“둔한 삶”의 꿈 : 레베카 하딩 데이비스의 「제철공장의 삶」 에 나타난 탈출로서의 예술

Abstract

The representation of industrial laborers as passive and unrevolutionary in “Life in the Iron Mills” has often been under scholarly rebuke. The novella is even judged to be a failed realism, for it gives an odd account of the atypical laborer who prefers art to work, not the stout laborer proud of his or her work while fighting against exploitative capitalists. But no laborers are the same. Art may function as alternative exit for laborers who suffer. Previously intertwined, labor and art took separate paths since the Industrial Revolution, when laborers were no longer permitted to exert his artistic talent. In this tragic disengagement of art and labor, this paper claims, the atypical hunger of an obscure laborer for art in “Life in the Iron Mills” showcases the potent disruption of capitalist stratification rather than the traitorous refusal of labor solidarity.