Visual Source 17.3
Outside the Factory
For many men and women, the modern factory represented their primary experience of the Industrial Revolution. Certainly, the human impact of factory labor was a central feature in the debate about this massive transformation of economic life. Visual Source 17.3, an 1874 painting by English artist Eyre Crowe, shows a number of young women factory workers during their dinner hour outside the cotton textile mill in the industrial town of Wigan.
Question
How do you respond to Crowe’s painting? Do you think it was an honest portrayal of factory life for women? What might be missing?
Question
Why do you think Crowe set this scene outside the factory rather than within it?
Question
Notice the details of the painting—the young women’s relationship to one another, the hairnets on their heads, their clothing, their activities during this break from work. What marks them as working-class women? What impression of factory life did Crowe seek to convey? Was he trying to highlight or minimize the class differences of industrial Britain?
Question
Notice the small male figure in a dark coat and carrying a cane, perhaps the owner of the mill. If so, how would you imagine his relationship to the young women?