In the decades prior to Melville's writing of "Bartleby," the United States underwent a complex process of economic transformation. Unlike the first interpretation, the second considers "Bartleby" to be a historicized text, and it emphasizes the importance of placing the story in the context of antebellum capitalism. The other dominant reading, which is developed in this essay (see also Gilmore Kuebrich and Foley), views Bartleby as a demoralized, exploited worker and the boss as an unreliable narrator who, blinded by his upper-class perspective, is unable to understand the underlying causes of his clerk's unusual behavior. Stern and Dan McCall, suggests that Bartleby is, for reasons that are never disclosed, a deeply melancholic soul and that the lawyer is a sensitive and well-meaning employer who recounts, with disarming candor, both his sincere efforts to understand and help his troubled but inscrutable scrivener and his own moral shortcomings. The first, perhaps best articulated by Milton R. In the early twenty-first century there are two dominant readings of "Bartleby," one of which might be termed psychological and moral and the other economic and ideological. Is he a spineless employer? Or a callous boss? A self-serving hypocrite? Or a compassionate employer whose helpful intentions are frustrated by Bartleby's incurable pathology? Is he a static or dynamic character? Does he understand the story he so artfully tells? ![]() Readers have also disagreed about the character of the lawyer-narrator. To some he is a Christ figure to others a mysterious misfit to still others he represents the exploited worker, a Thoreau-like practitioner of passive resistance, or even a projection of Melville as alienated author. Why does he refuse to work? And what does he want from his employer? In analyzing his character, critics have proposed remarkably diverse interpretations. Readers have been both intrigued and puzzled by Bartleby, the enigmatic and seemingly eccentric clerk of the story. First published in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1853, "Bartleby" was subsequently published by Dix and Edwards of New York in 1856 in The Piazza Tales, a collection of six of Melville's stories. After publishing seven novels between 18, including his magnum opus Moby-Dick (1851), Melville (1819–1891) turned to short fiction, writing "Bartleby" and thirteen other stories and sketches between 18. "Bartleby" is also one of the most celebrated short stories in American literature. "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" is one of Herman Melville's most highly acclaimed works of short fiction, along with "Benito Cereno" and the novella Billy Budd.
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