“The Welsh Industrial Novel” and Out of this Furnace

As I was reading Williams’ essay “The Welsh Industrial Novel” the elements that comprise his industrial novel reminded me of many of the elements of the novel Out of this Furnace by Thomas Bell. Although an American novel, I found the similarities between Williams’ definition of an industrial novel too great to not discuss. Out of this Furnace is a more recent publication (1976) and is actually a novel about Pittsburgh published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The novel was one I studied not only in high school, but in a Pennsylvania history class in college. It centers around the vastly industrial city that was Pittsburgh during the turn of the century. I first thought of Out of this Furnace as coinciding with Williams’ ideas of the industrial novel when he first begins describing what he sees as such a novel: “The movement towards the industrial novel is then, in this phase, a movement towards describing what it is like to live in hell, and slowly, as the disorder becomes an habitual order, what it is like to get used to it, to group up in it, to see it as home” (214). Out of this Furnace begins and centers around a Slovak immigrant and his life and his family’s life working in the steel mills of Braddock. The story encompasses three generations, and their daily struggles in what can only be described as hell on earth are what made me connect this novel with Williams’ ideas of the industrial novel. These three generations of immigrants literally grow up in the hell Williams’ describes, and become accustomed to it, just as he says.

Williams goes on to discuss what sets an industrial novel apart from realist and natural novels with his conclusion being that the society shown in the novel is vital to the development of its characters; they could not exist without the industrial setting which literally engulfs them (221-222). This is very true of Out of this Furnace. While there are important characters throughout the generations of steel workers what remains central to the story is always the steel mill itself. The steel mill is the most powerful and influential part of the novel. The working steel mill towns and its residents would obviously not exist without the industrial powerhouse that is the steel mill. The family, however, is still very important as Williams tells us (223) and to me it seems that for the industrial novel to exist it must have both the family and the industry, which Out of this Furnace does, and represents brilliantly.