Narrative Strategies in Bleak House and “Bartleby the Scrivener”: On the Significant Affinity between Dickens and Melville

Abstract

The affinity between Dickens’ Bleak House and Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” is significant in that it gives a direction in interpreting more relevantly an American literary work and in re-evaluating the British-American literary correlation._x000D_ There are identifiable similarities in many aspects, in characterization, plot, and_x000D_ narrative modes: characters of lawyers, law-stationers, law-copyists or scriveners; plot_x000D_ of the mysterious death of a deplorable law-copyist; and narrative modes abundant in_x000D_ brilliant wit and intriguing humor. Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” was composed_x000D_ and published immediately after Bleak House finished its serialization, thus suggestive of close connection. “Bartleby the Scrivener” looks very much like an elaborate magnified version of a single scene taken deliberately from Dickens’_x000D_ panorama in Bleak House._x000D_ This paper employs theories of influence study in comparative literature to interpret the significant affinity between Dickens and Melville. Melville never intends to write “Bartleby the Scrivener” out of the anxiety of influence or rivalry. He is more likely to be inspired by Dickens to tell the story of a miserable law-copyist he also knows, especially motivated out of admiration for a great master specializing in story-telling skills and intriguing humor. Both Dickens and Melville endeavor to make breakthroughs in narrative strategies. Dickens in Bleak House experiments with an innovated technique of the dual or double narrative, in which the first and the third_x000D_ points-of-view alternate to tell the story, to complement each other so as to achieve a_x000D_ multiplying effect. The story of Nemo is told as usual in Dickens’ sophisticated cynical tone of the third-person, yet in a rather disinterested way as to be undeserved for his position in Bleak House as the heroine’s father who died unknown and_x000D_ unrecognized. Melville in “Bartleby the Scrivener” concentrates on telling the story of_x000D_ the deplorable Bartleby from the lawyer’s single first-person perspective. No matter how earnest the lawyer tries to help Bartleby and how sincere his humanitarian concern is, he is still unable to save Bartleby’s wretched soul from collapse and_x000D_ self-destruction. Yet, neither the third-person of Dickens’ narrator, nor the first-person_x000D_ of Melville’s lawyer, is capable of telling us a true story. Both works reveal a difficulty in portraying reality, because any point of view on reality is subjective. The problem of human mystery remains an unsolved enigma. Both works question their own methods of representation, emphasizing their incapacity to shape materials and to bestow a truthful meaning on human experiences. Melville’s Bartleby is a focused_x000D_ revision of Dickens’ Nemo; he is “No One,” no body, a black-humored and gloomy protagonist who “prefers not to” live in this world. He is an un-representable reality in human life.