Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" is a short story by Herman Melville first published in 1853. The narrative, set in a Wall Street law office in New York City, follows an unnamed narrator and his employee, Bartleby, whose passive resistance and repeated statement "I would prefer not to" produce moral, legal, and existential dilemmas. The work intersects with contemporary debates represented by figures and institutions such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, The New Yorker, Putnam's Magazine, and later critics including D. H. Lawrence and Harold Bloom.

Plot

An unnamed lawyer, a practitioner of chancery and conveyancing in Wall Street, hires Bartleby as a scrivener to copy legal documents for clients like firms resembling Gordon, Hetherington & Co. and figures akin to partners in offices such as those in Broad Street and Chambers Street. Initially diligent like staff patterned on characters from The Bible and civic institutions such as St. Paul's Chapel, Bartleby soon refuses specific tasks. When asked to proofread or look at evidence, Bartleby replies with the now-famous phrase; comparisons arise to passive resistance leaders like Henry David Thoreau and movements led by Mahatma Gandhi though Melville predates Gandhi. The narrator relocates offices to avoid Bartleby, who remains in the old premises and later lodges in the Southern District's cells after being removed, intertwining with institutions like the New York Almshouse and Tombs before Bartleby's death in custody.

Characters

The principal figures include the unnamed narrator, a proprietor-lawyer figure who admires systems exemplified by John Marshall and bureaucracies akin to New York Stock Exchange clerks; Bartleby, a former employee of a counting-house possibly linked by implication to institutions such as the Dead Letter Office and resembling clerks in narratives by Charles Dickens; Turkey and Nippers, two other scriveners, whose temperaments echo stock characters in George Eliot and William Makepeace Thackeray; and Ginger Nut, a boy errands-runner recalling youthful figures in Harper's Magazine sketches. Secondary presences gesture toward legal and civic entities including Chancery Court, Supreme Court of New York, clerical traditions from Harvard College, and social settings like boardinghouses near Bowery and Five Points.

Themes and interpretations

Scholars have read the story through multiple lenses anchored in debates involving figures such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Max Weber. Readings emphasize alienation and labor in the spirit of Adam Smith and industrial critiques associated with Charles Dickens; existential isolation and interiority linked to Søren Kierkegaard and Arthur Schopenhauer; ethical responsibility and charity in conversation with Immanuel Kant and John Locke; and legal-ethical dilemmas resonant with cases from Common law and commentary by jurists like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. Psychoanalytic critics invoke concepts forwarded by Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein to explain Bartleby's passivity, while political readings track antecedents in Utopian socialism debates involving Robert Owen and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Literary modernists and postmodernists from T. S. Eliot to Jacques Derrida have found in Melville a precursor to techniques later evident in Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett.

Composition and publication history

Melville wrote the story during a prolific period that also produced works such as Moby-Dick and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities; contemporaneous correspondence with Elizabeth Knapp and Herman Melville's publisher reveal anxieties about reception akin to those faced by Nathaniel Hawthorne after Mosses from an Old Manse. "Bartleby" first appeared anonymously in Putnam's Monthly Magazine and was later collected in the volume "The Piazza Tales," issued by publishers associated with G. P. Putnam and edited in the milieu of antebellum American letters that included contributions from Ralph Waldo Emerson and reviews in periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly. Drafts and manuscripts studied at repositories like the Houghton Library and The New York Public Library show revisions influenced by Melville's engagement with legal reports and archival materials related to the United States Post Office's Dead Letter Office.

Critical reception and influence

Initial reception ranged from praise by some contemporaries such as Henry James to ambivalence in reviews in The Nation and The North American Review. During the early 20th century, critics like D. H. Lawrence and F. O. Matthiessen reevaluated Melville, while mid-century scholars such as Newton Arvin and Raymond Weaver cemented the story's canonical status. "Bartleby" has influenced a wide array of writers and artists from Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett to Thomas Bernhard, and has been adapted in films associated with directors like Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme, stage productions in venues such as Royal Court Theatre, and operatic settings presented by companies like Glyndebourne. The tale informs theoretical debates in New Criticism, Structuralism, and Post-structuralism and appears in curricula at Columbia University, Oxford University, and Harvard University; it continues to animate scholarship in journals tied to Modern Language Association conferences and monographs published by presses including Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press.

Category:Short stories by Herman Melville