ABSTRACT
The mission of the Women’s Trade Union League could be made visible to middle-class women through novels. Marie Van Vorst, an upper-class female reformer, was just one of those undercover social investigators who dedicated herself to the cause of women’s and children’s labor. Much was written about women’s labor during the Progressive Era, in both nonfiction and fiction, and women novelists worked on the fiction front to persuade their middle-class female audiences to support working women. Working for fourteen hours a day under unbearable conditions, Amanda attracts the attention of Mrs. Grismore, the mill owner’s independently wealthy wife. The narrator believes that the “poor white-trash is not an excitable race; it is slow, indolent. The experiences of life as civilization means life is so new to the forest-born that their attitude is one of startled surprise, timidity, and expectation.”.
