payment page
Nineteenth-Century Wall Street
Bartleby's quiet, polite, but firm refusal to do even the most routine tasks has always been a source of puzzlement for readers. Bartleby has been compared to philosophers ranging from Cicero, whose bust rests a few inches above the Lawyer's head in his office, to Mahatma Gandhi. Bartleby’s eccentric behavior is even more confusing because Melville never explicitly explains why this man acts the way that he does. However, one clue may potentially lie in the story's setting.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” is an example of a text whose messaging is best examined within the historical context in which it was written. Melville very pointedly sets Bartleby’s story in an office on Wall Street. The Wall Street setting is an integral component of the text. In fact, the full title of “Bartleby the Scrivener” is “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” Wall Street is a street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Melville published the story in the mid-nineteenth century at a time when Wall Street was becoming the main hub of financial activity in the United States, which it continues to be to this day.
Wall Street’s success has a few key origins. To begin with, Wall Street can attribute much of its success to the Erie Canal, the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, which was finished in 1825. The canal was an important financial achievement; it vastly reduced the cost of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. As a result, many Wall Street financial institutions benefited from the Erie Canal and the Erie Canal Fund. Just five years later, the Philadelphia-based Bank of the United States collapsed in the fall and winter of 1930, which opened up economic opportunities for privately owned and state-chartered financial firms based in New York City. Finally, industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century included two key inventions, the telegraph and the development of railroads, which allowed Wall Street brokers to trade an expanded volume of stocks. Unsurprisingly, the success of Wall Street resulted in America’s growing fixation on money, of which some people were critical.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” does not discuss the growing prominence of Wall Street at length. However, the Lawyer does briefly mention that he does business “among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds.” When considered within this context, Bartleby’s refusal of the Lawyer's requests can be read as a critique of the growing materialism present in American culture at the time in which the story was written. Melville (as well as other authors, including Edgar Allan Poe) were quick to note the emerging importance of money and its management in American life. Under this reading, Bartleby's stubborn refusal to do what is asked of him amounts to a kind of heroic opposition to economic control.
