Bartleby, the Scrivener

"Bartleby" redirects here. For other uses, see Bartleby (disambiguation).
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"
Author Herman Melville
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Short story
Publisher Putnam's Magazine
Publication date November 1853

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who—after an initial bout of hard work—refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to". The lawyer cannot bring himself to remove Bartleby from his premises, and decides instead to move his office, but the new proprietor removes Bartleby to prison, where he perishes.

Numerous essays have been published on what, according to scholar Robert Milder, "is unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.[1]

Plot

The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable business, already employs two scriveners to copy legal documents by hand, Nippers and Turkey. An increase in business leads him to advertise for a third, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the irascible temperaments of the other two.

At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work. But one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: "I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the lawyer and to the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks and eventually none, instead staring for long periods of time at a brick wall just outside one of the office's windows. The narrator makes several futile attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him; when he stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby has started living there.

Tension builds as business associates wonder why Bartleby is always there. Sensing the threat to his reputation but emotionally unable to evict Bartleby, the narrator moves his business out. Soon the new tenants come to ask for help in removing Bartleby, who now sits on the stairs all day and sleeps in the building's doorway at night. The narrator visits him and attempts to reason with him, and surprises even himself by inviting Bartleby to come live with him, but Bartleby declines the offer. Later the narrator returns to find that Bartleby has been forcibly removed and imprisoned in the Tombs. Finding Bartleby glummer than usual during a visit, the narrator bribes a turnkey to make sure he gets enough food. When he returns a few days later Bartleby has died of starvation, having preferred not to eat.

Some time afterwards, the narrator hears a rumor that Bartleby had worked in a dead letter office and reflects that dead letters would have made anyone of Bartleby's temperament sink into an even darker gloom. The story closes with the narrator's resigned and pained sigh, "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!".

Composition

Melville's major source for the story was an advertisement for a new book, The Lawyer's Story, printed in both the Tribune and the Times for 18 February 1853. The book was published anonymously later that year but in fact was written by popular novelist James A. Maitland.[2] This advertisement included the complete first chapter, which had the following opening sentence: "In the summer of 1843, having an extraordinary quantity of deeds to copy, I engaged, temporarily, an extra copying clerk, who interested me considerably, in consequence of his modest, quiet, gentlemanly demeanor, and his intense application to his duties." Biographer Parker points out that nothing else in the chapter besides this "remarkably evocative sentence" was "notable".[3] Critic Andrew Knighton notes the debt of the story to an obscure work from 1846, Robert Grant White's "Law and Laziness: or, Students at Law of Leisure." This source contains one scene and many characters — including an idle scrivener — that appear to have influenced Melville's narrative.[4]

Melville may have written the story as an emotional response to the bad reviews garnered by Pierre, his preceding novel.[5] Christopher Sten suggests that Melville found inspiration in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays, particularly "The Transcendentalist" which shows parallels to "Bartleby".[6]

Autobiographical interpretations

Bartleby is a scrivener—a kind of clerk or a copyist—"who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him". During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby may represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is "about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions".[7] Bartleby may also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.[8]

Melville made an allusion to the John C. Colt case in this short story. The narrator restrains his anger toward Bartleby, his unrelentingly difficult employee, by reflecting upon "the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams [...] was unawares hurled into his fatal act".[9][10]

Analysis

Bartleby's character can be read in a variety of ways. Based on the perception of the narrator and the limited details supplied in the story, his character remains elusive even as the story comes to a close.

As an example of clinical depression

Bartleby shows classic symptoms of depression, especially his lack of motivation. He is a passive person, although he is the only reliable worker in the office other than the narrator and Ginger Nut. Bartleby is a good worker until he starts to refuse to do his work. Bartleby does not divulge any personal information to the narrator. Bartleby's death suggests the effects of depression—having no motivation to survive, he refrains from eating until he dies.[11]

As a reflection of the narrator

Bartleby's character can be interpreted as a "psychological double" for the narrator that criticizes the "sterility, impersonality, and mechanical adjustments of the world which the lawyer inhabits".[12] Until the very end of the short story, the work gives the reader no history of Bartleby. This lack of history suggests that Bartleby may have just sprung from the narrator's mind. Also consider the narrator's behavior around Bartleby: screening him off in a corner where he can have his privacy "symbolizes the lawyer's compartmentalization of the unconscious forces which Bartleby represents".[12]

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas insists the story is more about the narrator than the narrated. "The narrator's willingness to tolerate [Bartleby's] work stoppage is what needs to be explained [...]. As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful."[13]

Analysis of the narrator

The narrator, Bartleby's employer, provides a first-person narration of his experiences working with Bartleby. He portrays himself as a generous man, although there are instances in the text that question his reliability. His kindness may be derived from his curiosity and fascination for Bartleby. Moreover, once Bartleby's work ethic begins to decline, the narrator still allows his employment to continue, perhaps out of a desire to avoid confrontation. He also portrays himself as tolerant towards the other employees, Turkey and Nippers, who are unproductive at different points in the day; however, this simply re-introduces the narrator's non-confrontational nature. Throughout the story, the narrator is torn between his feelings of responsibility for Bartleby and his desire to be rid of the threat that Bartleby poses to the office and to his way of life on Wall Street. Ultimately, the story may be more about the narrator than Bartleby, not only because the narrator attempts to understand Bartleby's behavior, but also because of the rationales he provides for his interactions with and reactions to Bartleby. The narrator's detached attitude, towards life in general, and his compatriots in particular, seems to become increasingly compromised as the story goes on through his emotional and moral entanglement with Bartleby, culminating in the story's pivotal final line "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"

Philosophy in "Bartleby"

Various philosophical influences can be found in "Bartleby the Scrivener". The story alludes to Jonathan Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"; and Jay Leyda, in his introduction to The Complete Stories of Herman Melville, comments on the similarities between Bartleby and The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity by Joseph Priestley. Both Edwards and Priestley wrote about free will and determinism. Edwards states that free will requires the will to be isolated from the moment of decision. Bartleby's isolation from the world allows him to be completely free. He has the ability to do whatever he pleases. The reference to Priestley and Edwards in connection with determinism may suggest that Bartleby's exceptional exercise of his personal will, even though it leads to his death, spares him from an externally determined fate.[14]

"Bartleby" is also seen as an inquiry into ethics. Critic John Matteson sees the story (and other Melville works) as explorations of the changing meaning of 19th-century "prudence". The story's narrator "struggles to decide whether his ethics will be governed by worldly prudence or Christian agape".[15] He wants to be humane, as shown by his accommodations of the four staff and especially of Bartleby, but this conflicts with the newer, pragmatic and economically based notion of prudence supported by changing legal theory. The 1850 case Brown v. Kendall, three years before the story's publication, was important in establishing the "reasonable man" standard in the United States, and emphasized the positive action required to avoid negligence. Bartleby's passivity has no place in a legal and economic system that increasingly sides with the "reasonable" and economically active individual. His fate, an innocent decline into unemployment, prison and starvation, dramatizes the effect of the new prudence on the economically inactive members of society.

Themes

Bartleby the Scrivener explores the theme of isolation in American life and the workplace through actual physical loneliness and mental loneliness. Although all of the characters at the office are related by being co-workers, Bartleby is the only one whose name is known to us and seems serious, as the rest of characters have odd nicknames, such as "Nippers" or "Turkey", this excludes him from being normal in the workplace. Bartleby's former job was at the "Dead Letter Office" that received mail with nowhere to go, representing the isolation of communication that Bartleby had at both places of work, being that he was given a separate work area for himself at the lawyer's office. Bartleby never leaves the office, but repeats what he does all day long, copying, staring, and repeating his famous words of "I would prefer not to", leading readers to have another image of the repetition that leads to isolation on Wall Street and the American workplace.[16]

Rebellion and rejection are also expressed themes in this story. Bartleby refuses to conform to the normal ways of the people around him and instead, simply just doesn't complete his tasks requested by his boss. He does not make any request for changes in the workplace, but just continues to be passive to the work happening around him.[16] Just as public rejects changes from a normal routine, this rebellious style by Bartleby causes his co-workers to reject him as he is not behaving the same as the rest of the work place environment. The narrator tries multiple tactics to get Bartleby to conform to the standards of the workplace, and ultimately realizes that Bartleby's mental state is not that of normal society. Although the narrator sees Bartleby as a harmless person, the narrator refuses to engage in the same peculiar rhythm that Bartleby is stuck in.[17]

Publication history

The story was first published anonymously as "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" in two installments in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, in November and December 1853.[18] It was included in The Piazza Tales, published in by Dix & Edwards in the United States in May 1856 and in Britain in June.[19]

Reception

Though no great success at the time of publication, "Bartleby the Scrivener" is now among the most noted of American short stories. It has been considered a precursor of absurdist literature, touching on several of Franz Kafka's themes in such works as "A Hunger Artist" and The Trial. There is nothing to indicate that the Bohemian writer was at all acquainted with the work of Melville, who remained largely forgotten until some time after Kafka's death.

Albert Camus, in a personal letter to Liselotte Dieckmann published in The French Review in 1998, cites Melville as a key influence.[20]

Adaptations

Passing references

References

  1. ↑ Milder, Robert. (1988). "Herman Melville." Emory Elliott (General Editor), Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05812-8, p. 439
  2. ↑ Bergmann, Johannes Dietrich (November 1975). ""Bartleby" and The Lawyer's Story". American Literature. 47 (3): 432–436.
  3. ↑ Parker (2002), 150. The opening sentence of the source is quoted there as well
  4. ↑ Knighton, Andrew. "The Bartleby Industry and Bartleby's Idleness." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 53 (2007): 191-192.
  5. ↑ Daniel A. Wells, ""Bartleby the Scrivener," Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle", ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 21 (First Quarter 1975): 35–39. Archived March 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Christopher W. Sten, "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." Modern Language Quarterly 35 (March 1974): 30–44.
  7. ↑ Leo Marx, "Melville's Parable of the Walls" Sewanee Review 61 (1953): 602–627. Archived August 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ↑ "Compassion: Toward Neighbors". What We So Proudly Hail. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Melville, Herman (1853). Bartleby the Scrivener.
  10. ↑ Schechter, Harold (2010). Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend. Random House. ISBN 978-0-345-47681-4.
  11. ↑ Robert E. Abrams, '"Bartleby" and the Fragile Pageantry of the Ego", ELH, vol. 45, no. 3 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 488–500.
  12. 1 2 Mordecai Marcus, "Melville's Bartleby As a Psychological Double", College English 23 (1962): 365–368. Archived January 7, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ↑ "Pushing Paper – Lapham's Quarterly". Laphamsquarterly.org. Archived from the original on 2012-05-29. Retrieved 2012-09-04.
  14. ↑ Allan Moore Emery, "The alternatives of Melville's "Bartleby", Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 31, no. 2 (September 1976), pp. 170–187.
  15. ↑ Matteson, John (2008). "'A New Race Has Sprung Up': Prudence, Social Consensus and the Law in 'Bartleby the Scrivener'". Leviathan. 10 (1): 25–49 – via Project MUSE. (subscription required (help)).
  16. 1 2 "Barlteby the Scrivner: Theme Analysis | Novelguide". Novelguide. Retrieved 2015-12-05.
  17. ↑ Walser, Hannah (2015). The Behaviorist Character: Action without Consciousness in Melville's "Bartleby". Department of English, Stanford University. pp. 312–332.
  18. ↑ Sealts (1987), 572.
  19. ↑ Sealts (1987), 497.
  20. ↑ Jones, James F. (March 1998). "Camus on Kafka and Melville: an unpublished letter". The French Review. 71 (4). doi:10.2307/398858. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  21. ↑ Stanley Hochman (ed.), "Albee, Edward", in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama: An International Reference Work in 5 Volumes, 2nd. ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984, vol. 2, p. 42.
  22. ↑ "Britannica Classic: Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2012-09-04.
  23. ↑ http://www.bartleby.com/sv/welcome.html
  24. ↑ "Le spectacle de Daniel Pennac au coeur d'un documentaire télévisuel vendredi soir – La Voix du Nord". Lavoixdunord.fr. Retrieved 2012-09-04.

Sources

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