"Reactions to Bartleby's" formula - A reading of text and critics

Contents

Introduction

1. General overview about Melville and his short novels

2. Bartleby
2.1 Bartleby: Context and sequence of events
2.2 Bartleby’s formula
2.3 The clerks’ reactions to his formula
2.4 The lawyer’s reaction to his formula
2.5 Other people’s reactions

3. Critics
3.1 Bartleby: Christlike? Biblical phrases and connotations in the text
3.2 “Parable of the Walls”?
3.3 Other Interpretations

Conclusion. Bartleby in today’s world?

Selected Bibliography, Sources

Introduction

Almost everyone has heard of the novel “Moby Dick”. Less people though know that it was Herman Melville who wrote the world famous best-seller. Yet even less people can name other books and stories written by the American.

One important story cycle he published in 1856 is called “The Piazza Tales” and it includes the short novels “Bartleby, The Scrivener”, “Billy Budd” and “Benito Cerone”.

This paper deals with the first one.

In the process of my work I will try to present a short overview about the story and give a brief summary. Nevertheless it is assumed that the reader of this paper is already familiar with the text.

I will focus on the formula “I prefer not to” which Bartleby frequently uses as his only way to communicate with his environment.

In a first step I will examine the influence that the usage of this formula has on the lawyer. Furthermore I will present the reactions of the office clerks and of other people to this phrase.

The second part of this paper then is devoted to the opinions and interpretations of famous Melville critics who put the weight of their argumentation on very contradictory points. This criticism is essential in order to understand the story. In traditional forms Bartleby is “unreadable”. The text becomes meaningful, framed and structured only by taking account of the according criticism.

Of course, there are many and very different ways to criticize the story. I though think that dealing with the famous phrase is the form of interpretation that is closest to the text and therefore the most easily to follow.

With all these critical views and opinions, including my own argumentation, I will show that Bartleby never had a chance to survive. His chosen style of living just did not fit into the world back in these days. Does it today?

I will come back to this thesis in the end and try to find an answer.

1. General overview about Melville and his short novels

Herman Melville was born in 1819 into a socially connected New York family.^[1]

Soon after the death of his father in 1832 he had to earn money for his family. He worked as a clerk and started writing, nevertheless had to focus on his jobs primarily. In 1839 he shipped out as a cabin boy on a merchant ship sailing to Liverpool. He abandoned the sea only shortly in order to look for other jobs, though not finding any he returned to the water on a whaler sailing on a voyage through the South Seas in 1841. His adventures in French Polynesia became subject of his first novel “Typee” (1846). He spent three years on various ships, whalers and military frigates until he returned to the East Coast, to Boston, in October 1844. Melville started to write down his memories and published his first books. “Moby Dick”, his most famous work, was finally published in London in October 1851 and a month later in America, but it brought its author neither acclaim nor reward.

As I mentioned in the introduction “Bartleby, The Scrivener” is one part of the story collection “The Piazza Tales”, Melville published in 1856.

“Bartleby” however already appeared three years earlier in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine with the subtitle “A Story of Wall Street”.

“By 1853 Melville had published seven books (including Moby Dick), but “Bartleby”, published late in that year, was his first attempt at a short story.”^[2]

Soon after finishing “The Piazza Tales” Melville turned away from fiction and started to compose only poetry. Nearing his death in 1891 he eventually returned to story-telling and wrote his classic “Billy Budd”.^[3]

2. Bartleby

2.1 Bartleby: Context and Sequence of Events

“Bartleby, The Scrivener” is a story about a young man who fails to integrate into 19th century Wall Street life and business and eventually has to die because his way of living is not adequate and completely alien to the people.

The story is told by Bartleby’s employer, a Wall Street lawyer, giving the details of the scrivener’s life in the 1st person point of view.

The narrator, whose name we never get to know, describes himself as a lawyer with an office in Wall Street. He has recently moved into this new office and his business is going quite well, nevertheless he is not very ambitious or eager to reach new levels. He is quite satisfied with the way his life is going.

Three clerks are working for him: Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut who mainly copy legal papers. Due to a lot of work the lawyer decides to hire a new scrivener and Bartleby becomes his new employee.

In the beginning the new scrivener starts to work very fast, but also silently, palely and mechanically.^[4] After a while when Bartleby is asked to assist the other clerks in examining and comparing copies, an important task for a scrivener, Bartleby refuses to do so and just responds: “I would prefer not to.”^[5]

Since the lawyer does not have time to think more about the situation he just ignores the incident and continues with his business. Only when this occurrence repeats itself a couple of times the lawyer starts to ponder about Bartleby and his strange behaviour.

He notices that his newest scrivener is always the first in the office in the morning and the last to go at nights and when he finally enters his office unusually on a Sunday morning he has to realize that Bartleby has lived and slept in the office for quite a while. He asks his employee to explain this strange situation and also inquires about Bartleby’s family and his background. The clerk though prefers not to answer as always.

Over the following days Bartleby even stops copying at all and the lawyer eventually settles to get rid of him. He tells him to leave within six days but Bartleby prefers to stay.

His employer is stunned and has no idea what to do next until he decides to change his workplace, if Bartleby does not want to leave this place. So he moves, together with his other employees, to a new office. Bartleby stays in the old and now completely empty bureau.

After a couple of days though the scrivener’s influence catches the lawyer again when the new lodgers start to complain about Bartleby who seems to live in the hall way.

The lawyer returns to his old building and tries to persuade Bartleby to leave, even offering him money and inviting him to his own home. The scrivener responds that he does not want to make any changes at all and remains where he is.

A few days later Bartleby is eventually taken to jail. The lawyer visits him in the tombs and takes care of his well-being but when he returns some days later he finds Bartleby dead lying under a tree with open eyes.

In a metafictional way Melville attaches a coda at the end of the story. The narrator informs the reader that he received new information about the scrivener. Bartleby used to work in the Dead Letter Office in Washington D.C. before he started to work for the lawyer.

2.2 Bartleby’s Formula

“I prefer not to.“

This phrase can be taken as the actual protagonist of the story. Bartleby is completely reduced to this sentence and all that follows is caused by these words.

From the first utterance of “I prefer not to” on page ten all actions and answers Bartleby gives are defined and underlined by this expression. Sometimes he repeats with longer sentences, but their only content is “I would prefer not to”: “At present I would prefer to give no answer”^[6], “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable”^[7], “I would prefer not to quit you”^[8].

Usually though Bartleby simply repeats the sole phrase in order to communicate with his environment.

In the beginning he just refuses to compare copies, a fact the lawyer does not take too much of an interest in. Nevertheless from the beginning onwards the narrator can never find a reason for Bartleby’s strange behaviour. He tries to search for reasons, believes that Bartleby’s bad eyes might be the cause, maybe his family background, but his scrivener prefers not to tell him the reason.

“Why do you refuse? - I would prefer not to.”^[9]

After a while Bartleby responds to even the slightest favour he could do to the lawyer with his phrase. He is asked to go to the post office, or just simply to go to the next room to call for an other scrivener who can do his work. But Bartleby repeats his well known words.^[10]

The entire situation gets more complicated when the lawyer discovers that his employee has lived in his bureau for a while. He starts to feel sympathy with Bartleby and he feels sorry for him, having to live in an office building that is completely empty and dark after business hours. He also starts to inquire about Bartleby’s heritage and his family, though his scrivener refuses to answer.

[...]

^[1] Biographical information from (2) and: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/bb/hm_bio.html

^[2] This and all subsequent quotations in the paper refer to:

McCall, Dan [ed]. “Melville’s Short Novels” Norton and Company, New York; London: 2002, this specific quote: p. VII (preface)

^[3] p. VII (preface)

^[4] cf. p.10

^[5] p.10

^[6] p.20

^[7] p.20

^[8] p.25

^[9] p.12

^[10] cf.p.15