Overall, the tone of “Life in the Iron Mills” is anything but cheerful. The narrator’s attitude varies somewhat, but consistently throughout the story there’s an overarching sense of tiredness and despair. In general, the narrator's voice conveys the intense weariness they—and the characters they describe—feel when thinking about the realities of mill life. There’s also a sense of detachment from events, which similarly stems from the numbing drudgery of millwork. This weariness is more than physical, it’s psychological. It permeates the mental state of all the story’s workers, showing how bleak the prospect of factory life was in the 19th century. The genderless narrator also remains sympathetic and emotionally descriptive from beginning to end. This works to bridge the gap between the reader and the mill workers, drawing readers closer to the grimy reality of workers' day-to-day.
The tone—as is usually the case in 19th-century fiction—is inherently tied to the content of Davis’s story. Right from the beginning, the narrative voice shows the reader that people in the town are saturated with a sense of exhaustion and brimming with unfulfilled wants and needs. The atmosphere is oppressive, but there’s also a persistent undercurrent of hope that things will get better. Although characters like Deborah have hopes and dreams, they’re blotted out by the drudgery of the environment.
As the novel progresses, these feelings of hope and despair keep clashing with one another, as the characters try to battle through the horrors they face and maintain some optimism. By the point of Hugh’s suicide, however, the tone becomes and remains extremely somber. By realistically recounting their emotions and then vividly illustrating the depths of their disappointment and suffering, the author awakens a sense of social and moral responsibility in the reader. The gloomy, moralizing tone of the story provokes Davis’s audience to acknowledge and respond to the social injustices industrialism created.
