In Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener", the reader is presented with a very visual example of this growing divide. It tells the story of a successful lawyer and one of his scriveners, Bartleby. From the beginning, the two have a strained relationship marked by misunderstanding and isolation from one another. This isolation leads to the famed preference of Bartleby to not do certain tasks and results in a growing and ultimately fatal conflict between these two main protagonists.
The Industrial Revolution undoubtedly changed humanity forever and not only revolutionized the way we produce and sell goods but also reformed social structures and dismantled long-established principles of hierarchy and class. In preindustrial times, one's position in society was mostly predetermined by birth, both physically and economically. Wealth and power were almost exclusively inherited and there was practically no social mobility. However, this changed with the advent of industrialization, as there was a new rising class in society: The capitalists.
Unlike other social classes that existed until then, capitalists where not created by birth, but rather by economic success. The possibility of social mobility and that birth did, in fact, not determine your success in life, was promising for many. This promise sparked many new concepts of society and equality, one of the most famous being the term of the "American Dream". However, this idealistic imagination of capitalism was soon to be disproven, as the growing divide between the two classes, workers and capitalists, became to appear insuperable.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Relevance of Space and Separation as criticism of class divide in Herman Melville's „Bartleby, the Scrivener“
I. Historical context
II.Space and separation as symbols for class divide
3. Conclusion
Works Cited
1 Introduction
The Industrial Revolution undoubtedly changed humanity forever and not only revolutionized the way we produce and sell goods but also reformed social structures and dismantled long-established principles of hierarchy and class. In pre-industrial times, one's position in society was mostly predetermined by birth, both physically and economically. Wealth and power were almost exclusively inherited and there was practically no social mobility. However, this changed with the advent of industrialization, as there was a new rising class in society: The capitalists.
Unlike other social classes that existed until then, capitalists where not created by birth, but rather by economic success. The possibility of social mobility and that birth did, in fact, not determine your success in life, was promising for many. This promise sparked many new concepts of society and equality, one of the most famous being the term of the "American Dream" (Cullen). However, this idealistic imagination of capitalism was soon to be disproven, as the growing divide between the two classes, workers and capitalists, became to appear insuperable.
In Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener", the reader is presented with a very visual example of this growing divide. It tells the story of a successful lawyer and one of his scriveners, Bartleby. From the beginning, the two have a strained relationship marked by misunderstanding and isolation from one another. This isolation leads to the famed preference of Bartleby to not do certain tasks and results in a growing and ultimately fatal conflict between these two main protagonists.
One could therefore argue, that Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" compares two kinds of lives lived on Wall Street, one successful and one fatal, and can be read as a criticism of the growing divide between the upper and lower classes. One of the many ways this criticism is conveyed to the reader, is by the unique role space and separation play in the story. This paper seeks to explore this possible interpretation.
First, I will briefly put the story into a historical context and illustrate, how contemporary events in New York support the following interpretation of the story. Then, I will analyze Melville's work by paying special attention to how the concept of division is represented in the story and if and how the characters seek to overcome their respective positions in society.
I. Historical Context
As hinted in the introduction, a satisfying interpretation of the short story in question as an illustration and subsequent criticism of class divide cannot be made without taking into account contemporary events in both the New Yorker society in general and Melville's personal experiences related to those events.
One contemporary event in New York that stands out as a possible background for the story, are the Astor Place Riots that took place on 10th May 1849. This civil unrest was caused by the rivalry between two popular actors at the time, Edwin Forrest and William Macready, a rivalry which coincidentally went along class lines. While Forrest was largely favored by the working class, Macready was an established actor from England, who was widely admired among the upper class of New York society (Berthold 433).
When Macready was attacked by a group of working class protesters for his affiliation with the upper class, a group of forty-seven upper-class men published a petition a day prior to the unrest , demanding Macready to continue his performances at the theater at Astor Place. Among those signatories was also an upper-class writer named Herman Melville (Berthold 429).
The very John Jacob Astor, a New York entrepreneur, after whom said Astor Place was named shortly after his death in 1848, also gets a prominent mention in Melville's short story:
„The late John Jacob Astor [...] had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion“ (Melville 2)
The fact, that this seemingly random statement, which seems rather disconnected from the rest of the text, comes from the lawyer-narrator, emphasizes the lawyer's deep affection for the upper class, of which he considers himself to be a member. Furthermore, the fact, that the short story chooses to feature such a prominent mention of the namesake of the location of one of the deadliest class riots in New York, at a time, when the event was still vividly remembered by many New Yorkers (Berthold 430), is a symbolism worth interpreting. One possible interpretation may be, that the lawyer not only serves as a representation of a member of the upper class, but rather as a representation of the New York economic elite as a whole and the social problems widely associated with that elite. This interpretation is only strengthened by the fact that Melville himself considered himself to be a member of the New York cultural upper class, but disdained the city's obsession with money. This has also lead some to believe, that Bartleby , the Scrivener may to some extent mirror Melville's belief, that a money-driven society leads to a growing inequality and conflict between the two social classes (Burrows 704).
This class-related interpretation of the characters is further supported by the fact, that the lawyer's employees are, both in their characteristics and appearance, described as stereotypical members of the working class. For example, each of the already employed scriveners are associated with various problems and struggles of the contemporary working class. Turkey, for example, is always wearing ”oily“ (Melville 5) clothes, but cannot afford new ones. He also struggles with an alcohol addiction. All employees dislike their work and struggle to cope with the workload, but, because they are men ”of so small an income“ (Melville 5), cannot afford to leave the job or work less (Ryan 38). They therefore can be seen as a representation of the contemporary working class as a whole. Bartleby's description also fits the typical image of a member of the lower class, as he is introduced to the reader as being „pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn“ (Melville 7).
II. Space and separation as symbols for class divide
Steven Ryan argues in his analysis of Bartleby, the Scrivener, that the various representations of separation in the short story ”constitute a leitmotif“ (41) and that recent discourse has mainly interpreted the symbolism of these physical separations, such as the ”ground glass folding doors“ or the infamous screen between the lawyer and Bartleby, as a form of criticism of capitalistic society. Much of this criticism takes its inspiration from the story's subtitle, A Story of Wall-Street, and, as Ryan states, therefore concludes:
”More recent criticism has seen the wall images more as an expression of Wall Street, thus of capitalistic culture. Since the 1990s, much of the best criticism has focused on the historical context of walls/Wall Street [...], offering sharp insights into the labor struggles of the nineteenth century.“ (41)
While Ryan's argument focuses on the depiction of walls in the story and criticism of capitalism in general, this chapter seeks to apply this argument on three other forms of separation occurring in the story and specifically focusing on their symbolism in regards to class divide and social mobility.
One of the first and most prominent division the reader is confronted with, are the glass doors the lawyer-narrator has installed in his office to separate himself from his employees. It has been widely accepted, that these doors not only are a form of physical separation, but can also be read as an form of a social separation: The lower-class workers and scriveners are permanently separated from their upper-class employer (Marx 606). Although the fact, that they are made of glass, may give away the illusion, that said divide is transparent and that the scriveners are able to cross that divide on their own. But as is pointed out in the story, the lawyer has the sole power to decide who may cross that line by ”[throwing] open these doors“, ”according to [his] humor“ (Melville 6), even though most of the time they remain closed. In the analogy of class divide, this may be read as a representation of an illusion of social mobility, even though in reality access to the upper class is heavily restricted for members of lower classes, most often by the members of said class themselves. The restricted mobility of the lower-class characters, often caused by some higher-ranked power, is a recurring motif in the story. For example, Bartleby almost never leaves the office, ”never goes for a walk“ (Melville 15) and seems to ”have ate, dressed, and slept in [the lawyer's] office“ (Melville 14). This behavior has been interpreted as a suggestion of the need to work long hours in order to earn a sufficient income, a struggle shared by all employees in the office (Ryan 38).
This is contrasted by the completely unrestricted mobility of the lawyer, who finds the time to go for frequent walks and leisure activities and whose financial well-being enables him to advance both economically and socially, while his employees, as previously stated, are stuck in their profession and the office. As an example, for him it proves of no difficulty to move his chambers just to rid himself of Bartleby (Melville 23).
Of course, the most well-known and most prominent representation of separation is that between the lawyer-narrator and Bartleby. It is interesting to note, that unlike the other employees, Bartleby seems to have crossed that social divide represented by the aforementioned glass doors from the beginning, as his desk is located in the lawyer's room. Directly after his employment however, the lawyer erects a curtain to separate himself from Bartleby, in order to ”keep privacy and society conjoined“ (Melville 7). The omnipresent power of the lawyer over his employees, especially Bartleby, is also prominently illustrated by the green curtain, as it ”isolate[s] Bartleby from [his] sight, but not from [his] voice“ (Melville 7). This, as previously explained, can be read as an analogy of an illusion of true social mobility, which was a promise promoted by the capitalistic ideology, but ultimately resulted in a strict divide between upper and working classes that became impossible to overcome, with the working classes being subordinates to the wealthy.
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- Florian Reus (Autor:in), 2018, Criticism of Class Divide. "Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Herman Melville, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1348474
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