella—that is, Wheeling as a city of iron. Focusing on iron, I reread Life in the Iron-Mills as a text that gestures toward the promise of railroad infrastructure as well as its failures in terms of mobility and toxic smoke; and this failure not only happens in Wheeling but potentially across the nation as railroads use coal and exhume fume along their journey, accelerate the speed of commerce, and contribute to national entrenchment in a fossil fuel economy, just as it is not merely Wheeling's population that drives its smoke-generating iron industry.3 Wheeling's involvement in the production of iron and expansion of railroad infrastructure in the nation, I argue, highlights the transregional ramifications of Davis’ critique. Ultimately, I contend that this transregional reading of the novella through iron is not opposed to but consistent with what the genre of regionalism can achieve in helping us understand Wheeling's wider national and global connections and the development of fossil capitalism in the U.S.Asking not what regional writing is but what regional writing does, Stuart Burrows suggests rethinking regionalism as “an epistemology as much as an ethnography.” Regions in regionalism, according to Burrows, “delineate more than a shared form of life, shared customs, habits, and traditions. Regions serve a psychological need by imagining the outside world as outside, an external space from which the region can be seen and thus take shape.”4 As Burrows emphasizes the work that regional writing performs in establishing the connectedness between the region and the nation, Hsuan Hsu and Mark Storey push this scale further, exploring the production of regions in global economies. Hsu recontextualizes regional writing as an aesthetic with “geographically oriented feelings that originate not only in isolated, local communities but also in the broader spaces of global capitalism,” navigating the “geographical and economic relations . . . between region and world.”5 Regionalism, for Storey, is a “cultural registration of ‘peripherality’ within [the] world-system”; it dramatizes communities “at the front line of modernity's characteristically layered historicities,” as they transition from a local to a global economy.6 Building on how such scholars read regionalism as an epistemology that creates the region in a global context, I demonstrate how Davis’ regional writing, centered on iron, resituated Wheeling in a global economy, in the germinal stages of industrialization, railroad expansion, and transregional trade.If regionalism attends to a region's imbrication into the world-system, I suggest that there is also a transregional story about infrastructure and global capitalism to be told with Wheeling's production of iron. While Wheeling bears the brunt of toxic smoke, smoke is merely a byproduct of iron. I thus draw attention to the product and what it makes possible. I ask where smoke and iron come from and go in the novella and consider, too, the particularity of Hugh's stance as a furnace-tender for a factory that produces railroad-iron. Nearly half a century before Edna Pontellier, Lily Bart, and Undine Spragg leisurely hopped off a train for lunch in the city or a seasonal getaway to the countryside, Davis unfolded the toxic story behind the fast-expanding mobility via the railroad: the story of iron production that undergirds transregional smoke and the immobility of workers at the iron mills.Through this focus on iron, I delineate how Davis sees Wheeling as not solely responsible for its smoke nor as the only region that will suffer from smoke in the near future. Furthermore, Davis raises the question of uneven mobility through iron—the mobility granted exclusively to the bourgeoisie to run away faster than toxic smoke can catch up with them; and this is an irony at the heart of the story, as it is Hugh's production of railroad-iron that facilitates this flight. Put differently, through iron, Davis portrays toxic risks produced by the capitalist world-system, not merely by the local mills, and risks that are posed to the middle-class national audience of the Atlantic, not just to the laborers in Wheeling. Davis, moreover, anticipates contemporary environmental injustices in which the mobility to run away from environmental disasters is stratified along lines of class, race, and disability. As we in the twenty-first century experience toxic events more frequently, violently, and unevenly, Davis teaches us to read toxic risks beyond the region for collective responsibility and survival.The defining feature of Wheeling is smoke. Davis’ description of the sky is a paradigmatic example of her representation of Wheeling as a smoke-ridden, sickly city rather than a city of iron: “the sun-touched smoke-clouds opened like a cleft ocean,—shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of billowy silver veined with blood-scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light.”7 The deployment of somatic and semi-somatic terms—cleft, crimson, vein, blood-scarlet—makes this scene seem like a medical procedure transposed onto an environmental setting. It is as if the sky is opened by a scalpel: the “cleaving” of the smoke-clouds reveals the inner workings of the body; blood rushes through the veins. This sky or body is covered with smoke. As Davis metaphorizes the sky as a body, she conveys a gory imagery of sickness of the mill town and hints at the shared vulnerability of the body and the sky, the human and more-than-human life, in this region.Reading moments like this in the novella that depict smoke's harm to the body and landscape of Wheeling, a handful of scholars have examined Wheeling as a city of smoke. Smoke in the mid-nineteenth century, Jill Gatlin writes, was often heralded as a sign of a town's progress and prosperity by boosters, businessmen, journalists, court officials, and even some physicians; if it was couched in negative terms, it was a “nuisance” rather than a real cause for concern. In this climate, Davis creates an “aesthetic of disturbance,” Gatlin asserts, to prompt readers to affectively engage with smoke. As Davis’ narrator places privileged readers in polluted environments, readers, in Gatlin's words, are to “evaluate how their own moral, aesthetic, emotional, and economic commitments are implicated in the oppression of workers.”8 Adam Vernon has likewise focused on smoke in Wheeling's landscape, claiming that Davis “entertained the popular idealist imagery [of nature] found in the American romantic literary canon, while inundating it in pollution to create a hybrid aesthetic of the real and ideal.”9 Calling attention to olfaction as an aesthetic strategy for representing invisible toxins, Hsu has elucidated the “atmospheric stratification at the heart of Davis's novella”—that is, the noxious odors in the streets, in the living cellars of workers, and in the mill, which contrast with the air the gentlemen carry or the clean air in the neighboring town.10While and Hsu have toxic smoke's regional I attention to iron production and the transregional networks of and that smoke as its waste. For toxicity is a problem as it what is with the of the mobility and of through has that the of economic has the of and of what has also is the toxic risks by and like As toxicity is often from mobility and toxic smoke in Wheeling can be by its to Davis’ regional Wheeling was primarily a region for transregional and In of Davis of her hometown as the the and the this the and and was on the and was a place on this national the only of between the and the . . . often with for the or with of for the the of the and the through the of in of which iron, in the mid-nineteenth the and Wheeling, the to in the the railroad and the Wheeling as the and for iron and the Wheeling the in Virginia, the and of Wheeling, its as the When was in iron ore was found near the to and In the iron on this on that early the of by the some on the of iron in this story, the the of iron that in the region with and in thus become the of the and an iron point in before the Davis her In from too, Wheeling was in the for its of iron. In the Wheeling as the of railroad-iron to iron, Wheeling's into the In the a of from and the in the of iron, and from Wheeling, and the East have rather production of iron was also and in and as the behind national in what was a economy. In a of in the Wheeling for the a in by of the of who has much attention to the and of this according to its and a of its and from its of iron, which the and attention of a of its the and in Wheeling and that its to iron. For writes, are in mills, of and and with railroad iron an production of ends by that Wheeling will be a for who “an of fuel at the it has of coal which the and which are often of such that the coal can be from the to the in words, the of Wheeling on its geographical and to a fossil fuel economy. was by Wheeling of its to fossil to iron and iron production more fossil fuel use by the speed of through railroads and a such as by Wheeling thus the of this of more fossil fuel use and a national line with such contemporary of Wheeling as an town to the of national Davis also Life in the Iron-Mills by attention to the mill Hugh at as a place of for railroad-iron. the the for railroads there the as she Hugh and his as their Hugh is if not to the Atlantic readers through his as a railroad-iron regions beyond Wheeling. The to the readers, their of the or at the to a of Wheeling as a mill town to national of Wheeling as a city of iron in Davis’ text when the of the his and the visit the mill with a who is up a of of the The the of the . . . a of the of the like the that be in regional or national to the of the railroad-iron in Wheeling. the coal I was Davis, the but about the its is by the as an of and its by the that suggest of the as if they are and for in her such on a and produced Wheeling as a to national infrastructure and economic in Life in the Iron-Mills Davis a of between its and the global through smoke and iron. It is not solely smoke or pollution but the between smoke and the question of mobility that from is at the of Davis’ regionalist in a world of capitalist Davis’ outside of Wheeling, toxic smoke's was more or invisible and in its to the speed with which iron was produced and through which Wheeling was as the city of In the I Davis’ more description of a world on Wheeling's production of iron: those who contribute to smoke with their iron those and are by iron, and those who can away from smoke and out through railroads of is an of Wheeling's involvement in railroad expansion, transregional and fossil The regional of its smoke by the of and environmental that Hugh and Deb as laborers in the In the there is a and of the and the laborers in by global which their The and of the of and When I was a I used to a of the of the its of the to when from the I on the of human and to the of with to the . and and with smoke and of the Davis a of as a of and that with what is in the romantic that a to the and was as of a regional Davis human into environmental in this as the and the of Wheeling are of this are in and The is to an through his and the the which has a of with and covered in toward the mill. While that Davis of to to the of to with and with I read this as an to the transregional in this regional scene of Davis makes a between Wheeling's iron production and the economy, she is also that smoke is not to the mill town but rather a transregional and toxicity of iron production and are on transregional can be through the lines of the text where the narrator smoke as a defining feature of this what that is in a town of . . . The air is with the of human It I the can through the the where a of are in their I can the through the in the portrayal of the of from the of and odors in the air in her of smoke as the of this in from the of the and down in on the the of the description of a It is the that she as the for her the of that in front of a from Virginia, which into the the from a neighboring region with the of the to the anonymous and the the narrator move on to the of smoke from “the of the In this local scene of smoke, Davis Wheeling, and through air is with what produced by the of fossil fuel an and a is a of this fossil as it fossil fuel for its production and facilitates more fossil fuel use through the of however, Davis the people who are by and to smoke in an town before the of the iron an of before of Wheeling's production and of railroad-iron is by and on the human who iron, and the the mill workers, who of from before to work to iron. Wheeling's regional problem of smoke, is not only by production but also by transregional and of commerce, and in a global capitalist Davis thus readers of the Atlantic in the problem of smoke in Wheeling as they form the human into the even if from by in a national economy, the production of or iron or Davis is the transregional entrenchment in the fossil fuel which happens not only on a and scale but also on an and from work in the Deb from an by the she her she to the to bring Hugh his While for Hugh to off from Deb in the of the on a with the of iron: her an for a and to his The was the of the iron, and was not a the too, her their and The narrator to in iron and by waste. of their on fossil just their work but also their of As in for her body through and by her for Hugh's body that to iron, is and by coal for the production of iron. Davis’ attention to of and on iron as the of smoke thus her of entrenchment in a of work and and in global fossil capitalism that as the production of smoke is a byproduct of an and integrated fossil fuel economy, on a scale much than the toxic risks not only the laborers but also the middle-class narrator who to be a the narrator from the laborers out in the air and there are that the house is by smoke. The narrator is a of an from the but even its are covered with smoke, and The is also and is as its of and . . . As the smoke and the the body and the well be at Toxic smoke as a to between and between or even between not be to toxic risks as much as smoke people also move the of the scene in which coal smoke to just the or of but the of as materials that the of a of that through the of smoke, Davis the of a in of a material by its It is not smoke's however, that the of in the it is Hugh's smoke, with Davis’ of the human as to space to in the scale of and seasonal Hugh's to spaces with clean air is by his immobility as an his to in this town is also it is not much that there is clean air in to Hugh's town but that has a to to of the the the for of air on a to down and his out in the The narrator also Hugh's of mobility with the and that through and out of As Davis at the that in town that beyond there for it with of and crimson with and and the beyond the of this town is not on the for by his own in but to have only before the of toxic smoke up with As the Hugh is and has that have of even if not his The invisible of toxicity is a for that merely to be within the of the When Deb of his she is that will be in the and the who Deb in she in where air is and for take out where air The a to take Hugh to the the where she where “the light . . . and the of air visit Hugh in as on the was to it when was immobility is by the fact that is a for a railroad-iron mill in the of his go into mobility for the of the This irony is into the of fossil capitalism as the production of the railroad on the of laborers like Put differently, what Davis is that fossil capitalism produces of who can use the railroad to escape toxic smoke and others who are mobility and into in fact mobility as more railroads and in the The was newly integrated into the of as in The of and his catch a train to run away from the house and the that they will the train far as that will carry . . . are for as a with who it that they for on a the railroads as “the of his it with a newly found of and us they the and of they what can be to in a more than can be off with himself a for in and and when just as in a the and a only railroads for but railroads also to to and even environmental disasters to us at the speed of a by in the speed of the as a about a of of and up in the of a of irony to of the what and Davis makes it that not can to the railroad as a some flee from environmental disasters like or toxic smoke even with the of that as it for laborers like toxic smoke was for it for others with Davis’ the people of Wheeling seem to have the of polluted and they out of the region for the Wheeling Life in the the experience at a in The air is with the of the a to The of which sometimes in our about Wheeling, not but can at the or and the of the air to the have what an this air with of has the the air in Wheeling to air in the of the of air and the with and those with oil to visit the to experience their is left and is that this mobility to an was a in this early of railroad for the In the of the in a which the in This railroad about a in and of for of where hoping to a of in the by their from and for the of the air and the While take to their in regions with water and laborers in Wheeling like to not escape the toxic this of mobility in railroad in of Davis in Life in the Iron-Mills the narrator and the gentlemen who visit the mill Wheeling with more and mobility than the narrator this story from the house in which the lived, she is from the smoke. The gentlemen who in the in the mill with Hugh are likewise who can town at their and When Hugh to the to this of the Davis hints at the and of for gentlemen in contrast to the of the workers who in narrator and the in words, mobility through the railroad-iron produced by workers who not have to the they in and beyond Wheeling. The workers from railroad-iron Davis are and they are the to flee from if the geographical scales that iron, smoke, and the in Life in the Iron-Mills Davis thus more Wheeling's smoke is, as merely within the Davis regions far from Wheeling into Hugh's tragedy, as they contribute to the of fossil and smoke through their iron and they have to the of toxic but not and not toxic risks to exclusively to the we that they also the as we the of and to be and toxic disasters that seem to and along the of It is in Davis’ writing that we an environmental for navigating of risks that but across lines of class, race, and and are by to As as we are on with iron and by iron Life in the Iron-Mills us to the of toxicity in a world of global fossil capitalism with geographical scales that the