1. What is the theme or main focus of the film? Explain.
2. Why do the factory girls of Lowell rebel in the mid-1830s? What are the sources of that rebellion?
3. What is the link between the daughters’ resistance and their fathers’ and grandfathers’ experiences? What principle concept connects both examples of resistance?
4. Describe and explain the kind of paternalistic setting the mill girls worked and lived in. How was it different from other work environments of the antebellum era?
5. How—in what specific ways—did the factory experience change Lucy Hall’s earlier perceptions and ideas about rural life and work and the possibilities or opportunities for women outside the home? What new doorways were opened to her as a result of coming to work at Lowell? Explain.
6. Explain what the mill girls mean by the expression: “The oppressing hand of avarice would enslave us.” In what way is this fear connected to black slavery in the South?
7. Why would factory slaves, as Hannah Price argues, be among the first to join in denouncing the institution of slavery and to endorse the Abolitionists’ call for the immediate abolition of slavery in the South?
8. Compare the radicalism of these and other like-minded mill girls to the journeymen artisans’ rebellious spirit during the antebellum era. What did both groups of radicals have in common? Explain.
9. How did this particular film “from the bottom up” help you better understand the plight and conditions of the young mill girls at Lowell and similar planned factory towns? What did you find most interesting and stimulating about their factory lives? Explain.
