A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 11
of Bartleby ’ s existential recognition as the “ walled - in lawyer ” cannot see himself as
associated with “ the walls of gloom ” (449). While Bartleby represents people who see
“ the larger isolation of man and frequent futility of his endeavours ” (448), to Widmer
the narrator represents the liberal American as “ the blandly benevolent rationalist ”
(448). Such a man cannot deal with cosmic irrationality and recoils from
“
more
ominous and nihilistic truths about the universe
”
(453). Widmer dismisses the
42
Steven T. Ryan
narrator ’ s fi nal exclamation as “ a last sentimental gesture of the representative Ameri-
can confronted with the violation of his faith ” (457).
Widmer presents his existential perspective as an opposition to the Marxist or more
generally anti - capitalist view of the story. He dismisses such perspectives as inade-
quate in dealing with the story ’ s complexity. According to Widmer, Melville ’ s Wall
Street works well as a “ metaphysical metaphor of confi nement and of barriers to
understanding ” but does not work as a propagandistic expression of abusive fi nancial
“ power and manipulation ” (447). Since Bartleby is indifferent to wealth, Widmer
concludes that the story fails to target American capitalism and commercialism
(446 – 7). Widmer ’ s dismissal of a socioeconomic interpretation of “ Bartleby ” is only
a more extreme expression of Leo Marx ’ s argument that although “ Bartleby ’ s state of
mind may be understood as a response to the hostile world of Wall Street ” (Marx
619), “ Melville does not exonerate the writer by placing all the onus upon society ”
(620). Both in Leo Marx ’ s 1953 context and Widmer ’ s 1969 context the underlying
implication of an anti - socioeconomic interpretation expresses opposition to Marxist
critics, fi rst the popular Marxist criticism of the 1930s opposed by the original New
Critics and later the resurgence of Marxist criticism during the cultural revolutions
of the 1960s. Of course, an existential interpretation need not dismiss a socioeconomic
interpretation (no surprise to Jean - Paul Sartre), but one can easily understand the
either/or logic that would see within Bartleby ’ s dead - wall revery either a recognition
of the cosmic void (death, isolation, epistemological limitations, or the limits of love)
or a confrontation with Wall Street as the ascending power of modern capitalism. Leo
Marx ’ s argument is that Bartleby errs in extending his interpretation of the wall from
the socioeconomic to the existential: “ What ultimately killed this writer was not the
walls themselves, but the fact that he confused the walls built by men with the wall
of human mortality ” (622). However, few critics thereafter have been willing to argue
that the story ’ s meaning derives from Bartleby ’ s misinterpretation of the walls. Since
1970, most criticism argues that whatever Bartleby sees in the walls is real and extends
beyond the vision of the narrator.
Although both Leo Marx and Widmer respond to or anticipate a Marxist interpre-
tation of “ Bartleby, ” the fi rst developed Marxist view does not appear until Louise K.
Barnett ’ s article in 1974 . However, since Bartleby lacks proletarian consciousness,
Barnett sees him as the “ alienated worker who, realizing that his work is meaningless
and without a future, can only protest his humanity by a negative assertion ” (Barnett
379). According to Barnett, Bartleby sees the natural world as “ equally constrained
in the Tombs and on Wall Street ” as the “ man - made wall is omnipresent ” (384). This
may seem similar to Leo Marx until we see how Barnett reverses Marx ’ s interpretation
of the redemptive blades of grass by arguing that when Bartleby is imprisoned and
still in his dead - wall revery, “ the narrator can patronize him once more and encourage
him to make the best of it ” (384).
James C. Wilson extends the Marxist argument in
1981
and, in so doing,
clarifi es the way in which the Marxist argument is likely to oppose the existential
interpretations. According to Wilson, the narrator “ exposes Wall Street and its new
“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
43
religion of materialism, of which he and John Jacob Astor are members of a kind of
priestly caste ” (Wilson 338). Within the story, “ this new religion posits money as
its only value ” (338). Thus, Bartleby ’ s alienation and dehumanization result from
the
“
prison of his socioeconomic system
”
(340). From an opposing perspective,
Wilson, like Leo Marx, emphasizes the limitations of Bartleby ’ s vision as he argues
that Bartleby fails to make a connection “ between his own individual alienation and
the class alienation of the propertyless worker ” (340). One might initially look at
this statement and assume that Wilson has reached the same point as Leo Marx.
However, the important distinction is that Leo Marx
’
s Bartleby goes too far in
giving meaning to the wall whereas Wilson
’
s Bartleby does not go far enough.
Whereas Marx ’ s Bartleby makes the artist ’ s mistake of extending his personal situa-
tion into “ metaphysical problems which seem to be timeless concomitants of the
condition of man ” (Marx 619), Wilson ’ s Bartleby lacks the capacity to connect his
personal state and class struggle (Wilson 340). In both cases, Bartleby ends in
despair, but the fi rst is the isolated, egocentric artist while the second is the iso-
lated, uninformed worker.
Naomi C. Reed summarizes a primary direction of “ Bartleby ” criticism in the
past twenty years as she notes the movement of Marxist criticism from a
“
more
thematic approach, which presents the story as illustrative of Marxist concepts, to
rigorously historicist readings
”
(Reed 248). Since there is
“
no real evidence that
Melville was familiar with Marx ’ s writings at the time he composed ‘ Bartleby ’ , ” the
emphasis of Marxist criticism has shifted to labor disputes in New York at the time
of the story ’ s publication (248). Reed ’ s article (2004) extends the excellent scholar-
ship of writers like David Kuebrich (1996) , Richard R. John (1997) , and Barbara
Foley (2000) in providing a historical context for “ Bartleby ” that reveals Melville ’ s
awareness “ that Wall Street was a hotbed of labor activism ” and that he “ knew of
political debates about the rights of workers ” (Reed 248). It is within this context
that the story has been reevaluated. Kuebrich ’ s article is particularly insightful in
its application of Antonio Gramsci ’ s concept of hegemony to the perspective of the
narrator. According to Kuebrich, the lawyer is “ self - deceived by the moral catego-
ries developed by nineteenth
-
century U.S. Christian culture as it accommodated
itself to capitalism ” (Kuebrich 396). Kuebrich believes that Melville uses the nar-
rat
or to investigate the cultural denial of contradictions between exploitative self -
interest and Christian values (396). Hegemony is thus at the core of the lawyer ’ s
narrative, and the narrator expects his readers to accept that capitalism and
“
its
ideological underpinnings are not subject to question because they are commensu-
rate with the rational or natural ordering of society ” (404). I have elsewhere ana-
lyzed these
“
underpinnings
”
as derivations of the central principles proposed by
Cicero in The Offi ces , thus explaining Bartleby ’ s troubled gazing upon the bust of
Cicero over the narrator ’ s head.
Whether from the existential or Marxist direction, the past forty years have placed
a great deal of emphasis upon the original subtitle, “ A Story of Wall - Street. ” As an
image of philosophical “ blankness ” or a study of socioeconomic systemic abuse, the
44
Steven T. Ryan
world of walls has come to be seen as central to Melville ’ s communication. Critics
gaze upon the wall with Bartleby and typically question the narrator ’ s inability or
unwillingness to do so.
Communication
The one story element that receives as much attention as walls in the study of “ Bar-
tleby ” is communication. We are introduced into the world of those who copy legal
documents. In the epilogue, the narrator offers the rumor that Bartleby previously
worked in the Dead - Letter Offi ce. In the Tombs, the grub - man mistakes Bartleby
for a
“
gentleman forger
”
(
“
They are always pale and genteel
-
like, them forgers
”
[ “ Bartleby ” 670]). Once we consider these references to written documentation, we
next consider the lawyer ’ s narrative as another form of documentation. The fi nal con-
sideration becomes Bartleby ’ s refusal to copy and his reticence versus the narrator ’ s
verbosity. We may then ask ourselves: who communicates more effectively, the nar-
rator or Bartleby? How may more language say less and less language say more? How
may silence become expression and expression become silence?
Early criticism was quick to equate Melville ’ s biography with Bartleby ’ s fate. Par-
ticularly stressed was his reaction to the public reception of Pierre since Melville was
accused of insanity. Details such as the narrator ’ s suspicion that Bartleby ’ s diligence
has caused damage to his eyes tempt the reader to consider the parallel to Melville ’ s
comparable diligence and similar family fears. Biographical encoding to Bartleby as
resistant copyist may occur as an equivalent to Melville ’ s resistance to commercial
writing. Susan Weiner in her 1992 essay takes this parallel to a deeper level that asks
us to consider Melville ’ s reaction to language itself: “ By the time Melville completed
Pierre , he had become profoundly skeptical about the ability of language to penetrate
beneath the surface of appearance and reveal something about the mystery underlying
reality ”
(Weiner 91). Weiner builds upon the post
-
structural perspective of John
Carlos Rowe (1982) and others when she focuses on semiotics and sees “ Bartleby ” as
a story about language and its limitations: “ The act of writing, which is an assertion
of originality in Pierre , has been reduced to copying in ‘ Bartleby. ’ Similarly, the lan-
guage of law has also become so rigid as to inhibit its fl exibility in dealing with the
most pressing confl icts of the period, particularly slavery ” (92). Weiner is appropri-
ately fascinated by the whole concept of “ copy ” from the epistemological doubt that
may question the existence of creativity to the legal underpinnings of culture.
This range is reminiscent of the previously discussed opposition of existential and
Marxist perspectives as it asks us to consider whether the focus is more on the human
condition or the culture. In regard to culture, Weiner examines the law offi ce and the
specifi c work of the narrator as it refl ects upon the larger culture: “ By repetitiously
writing the documents that encoded the laws of ownership or origin, the lawyer
becomes a key element in maintaining the structure of the entire legal framework ”
(104). The problem at this level is the way in which law and language provide the
“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
45
framework for culture: “ the written legal document is the surface expression of a
reality that is decontextualized and refuses to consider any adaptation to special cir-
cumstances of an individual case ” (105). Weiner presents cultural law as a language -
based process through which reality is squeezed into ill - fi tting boxes: “ Exactitude
substantiates truth and the copy comes to stand for the original ” (105). This is a useful
way of approaching the narrator ’ s hegemony as well as offi cially documented law.
Thus the “ copyist ” becomes all who repetitively document or “ force ” a reality and in
so doing create a substitute for “ what landscape painters call ‘ life ’ ” ( “ Bartleby ” 636).
However, a movement from the more sociological to the epistemological occurs
when Weiner questions the human ’ s, including the writer ’ s, dependence upon lan-
guage: “ Melville undermines the whole notion of an abstract truth that can be con-
tained in the fi nite material of language ” (Weiner 105). Therefore, language itself
becomes the ultimate source of deception: “ Language is put to the task of creating
surface illusion to stand for meaning ” (111). One may thus argue that beneath the
actual source of meaning (language) lies meaninglessness or the void. At this point,
the implications of Weiner ’ s argument carry the reader from protest of cultural rigid-
ity to the void that lies beneath – in other words, again from the popular Marxist
argument that Melville exposes the dangerous artifi ces of capitalistic class structure
and ownership (the narrator ’ s offi ce and its production) to the existential realization
that the word (or the wall) is also indicative of the blank/nothingness that underlies
all meaning. Here again the suggestion is not that Bartleby ’ s reticence is a refl ection
of his opposition to oppression and to his inability to see the true meaning that may
lie beneath oppression (Leo Marx ’ s compassion, Wilson ’ s Marxist utopia, Weinstock ’ s
love letter), but rather the possibility that the fi nal silence of the dead - wall revery is
the fi nal truth – death, meaninglessness. In this case, Bartleby ’ s “ language ” of truth
must move toward silence, just as we may assume that the more the narrator speaks/
writes, the less he says. This possibility places Melville closer to Samuel Beckett than
to any writer of his own generation.
B artleby
A casual reading of “ Bartleby ” (or what one usually deals with in the college class-
room) suggests that the fi rst topic to consider in a discussion of the story is Bartleby
himself – who is he and what is wrong with him? If the history of “ Bartleb
y ” criti-
cism teaches us anything, it is the realization that consideration of the character of
Bartleby is better left to a much later phase of analysis. The story ’ s narrator misleads
us into thinking that this is “ A Study of Temperament ” to quote a Kate Chopin
subtitle and that the subject is Bartleby. Ironically, to the extent to which it is a study
of temperament, the subject is the narrator. One can say very little with assurance
about Bartleby ’ s temperament. We know that the narrator knows little about Bartleby
and understands him even less. Bartleby is the cipher that haunts the narrator and
the void within which we all place our separate meanings.
46
Steven T. Ryan
“ Haunting ” is a concept that comes up often in “ Bartleby ” criticism. I once sug-
gested that the story disguises a Gothic structure and that, within that structure, the
narrator is haunted by a ghost – the perfect ghost intended to haunt this particular
man (thus Bartleby ’ s initial diligence and gentlemanly demeanor). The comparison I
used was Poe ’ s “ The Fall of the House of Usher, ” and I still think this is useful if one
is thinking in terms of a fi ctive construct and how characters play roles within such
a construct. For example, if a student should ask why Bartleby will not leave the
narrator ’ s offi ce, I would ask in turn why does not Roderick leave the House of Usher,
and why does not Hester Prynne leave her New England village. Part of the explana-
tion lies within the understanding of a Gothic construct – the haunted house or its
equivalent – which envisions the human edifi ce as inescapable. Bartleby does not leave
for the same reason the narrator shows up at the offi ce on Sunday morning. The Gothic
world is claustrophobic; to be haunted is to fi nd no exit. To the extent to which all
roads are closed, the human is held within a human edifi ce that associates with human
dreams: the House of Usher is patriarchal lineage, her New England village is the
City of God, and the narrator ’ s offi ce is the brave new world of American business.
Nightmare derives from dream; without the dream, there is no true nightmare. Mel-
ville ’ s mastery in “ Bartleby ” can be seen in watching the narrator ’ s world, his “ snug