Life in the Iron Mills: Dialect 1 key example

In this quotation, Deb is telling the Quaker that she can’t let Hugh be buried in the yard, as he was born somewhere where the air was clean. She begs her to take his body away somewhere where “t’air blows.” The dialect that Deb speaks in throughout the story is meant to represent the speech of an immigrant from the North of England. It uses contractions and phonetic spellings like "t'" for "the" and "wur" instead of "was.” These are regional variations of spoken English which are usually found in either North-Western England or Wales. By using dialect in this way, Davis provides local color to the narrative. It reminds the reader that Deb and Hugh have a specific cultural and geographic identity. This passage makes it clear that, while Hugh and Deb might have been dirtied and downtrodden by mill town life, they weren’t always so crushed and worn.

The use of dialect here and elsewhere is one of the many ways Davis shows the diversity of backgrounds that made up new American industrial communities in the 1860s and '70s. It adds depth to the novel's portrayal of the immigrant experience in 19th-century industrial America, where people’s expectations for town and city life were often far removed from reality.