In “Life in the Iron Mills” the mood reflects the downward spiral of each character's journey. The story starts with a feeling of anxiety as Deborah scrabbles to survive in a dank, tiny house. This worsens as readers learn how Hugh and the mill workers perform backbreaking labor in hellish heat and filth. The reader feels disbelief and sympathy as the narrator describes the rank conditions in which factory workers lived, often turning to alcohol to cope. In every paragraph, Davis shows how the mill’s presence worms its way into each aspect of her characters' days.
As the story progresses, moments of kindness and creativity rub painfully against this torpor and misery. Deb’s quiet attempts to perform her tasks without waking anyone and Hugh’s carving of the korlwood figure stand out against the descriptions of drunken neighbors, dirty houses, and street arguments. However, these moments do not alleviate the gloom. Instead, they make the hardships the “Old Wolfe” and his companions endure seem even worse by comparison. The reader is prompted to feel Hugh’s longing for beauty and the deep unfairness of his “loving poet’s heart” being trapped in a life of hard labor.
Deborah's experiences as a poor, disabled woman also make the reader feel the lack of justice in the dual burdens of class and gender oppression. All she wants to do is help, but nothing legal or illegal she does has any sort of permanent positive effect. The glibness and casual dismissiveness of wealthy characters like Clarke Kirby and Mitchell also cause the reader discomfort. They see how easily the troubles of the working poor could be waved away or rationalized by their employers. By the end of the story the mood becomes one of outrage, as Hugh’s miserable, silent suicide brings home the hopelessness and injustice faced by the working class in an exploitative world. The mood swings from anxiety to helplessness to anger at the unfairness of the story’s events. In taking this approach to the story’s mood, Davis plays on readers' emotions to rally them to consider the need for change.
