The Limitations of Bartleby

Alan Reid

Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” poses two questions on its reader: Who is

Bartleby? And why does he refuse to cooperate with the narrator? The mystery of

Bartleby adds to the suspense of the storyline, but leaves its reader with an unfulfilled

sense of understanding in the end. Melville never directly satisfies these two questions,

and the story is conveyed through the eyes of the lawyer-narrator, whom both Norman

Springer and Allan Moore Emery believe to be flawed and unbelievable. Emery agrees

with Springer in that the narrator “fails to answer adequately the question: who and what

is Bartleby?” (418). However, Emery does not support Springer’s notion that the reader is

unable to fully understand Bartleby and his actions. Emery maintains that “Norman

Springer seems wrong then to insist upon our complete inability to penetrate Bartleby’s

mind” (173).

Springer proposes that the lawyer-narrator has “surprisingly large limitations”

placed upon him, and this makes him incapable of penetrating Bartleby’s mind. These

limitations are the result of societal expectations and the assumptions that accompany the

life of a normal, law-abiding citizen such as the lawyer (410). In fact, Springer

acknowledges that the judgments and explanations which are derived from the lawyer-

narrator should not and can not be relegated to the reader’s judgments. “All our

‘information’ about Bartleby comes from a man who is limited, flawed, with a built-in

protective device: his self-esteem” (413). The narrator does not offer adequate

interpretations of Bartleby’s refusals, and only demonstrates his inability to comprehend

Bartleby’s outlook on society: an outlook free of societal limitations. This inability is

precisely what segregates the two characters.

 The argument set forth by Emery agrees with Springer in that the narrator is not a

sufficient interpreter of Bartleby, and further suggests that the reader must not rely on the

narrator’s reasoning alone, but instead must look beyond this confusion and develop his

own. In doing so, the reader is able to understand the actions of Bartleby, thus defying the

logic of Norman Springer. Emery offers an answer to the question of why Bartleby does

not cooperate with the lawyer: “The ‘paramount consideration’ which lies behind

Bartleby’s refusals is evidently, as suggested earlier, a desire, previously fixed upon, to

free his will from everything external to it, including all other motivations, and including

his reason” (173). This exemplifies the dichotomy of characters in which Melville has

succeeded in creating. The lawyer is fixated upon work, Christian values, societal

expectations, etc. Bartleby, on the other hand, seeks complete separation from these exact

things in order to exert his free-will; “for in order to establish freedom of his will,

Bartleby must prefer not to be normal, dutiful, reasonable, law-abiding, and anything else

that would require his will to knuckle under some ‘determining’ consideration” (173).

This notion is supported by another critic, Mordecai Marcus, who contemplates Bartleby

as the psychological double of the lawyer; a complete inverse of the lawyer’s mainstream

behavior, in his article “Melville’s Bartleby as a Psychological Double.”

There may, however, be reconciliation between Norman Springer and Allan

Moore Emery. Both critics agree that the story which is delivered through the single

perspective of the lawyer-narrator becomes narrow and flawed because of his societal and

psychological limitations. At the same time, these limitations contribute to Bartleby’s

mysticism, but also function as a defect: “While Bartleby’s flaw is his radical refusal to

undergo the imposition of psychological limits, the narrator’s unattractiveness stems from
his readiness to accept them” (181). Essentially, “his [the lawyer] judgments cannot be

the reader’s judgments, which grow out of the totality of the story” (413). Therefore, the

main disagreement between the two critics is the ability for the reader to comprehend and

justify the actions (or lack thereof) of Bartleby the scrivener. Springer contends that we

are unable to realize this because of the imperfection of the narrator and his personal

inability to reason with someone that possesses the absolute inverse of his values. Emery

argues that the reader is able to gain this interpretation by transcending the perspective of

the narrator, thus penetrating Bartleby’s mind. The reconciliation that may occur then

rests on the perspective on which the reader draws a conclusion. If the reader understands

Bartleby solely through the eyes of the lawyer, as Springer suggests, his interpretation

will be unjustified and confusing, just as the lawyer renders Bartleby. If, however, the

reader considers the imperfections of both the lawyer’s outlook and Bartleby’s outlook, as

Emery suggests, a neutral interpretation is possible, and an understanding of Bartleby and

his behavior becomes understandable and justified.

 Works Cited

Emery, Allan Moore. “The Alternatives of Melville’s ‘Bartleby.’” Nineteenth-Century

Fiction. 31 (1976):170.

Springer, Norman. “Bartleby and the Terror of Limitation.” PMLA. 80 (1965): 410.