Hungerstone

In Hungerstone, Kat Dunn dismantles the artificial separation between the domestic and industrial spheres, arguing that the patriarchal oppression Lenore endures and the class exploitation at Henry’s factory are two expressions of the same violent, consumptive system. Henry’s power is predicated on his ability to control and devalue both his wife and his workers, treating them as resources to be managed or discarded in his quest for status and wealth. 

The parallel between Lenore’s marital subjugation and the factory workers’ exploitation is established through Henry’s consistent dehumanization of those under his control. Early in their marriage, he praises Lenore by telling her she is “more like a man emotionally” (16), framing her lack of “hysterical” feeling as her primary asset. This backhanded compliment attributes her value to her utility and lack of inconvenient demands. This same cold logic governs the Ajax Works, where workers’ bodies are expendable. After a horrific accident maims a grinder, Henry’s only concern is the financial liability, which he dismisses by callously denying the man’s family any compensation. Whether it is a wife’s emotional life or a worker’s physical body, Henry sees others in terms of their function and cost, stripping them of their humanity to maintain his authority.

This system of exploitation is reinforced by the combined power of the state and capital. Henry’s ambition is bolstered by a social structure designed to protect men like him. When his fraudulent compensation scheme is threatened by journalists, he allies with Cora’s father, a minister in the Home Office, to suppress the investigation and discredit the workers. This alliance reveals how the patriarchal family structure, industrial capital, and state power work in concert to protect the interests of the ruling class. Henry’s control over women like Lenore and Cora is directly linked to his ability to crush dissent from his workers, showing that the business world and the domestic sphere are both sites of the same brutal power struggle.

Ultimately, Lenore recognizes that her miserable marriage is a reflection of the public violence Henry enacts. She understands their union as a transactional contract, his “new money for [her] old blood” (250), a cold exchange that mirrors the relationship between employer and employees at the factory. When she discovers Henry is poisoning her to replace her with Cora, she sees the final, brutal logic of this system: Wives, like workers, are interchangeable and disposable assets. Her violent rebellion at the novel’s end is a blow against the entire oppressive structure Henry represents. By killing him, she liberates herself from a system that sought to consume her, just as it consumed the lives of the men at the Ajax Works. Through Lenore’s struggle for liberation from Henry, Dunn calls on her readers to recognize the intertwined injustices of sexism and classism.