Part of a series of articles titled Lyddie - Books to Parks.
Article • Lyddie - Books to Parks
Lyddie: Chapter 10 - Oliver
Color photograph of a label used by the Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, Mass. c. 1845. Lowell National Historical Park. Public Domain.
The next day is Lyddie’s first full day as a mill worker. Diana tells her that the two of them will be working three looms together. Within a few minutes, Lyddie is overwhelmed by the noise and the dust in the air. She tries to take a break for a moment, but the overseer is watching her. Lyddie reminds herself that if she is strong enough to face down a bear, she can also face the machines. She gets through the rest of the day.
That night, Lyddie doesn’t go back to Diana’s boardinghouse to study the rules, as she and Diana had planned. She is too tired to eat and wonders if she’ll ever get used to the fast-paced mill work. She goes to bed as soon as supper is over. Her roommate, Betsy, is also under the covers, reading a book. She notices how tired Lyddie is and remembers what it was like when she first started at the mill. Betsy begins reading out loud. The story is Oliver Twist, and as Lyddie listens, she discovers a new kind of hunger. She wants to hear how Oliver’s story ends.
Fact Check: Work conditions
Lyddie is accustomed to hard work on the farm and in the tavern but is overwhelmed by a day’s work in the mill. Were conditions really that challenging?
What do we know?
Working conditions in the mills were very difficult. Workers were awoken by the mill bell at 4:30 a.m. and were at their machines ready to work at 5 a.m. They labored until 7:00 at night, with only two, short half-hour breaks, during which they returned to the boardinghouse for breakfast and a noon-time dinner. While in the factory, the women were surrounded by excessive noise and motion from the machines. Cotton lint or dust filled the room and the workers breathed it in all day, and the windows could not be opened since cool air damaged the threads. While the girls labored, the overseer kept his eye on everyone to make sure each person was keeping pace.
What is the evidence?
Primary Source:
“Now let us examine the nature of the labor itself, and the conditions under which it is performed… The girls attend upon an average three looms; many attend four, but this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care. However, a great many do it. Attention to two is as much as should be demanded of an operative. This gives us some idea of the application required during the thirteen hours of daily laborer. The atmosphere of such a room cannot of course be pure; on the contrary it is charged with cotton filaments and dust, which, we were told, are very injurious to the lungs. On entering the room, although the day was warm, we remarked that the windows were down; we asked the reason, and a young woman answered very naively, and without seeming to be in the least aware that this privation of fresh air was anything else than perfectly natural, that ‘when the wind blew, the threads did not work so well.’ After we had been in the room for fifteen or twenty minutes, we found ourselves, as did the persons who accompanied us, in quite a perspiration, produced by a certain moisture which we observed in the air, as well as by the heat.”
“An Account of a Visitor to Lowell, November 14.” In The Harbinger, 1836. Reprinted in the Voice of Industry, 1846.
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Primary Source:
Lowell Letters Collection, Box 1, Folder 34, Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“Lowell, December 6th 1847
My dear Sister
I now sit down to write
you a few lines to let you know that I am well and
hope you are the same. you [sic] must excuse me
for not writing to you before this, but I have
been so busy that I have not had time. I
arrived here safely, and have gone to work…
it is very easy pretty work after you
once get learned, but it requires some patience
to learn when you first begin. I almost gave
up in despair the first day, it made my
fingers so sore, but I thought if the other
girls could learn I could and now the work
seems quite easy to me.”
Cowles, Mary “My dear Sister”, Lowell Letters Collection, Box 1, Folder 34, Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
SecondarySource :
“At first, most mill girls were satisfied with their life in Lowell...however, factory conditions soon began to take a toll on the Yankee women. Mill owners required that a hot and humid environment be maintained in the mills in order to prevent threads from breaking...As a result, cotton dust and lint filled the air in the mills and caused many workers to suffer from severe respiratory illnesses such as brown lung disease. Without proper hearing protection, many workers experienced a permanent loss of hearing. Machines in constant motion without protective covering led to frequent injuries.”
Tsongas Industrial History Center, The Lowell Mill Girls. Lowell: Eastern National, 1999
SecondarySource :
“A weaver had to repair broken warp yarns and replace the shuttle bobbin when it ran out of filling yarn. Her output depended on the speed with which she performed these tasks. Tending two looms at a time, she had to keep a watchful eye on each in turn. The task of replacing empty bobbins involved seven distinct steps: ‘[T]aking the shuttle out, putting in another, starting the loom, taking the empty bobbin or cop tube out of the discarded shuttle, putting in a new bobbin or cop, sucking the thread through the eye, and placing the shuttle in a holder.’ The frequency with which an operative had to intervene to replace empty bobbins or tie broken yarns limited the number of looms she could tend… New operatives generally found their first work experience difficult, even harrowing, though they may have already done considerable hand spinning or weaving in their own homes.”
Dublin, Thomas. Women At Work: The Transformation of Work and Community In Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Fact Check: Oliver Twist
Lyddie identifies with the story told in Oliver Twist, a realist novel (it describes the current moment) published in installments between 1837-39. Is the story of Lyddie and her brother like Oliver’s? Is Katherine Paterson’s novel Lyddie like Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist?
What do we know?
Oliver lives in London, England during the industrial revolution. Like Lyddie and Charlie, he is a poor orphan who must work for others from a very young age. Lyddie is right: there are ways their life stories are similar. The novels featuring these fictional characters also have similarities. Novels from the nineteenth century often include a series of coincidences.
… Lyddie’s own story so far has been filled with similar coincidences, such as the unlikeliness of her meeting Ezekial, etc. In many ways then, the book Lyddie is not only a story about the 1800s, but works in a similar way to novels that had been written during the time in which it takes place.
What is the evidence?
Primary Source:
In this scene, Oliver walks to London to find work, much like Lyddie attempted to walk to Lowell.
“Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water, which he begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the night came, he turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened at first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before. Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles.”
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. N.Y., Barnes & Noble Classics, 1995.
Secondary Source:
“The first novel to attempt a complex rather than episodic plot is Oliver Twist, and the coincidences by which the tale advances are notorious. Forster remarked that the novel was "simply but well constructed," but most readers have probably agreed with Wilkie Collins, who wrote in the margin of his copy of Forster, ‘Nonsense! The one defect of this marvellous book is the helplessly bad construction of the story.’ The novel shows in an acute form many of the problems with coincidence that Dickens tried to resolve, but it also suggests the directions the solutions would take… Steven Marcus, it is true, defended these coincidences on the grounds that they are ‘of too cosmic an order to belong to the category of the fortuitous’ and have the effect of circumscribing the world of the novel.' They have, he suggested, the intensity, as well as the implausibility or arbitrariness, of nightmare … the delight in coincidence shared by author, characters, and readers is protected, ultimately, by the power of the plot to make meanings. Without that power, which we have seen Dickens gradually acquiring, coincidence may suggest random, shapeless confusion and so evoke only anxiety”
Forsyth, Neil. “Wonderful Chains: Dickens and Coincidence.” Modern Philology 83, no. 2 (1985): 151–65.
Writing Prompts
Opinion
Mealtimes in the boardinghouse were short but there was plenty of food and companionship. Compare and contrast Lyddie’s mealtime experience in the boardinghouse with lunchtime at school, or a meal with family. Provide specific examples from the text.
Informative/explanatory
What parallels does Lyddie draw between her life and the first reading she hears from the book Oliver Twist, a novel by Charles Dickens? Provide specific examples from the text.
Narrative
Describe the physical toll that working in the mill had on Lyddie’s body. If you were working alongside Lyddie, how would you have reacted to the working conditions that she describes? Provide reasons that are supported by facts and details.
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Last updated: December 10, 2024