Factory Girl; or Gardez la Coeur, The.
A Defense Of The “Factory Girl”
[Labor]. (Cummings, A.I., M.D.) The Factory Girl or Gardez la Coeur. Lowell: J.E. Short & Co., 1847.
12 mo.; offsetting to endpapers and occasional pages throughout; spine tender; blue ink engraving facing title page and occasional other engravings facing chapter headings; brown cloth, stamped in gilt; covers worn and lightly watermarked.
A polemical novel about the plight of two “factory girls,” dedicated “To the intelligent and highly respectable class of female operatives in New England….by their friend and humble servant the author.” Though ostensibly set in New Hampshire, the real subject is obviously – from its dedication, via continuous allusions within the text, and from the title, its publication date and it’s place of publication – the mill girls of Lowell, Mass.
In twenty chapters the author follows the ups and downs (mostly downs) of his two main characters, Caliste and Louisa, both factory girls who sacrifice their best years in order to spend their days toiling under oppressive conditions to support themselves and their families. The book is at times oddly laudatory about the nature of factory work, describing it as a nearly idyllic pastime for lower class young ladies; yet at other points the heavy-handed narrator rails against the class system that forces young women to enter this disreputable and draining profession. The book portrays a strong friendship between two factory women that is the life-force that helps them survive the factory world – that and their readings of, and contributions to, The Offering:
Her [Caliste’s] contributions to the pages of “The Offering” displayed a native
genius, untrammeled by the rigid rules of the schools, and thus in their simplicity
united grandeur and sublimity…”The Offering,” as we have intimated, and is
well known, is the work entirely of “mind among the spindles” and in point of
merit ranks high in the literary world….If its pages display none of the art of
fiction, they shine with lustre unrivalled in their own strength…Indeed, we
cannot speak too highly of this periodical…” (94)
At the final denouement of the novel one of the characters escapes the factory life by marrying well—to a doctor—forcing us to speculate that our author A.I. Cummings, M.D. had perhaps a personal as well as a political stake in taking up the cause of the factory girl.
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