40 pages • 1 hour read
Bartleby, the Scrivener
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Background
Socioeconomic Context: Wall Street and Capitalism
Money and sums of money appear frequently throughout “Bartleby.” These numbers would have been easily understood by Melville’s contemporary readers, but inflation has decontextualized them. Ginger Nut is paid $1 a week, which is approximately $37 in 2022 (8). Ginger nut cakes cost a penny for “six or eight,” which is equivalent to about 38 cents today. Scriveners in the law office are paid the “usual rate of four cents” per 100 words copied (15), or about $1.50 today. The workers in the office spend their money on cheap snacks while working, and these ginger nut cakes seem to be all Bartleby eats. What little money Bartleby makes he prefers to save instead of buying more expensive foods.
The scriveners make very little pay for work that can damage their eyesight. In Melville’s time, labor movements were very active seeking better pay and working conditions (most famously in factories). Melville also held jobs like clerk or cashier, similar to Bartleby’s. These jobs, biographers contend, made Melville sympathetic to the lower classes but pessimistic about improving their conditions.
Philosophical Context: Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Priestley
Two philosophical texts are mentioned by name in “Bartleby”: Jonathan Edwards’s The Freedom of the Will and Joseph Priestley’s The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. Written in 1754 and 1777 respectively, these texts would have been familiar to most of Melville’s contemporary readers, and they shape how the narrator views Bartleby.
The Freedom of the Will examines free will from a Calvinist viewpoint. Calvinism is a branch of Christianity that has as a central tenet “total depravity” of the human will. “Total depravity” means that all humans are born sinful and their will, left unchecked, tends toward sinfulness. Melville was raised as an orthodox Calvinist and was steeped in this religion for most of his life, so he was personally familiar with Edwards’s ideas.
Philosophical Necessity is a philosophical text that explores the possibility of free will in a world ruled by the laws of physics. Priestley concludes that human free will does not exist. But, unlike his contemporaries, he argues that this view is compatible with Christianity. Priestly believed that thoughts and actions are, like everything else, determined by the laws of nature. But a benevolent God would determine things toward perfection.
These two texts help explain the narrator’s outlook and the final line of the story, “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” (35). From a Calvinist perspective, free will is impossible because people are determined to sin by their “total depravity.” Humans are akin to the dead letters heading to predetermined ruination. According to Priestly, people are not necessarily sinful, but their actions are determined by the laws of nature. The narrator concludes that Bartleby cannot help being how he is, and so the narrator is obligated to protect the harmless and eccentric scrivener. The narrator’s contact with these texts also explains his resignation to the incurable malady in Bartleby’s soul. Everything is determined to be as it is.
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