Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, The Scrivener” was originally published anonymously in 1853 by Putnam’s Magazine, and was later included in Melville’s collection of short stories The Piazza Tales in 1856. “Bartleby” was written by Melville in what Lewis Mumford refers to as Melville’s “miserable year”, citing the underwhelming success of the massive and draining work Moby Dick in 1851 and the commercially and critically derided Pierre in 1852 — which left him in a financial strain that was complemented by an inability to land a government job (Mumford 57). The biographical context of Melville’s life during the writing of “Bartleby” offers insight into the formulation of the eponymous character’s eccentricities, as well as the satirical elements of the story.
Melville’s social life had drifted away during the writing of “Bartleby” and his sense of isolation clearly seeps into the themes of the story. Egbert Oliver notes that a common view of “Bartleby” among Melville scholars is that “it is a picture of Melville’s mind” (Oliver 61). Supporting this idea, David McCall points out connections between Melville’s eye troubles and Bartleby’s alleged eye troubles, as well as Melville’s lack of diet while writing the story and Bartleby’s lack of desire to eat (McCall 37, 39). Moreover, Bartleby’s self-induced hermitage offers a faint impression of Melville’s own mindset while writing the story, and mirrors his own self-imposed hermitage at “Arrowhead” — the name for his property in Pittsfield, MA. Extensive borrowing of money and the commercial failure of Moby Dick and Pierre forced Melville into writing short stories for magazines (Sealts 477). Melville was pressured by friends and family to “go into business and make a good living, or at least write the sort of books that the public would read” (Mumford 60), a course that parallels the routine and monotonous demands placed on Bartleby by his social environment.
A striking difference between Melville and Bartleby is that while Melville had no original intention to write for periodicals, and would seemingly prefer not to (Sealts 482), financial strain and the flow of social necessity pushed him to the work, whereas Bartleby obstinately refuses to do anything at all, his individualism pushing him towards his own demise. This difference highlights the satirical aspects of the story that stem from Melville’s anti-transcendentalist views. Oliver suggests that in his isolation, the writings of Henry David Thoreau would have left some impression on Melville and that there are numerous parallels between Thoreau’s Transcendentalist philosophies and Bartleby’s actions (Oliver 64-65). Namely, Bartleby’s nearly absurd perseverance and his repetition of “I would prefer not,” which almost directly leads to his death by starvation, mirrors and mocks elements of Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” such as when Thoreau is requested by the state to pay a sum: “‘Pay,’ it said, ‘or be locked up in the jail.’ I declined to pay” (Thoreau).
McCall, David. The Silence of Bartleby. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Print.
Mumford, Lewis. “Melville’s Miserable Years.” Ed. M. Thomas Inge Bartleby the Inscrutable. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. Print.
Oliver, Egbert. “A Second Look at Bartleby.” Ed. M. Thomas Inge Bartleby the Inscrutable. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. Print.
Sealts, Merton. “Appendix: Historical Note.” From: Melville, Herman. The Piazza Tales. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1987. Print.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” (1849) The Thoreau Reader. The Thoreau Society, Web. 12 Aug 2013. <http://thoreau.eserver.org/default.html>.
103A: American Literature from 1789 to 1900 