Letters of Mary Paul

Through her letter, Mary Paul describes her life in the mills and her all around experience in Lowell. Her first letter was to her father. In this letter Mary pleads with her father to let her go to Lowell. The tone of the letter was eager and excited. She gave him several reasons, she could help out with the mortgage, she could buy her own clothes, and there would be one less mouth to feed around the house. Her second letter was also to her father. In this letter she tells him how she has become lonely there and is very homesick. She begs him to have other people write letters to her and to have Julius visit her if he is in town. The tone of the letter is she is lonely and homesick. In her third letter she mentions that a lot of injuries have happened lately at the mill. The tone of this letter is excited, but she may also be scared. Mary seems excited because she says "I think that the factory is the best place for me and if any  girl wants employment I advise them to come to Lowell." What makes her seem nervous though is the fact that she brought up all the injuries. Maybe she was trying to make her father fear for her and send her home. In her fourth letter to her father she begins to be worried.  her pay is beginning to be cut and she won't be able to send as much money home. She also is being told that she is "growing very poor"  health wise at least. The long hours have started to take a toll on her. Her tone in this letter is nervous and anxious. She feels this way because she doesn't know if there is going to be a pay cut or not. In the 5th letter she wrote to her father she talks about how she lost her job and is looking for a new position. She lost her job because she became very ill and had to take six months off from work. During hat time she  went back to her dads farm to heal. Getting a new position wasn't easy. Mary tried several times and was about to give up her job search but then got her old job back. The tone of this letter is negative. She says she ". I do not like here very well and am very sure I never shall". In her final letter (6) she summarizes her experience in Lowell. She talks about how it was kind of a let down. She worked so hard yet was payed so little.

Her experiences change a lot throughout her letters. At first she is getting everything she is promised.As days go on though she realizes that she misses everyone and has no time to see any of them because she has to work. Plus the only person she is talking with via mail is her father. As Mary's time their goes on at the mill her time gets worse and worse. Mary's experience represents a failure of "the Lowell experiment" because a young healthy farm girl is withered down into such a state she wasn't able to work anymore and was forced to go home to rest and regain her strength. In some peoples eyes her experience might seem good because many people that lived in Lowell had equally bad or even worse experiences than Mary, but all in all the experiment was a failure in Mary's case.   

Picture From http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20103/outline%2011%20umf%20103_06.htm
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