Philip Shelley

ENG 380
Prof. Kuenz
February 25, 2013
Melvilles Bartleby as Emersons Self-Reliant Man

Herman Melvilles short story Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) is nearly as

inscrutable as its title character. The story centers on the weird and improbable struggle
between its two main characters: an opaque young scrivener who withdraws from doing
any work (and whose famous catch-phrase I would prefer not to is practically the
only thing he ever says), and the narrator, a comfortable, middle-aged, paper-pushing
lawyer and low-level bureaucrat, who is mysteriously driven to indulge his odd and
frustrating employee. While neither character is particularly realistic (the entire story has
an air of broad-brush Dickensian caricature), Bartleby especially seems to defy actual
human psychology his passive but obstinate refusal to partake in any socially
constructed reality is so extreme that it edges into the realm of the purely symbolic. But
symbolic of what?
One answer may lie in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and particularly in the
essay Self-Reliance (1841). In Self-Reliance, Emerson preaches a sermon of explicit
and extreme individualism, necessary, he thinks, to counter the corrupting influence of
calcified institutions, such as the church and the academy, that have imposed a soulstunting mediation between man and the inner wisdom to be found through each
individuals spiritual intuition and direct lived experience. Towards the end of the essay,
Emerson explicitly enumerates these corrupting traditions and institutions as follows:

1.) The church, no longer a pathway to truth, but all about maintaining, and often
jealously guarding, the pathway itself; 2.) Travel, in what seems to be a rebuke to the
very idea of worldliness, and is perhaps a Walden-esque assertion that one can potentially
find an entire universe in a puddle of water what you seek lies within you in any case;
3.) Foreign influence, in an intellectual or aesthetic sense, an exhortation to his fellow
Americans to cease Euro-centric practices and create an original, authentic American
culture; 4.) And finally, the spirit of American society itself, in which inexorable waves of
material or technological progress are automatically lauded and mistaken for the actual
spiritual progress of individual human beings (Emerson 195-201).
Even if one does not agree completely with this four-point outline of the problem
and Emersons parochialism, to name but one element, is troubling one can observe
with some sympathy the institutional forces arrayed against the American individual in
the first half of the 19th century. However, despite this sympathy, it is difficult to see
Emersons remedy his uncompromising exhortations to individual self-reliance as
anything other than shockingly extreme. Emerson goes overboard both in extolling the
benefits of individualism ([n]othing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind)
and in dismissing [s]ociety everywhere as being in a conspiracy against the manhood
of everyone of its members, a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for
the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture to
the eater (Emerson 178). The absolutism of his assertions leaves little or no wiggle room
for human imperfection, and does not seem to admit any human need for community,
compromise, or any inherent mutual responsibility.

Although it may be too much to claim that Bartleby is a direct rebuttal to

Emerson, it is well known that Melville grew progressively critical of Emerson, and did
not share his optimistic view of human nature. (In the margins of his copy of Emersons
Essays Melville scribbled, God help the poor fellow who squares his life according to
this (Parker 501).) Using Self-Reliance as a lens, then, it is possible to arrive at a
reading of Bartleby that stands as a rebuke to both Emersons uncompromising selfreliance and to what Emerson saw as the universally corrupting influence of society. In
the character of the lawyer, we can see Emersons spineless and corrupt societal man
given admirable and sympathetic qualities and made more human and relatable, while in
the character of Bartleby, we can see Emersons extreme individualism exaggerated to a
ridiculous and ultimately morbid extreme.
Indeed Bartleby stands like a black hole at the center of Melvilles construction
there is nothing ordinarily human about him he is a character with no evident motives
and no positive desires, exhibiting only a vague and monotonous preference not to
(Melville 10). He is described repeatedly as a ghost and an apparition, engaged in an
endless dead-wall reverie (Melville 14, 16, 21) Yet in his absolute refusal to form any
social ties or to explain himself to another human being, Bartleby is in many ways simply
following Emersons dictates of self-reliant individualism.
Bartleby is described constantly as being oblivious to everything but his own
peculiar business (Melville 12). This complete self-obsession mirrors Emersons rigid
directives that Who would be a man, must be a nonconformist, and [T]he only right is
what is after my constitution (Emerson 178, 179). And indeed, Bartleby feels no need to
conform to the routines of the law office; eventually, he stops working altogether,

preferring to hide behind his screen and stare at the wall. The other scriveners in the
lawyers office are outraged and resentful that Bartleby is allowed to break the rules. I
think I should kick him out of the office, says Nippers (Melville 12). Emerson, of
course, is ready for such resentment.
For one thing, Emerson says, the sour faces of the multitudehave no deep
cause which is to say, when members of the multitude band together in disapproval,
their disapproval has no genuine moral weight they are really only masking their
timidity, because they feel threatened by the actions of a genuine maverick, which is a
challenge to their own shameful lack of self-reliance; Emerson dismisses their rage as
merely feminine (Emerson 182). Emerson also notes that the populace think that [the
individualists] rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere
antinomianism, and that the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his
crimes (Emerson 182). In Bartleby, we see almost exactly that the rejection of all
standards and it is threatening, but not for the reasons Emerson states.
The populace may view extreme individualism as threatening for reasons less
flagrant than outright impiety, immorality, or criminality. Extreme individualism, even at
its most benign or self-contained, is by its very nature an affront to the many small
agreements, compromises and interdependencies by which human beings form workable
societies. No, no, says Emerson, coming down hard on the side of the individual, We
must go alone and he does not stop at the workplace (Emerson 192). No level of
interpersonal connectedness is too close to be dismissed when it stands in the way of the
self-reliant man; as Emerson writes, I shun father and mother and wife and brother when
my genius calls me (Emerson 179).

Nor is there any need for the self-reliant individual to explain himself. Bartlebys
mantra-like repetitions of I would prefer not to are perfectly aligned with Emersons
haughty (a word the lawyer uses to describe Bartleby) dismissal to those who would
seek to understand the rebuffs of the self-reliant man: Expect me not to show cause why
I seek or why I exclude company (Emerson 179). In one of his few flights of relative
loquaciousness, when asked by the lawyer why he does not work, Bartleby sniffs
indifferently, Do you not see the reason for yourself? (Melville 21). The onus is on us
to figure out the self-reliant man, rather than on him to explain himself. And to his credit,
Melvilles lawyer, the narrator of the story, gives a valiant effort in trying to figure out the
reasons why Bartleby is as he is.
The lawyer is a man who is deeply invested in Emersons joint-stock company,
and it is easy to count up his myriad institutional affiliations. As an attorney he is an
officer of the court, a sworn upholder of the legal system, and in the office of Master in
Chancery, he is a representative of the government itself. The Christian church is another
one of his affiliations, and at several points in the story he refers to scripture. When
Bartleby is provoking him to anger, lawyer quotes scripture to fortify himself with
tolerance, recalling the divine injunction that ye love one another, which allows him
to put aside his violent thoughts (Melville 25). He also uses scripture to make sense of the
world, proclaiming on Bartlebys death that Bartleby now slept with Kings and
counselors an allusion to the Book of Job, suggesting that Bartleby has finally found
peace and transcendence after a life of trial and misery (Melville 33).
Thus, the lawyer is affiliated with at least three major institutional pillars of
society (legal, governmental, religious), and for Emerson, the more embedded one is in

institutional society, the more ones intrinsic self is hidden. Emerson believes that a
persons social affiliations are so determinative that he feels confident enough to boast,
If I know your sect I anticipate your argument (Emerson 181). Yet the lawyer, socially
fettered as he is, shows genuine flexibility, tolerance, and curiosity about the world. He is
not a one-dimensional creature, solely defined by the groups to which he belongs. While
Bartleby will not budge from his cocoon of self-sufficiency, the lawyer, charmingly, tells
us that he is strangely disarmed, touched, and disconcerted through his interactions
with Bartleby that is, he is able to be moved and changed by another human being.
Because of this effect, the lawyer feels a compulsion to help Bartleby. Contrary to
Emersons assertion, the lawyers conformity makes him false only in a few particulars
but not in all particulars (Emerson 181). The lawyer may be a company man, but he is a
human being too. Thus, while it is obvious that the lawyers motives are not pure, and his
generosity and compassion often give way to selfishness and frustration unlike
Bartleby, at least he is trying.
What finally raises the lawyer to full humanity the flash of insight he receives
upon discovering that Bartleby has been living, in squalor and secrecy, in the law offices.
The lawyer is seized with an unprecedented feeling of overpowering stinging
melancholy whose cause he traces to the bond of common humanity he shares with
the unfortunate Bartleby (Melville 17). A fraternal melancholy! he declares, For both
Bartleby and I are sons of Adam that is, the lawyer and Bartleby are both human
beings bound to endure pain and loneliness, yet also able to at least partially alleviate
such feelings through fellowship and commonality (Melville 17). This is the bond
Emerson explicitly denies in Self-Reliance when he writes, do not tell meof my

obligation to put all poor men in good situations, and, I grudge the dollar, the dime, the
cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong (Emerson
179-180). To Emerson, there are human beings with whom he belongs and those with
whom he does not to him the bonds and responsibilities of common humanity are not
universal. Are they my poor? Emerson asks with disdain (Emerson 180).
Emerson goes so far as to use a kind of proto-Darwinism to naturalize his own
aversion to charity, writing, Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which
cannot help itself (Emerson 191). While culturally imposed material conditions seem to
mean little to Emerson the fact that some people are unable to help themselves (let
alone exercise a self-reliant individualism) for reasons beyond their ability to control
the lawyer at least recognizes that his position of privilege (or so he assumes) relative to
Bartleby carries with it some measure of obligation.
Something even more insightful comes about as the lawyer contemplates
Bartlebys situation. The lawyer is mentally vacillating in what we recognize as a very
human way between the conflicting impulses of charity and resentment. In some ways,
his natural initial reaction to Bartleby is one of sympathy, an automatic Poor fellow!
(Melville 13). But when he asks himself (examining his own feelings), how could a
human creature, with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly
exclaiming upon such perverseness such unreasonableness? he is also making sense,
and expressing an idea about the limitations of human tolerance compassion (Melville
15). Human beings can only put up with so much individualism. The lawyers growing
resentments are a natural-seeming consequence of his odd situation and the more the
lawyer ponders Bartlebys plight, and Bartlebys concurrent unwillingness to do anything

to change his situation, the more the lawyers feeling of melancholy merge[s] into fear,
his sincere pity into repulsion (Melville 18). Melville has allowed the lawyer to voice
an insight that rings true that there is a limit to how bad human beings are willing to
feel and for how long. The lawyer recognizes, correctly, I think, that this kind of
compassion fatigue is not due to inherent selfishness but to the impracticality of living
inside a certain hopelessness a recognition of our inability to remedy every ill and
evil in the world (Melville 18).
Emerson was strangely cavalier about the problem of evil, which may be one
reason Melville had problems with his philosophy. While to some people a world where
everyone behaved with the nonchalance of boys who are sure of a meal hanging out in
the parlor and following their every italicized Whim sounds like it could go to hell
with breathtaking speed, Emerson does not seem worried: [I]f I am the Devils child, he
shrugs, I will live then from the Devil (Emerson 177-179). But can he really mean that?
Well, as it turns out, Emerson actually believes that it demands something godlike in
him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and along with that comes the
faith that this unsurpassably high moral standard is attainable in all men (Emerson 194).
In defending the rigor of his custom-tailored moral code, Emerson challenges readers to
abide by my own stern claims and perfect circle for even one day (193).
As with Emersons exhortations, Bartleby's individualistic self-reliance is weirdly
inspiring, but through the use of grotesque exaggeration, Melville shows how easily it
can become pointless and self-indulgent. If Melville saw Emerson as Pollyannaish, then
the character of Bartleby could be seen as a demonstration of what Emersons
prescriptions for self-reliance would actually lead to in the real world namely, misery,

loneliness, and death. And this kind of death is not a heroic martyrdom but a stupid
waste. Life cannot be lived except in concert with other human beings, something that the
lawyer, for all his faults and blind spots, sees very clearly. For Melville, complete selfreliance is not a realistic path to a happy and successful life, and neither are the comforts
of human society so pervasively toxic as Emerson argued. Yet the bleak ending of
Bartleby suggests that despite his sympathy for people like the lawyer muddling
through imperfectly, and doing the best they can in the end, Melville saw no real hope
of redemption for humanity on either side.

Works Cited:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays. New York: Penguin, 1982. Print.
Melville, Herman. Bartleby and Benito Cereno. Toronto: Dover, 1990. Print.
Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 2, 1851-1891. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 2002. Print.

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