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Caleb McGhee

Dr. Griffin

English 435

16 November 2018

Psychological Realism in “Bartleby the Scrivener” and The Blithedale Romance

There being little consensus on the nature of reality, the term “realism” is of little value.

A skeptic may find a ghost story ludicrous, while a supernaturalist may find it an accurate

representation of the state of things. We will have to define reality to define “realism,” a task

that, having eluded the philosopher, is certainly impossible for the literary critic. Instead of

philosophical abstraction, the critic might better and less contentiously define realism in terms of

the self-evident aspects of human experience that few if any can contest. Psychological realism is

the most unobjectionable form of realism, as we are all in possession of a mind; we may

squabble about the verisimilitude of an author’s setting, and we may argue endlessly about

whether or not his plot was contrived, but we seem to have more of a consensus on whether a

character is “realistic,” i.e. acts like a conceivable human being. We may disagree about the

props and backdrop, but we all know what constitutes good acting. I would even wager that good

acting would redeem the fakeness of the props; this is certainly the case in Herman Melville’s

story “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Blithedale Romance. Both

works have unrealistic plot elements, but they are works of psychological realism whose

characters display depth and complexity.

Bartleby’s death is the only unrealistic plot element of “Bartleby the Scrivener;” certainly

the whole situation with Bartleby is strange, but it is by no means unbelievable. The narrator

implies that Bartleby has voluntarily starved to death in prison:

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Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying on his side, his
head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused;
then went close up to him; stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise
he seemed profoundly sleeping. (40)
His repetition of the grub-man’s phrase “lives without dining” indicates that he believes Bartleby

has starved himself, as does his description of Bartleby’s body as “wasted” (40). However,

Bartleby’s death seems sudden and unexpected. The narrator had visited him only a few days

before and did not remark on him seeming any thinner and sicklier than usual; the narrator

frequently remarks on Bartleby’s pallor and thinness yet never indicates that he seems as if he

might die. Bartleby’s death seems some perverse, unexpected cruelty of fate which introduces a

greater note of gloom and misery into the story.

Bartleby’s unrealistic death leads to a realistic response from the narrator; his outpourings

of grief seem authentic. His mention of Bartleby having worked in a dead letter office seems out

of place and irrelevant; he prefaces a warning before telling us the uncertainty:

Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came to
my ear a few months after the scrivener's decease. Upon what basis it rested, I could
never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I cannot now tell. (41)
He admits that it is a rumor. He says that he is only repeating it only because it has “a certain

strange suggestive interest” to him (41). The rumor seems like the irrelevant speech someone

falls into when distraught. My reasoning is not just a subjective evaluation of tone; his final cries

at the end of the story, “Oh, Bartleby! Oh, humanity!” make it seem as if he has reached the

highest point of agitation, as if he were weeping in his chair as he finished his narrative (41).

The events of “Bartleby the Scrivener” are filtered through the first person narrator, who

naturally has limitations in his knowledge; his incomplete picture of Bartleby is psychologically

realistic owing to its limitations. Bartleby’s mystery is his main appeal; we have no clear

explanation for his peculiar apathy, his always preferring not to. We get a sense of his mystery

by the narrator’s sense of mystery. He describes the puzzlement Bartleby elicits:

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I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he
never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had considerable time to himself,
yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he
would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall.
(21)
Passages like this give us the same sense of mystery that the narrator feels. We should notice also

that we never get into Bartleby’s head. We only see the external signs of his undoubtedly

peculiar psychology. Melville himself may not have known Bartleby’s inner state, and an

exploration into his mind might have proved an aesthetic failure. Showing only the external

aspects of Bartleby’s psychology, however, gives him more verisimilitude.

The Blithedale Romance is filled with novelistic conventions; its events are more

unrealistic than those of “Bartleby.” For instance, Coverdale has an all-too convenient habit of

unexpectedly overhearing and seeing things, a clunky, melodramatic device. Overhearing

something important or witnessing something one ought not see is possible and happens in the

course of life. However, it happens to Coverdale too often to be realistic. He hears Hollingsworth

praying in chapter six, a fine though unrealistic chance to characterize him. In chapter twelve,

Coverdale climbs a tree in order to think, and he just happens to hear Westervelt and Zenobia

conversing in the woods below, a perfect chance for Hawthorne to introduce some melodrama.

In chapter eighteen, Coverdale happens to see into a boarding house from his hotel room; he

espies Zenobia and Westervelt, who have conveniently and unexpectedly taken residence there.

Coverdale’s glimpses are totally unbelievable; they are blatant literary devices.

Despite The Blithedale Romance’s numerous conventions, it displays remarkable

psychological depth. In the case of Hollingworth praying, convention and insight intersect.

Coverdale describes the effect overhearing Hollingsworth has for him:

My sleeping-room being but thinly partitioned from his, the solemn murmur of his voice
made its way to my ears, compelling me to be an auditor of his awful privacy with the
Creator. It affected me with a deep reverence for Hollingsworth, which no familiarity
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then existing, or that afterwards grew more intimate between us--no, nor my subsequent
perception of his own great errors--ever quite effaced. (39)
Coverdale learns of Hollingsworth’s zealous character, perhaps the same zealotry that leads him

to single-mindedly pursue his scheme to reform criminals. This is a believable trait, but it could

be presented in a heavy-handed, cartoonish manner; Hawthorne however shows it in a realistic

fashion. As opposed to being a caricature of zealotry, Hollingsworth exhibits his passion through

loudly, passionately praying in his room.

Perhaps nothing better displays Blithedale’s mixture of convention with psychological

realism than Coverdale’s report of his earliest impressions of Zenobia; he mixes cliches about

womanhood with vague, subtle indications of sexual attraction, something quite risky and

unusual for a 19th century work of fiction. Being somewhat flirtatious, Zenobia tells Coverdale

“As for the garb of Eden, … I shall not assume it until after May-day!” (17). She makes a jocular

remark about nudity that Coverdale finds stimulating:

These last words, together with something in her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture
of that fine, perfectly developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her free, careless,
generous modes of expression often had this effect of creating images which, though
pure, are hardly felt to be quite decorous when born of a thought that passes between man
and woman. (17)
In essence, Coverdale says that he thought about Zenobia in the nude, qualifying it as being

“pure” and ultimately chaste. He recounts having a spicy thought about a woman but claims that

it really was not that bad. He even tries to absolve Zenobia for bringing about the thought,

writing that she was “conscious of no harm” and given to “scorning the petty restraints which

take the life and color out of other women’s conversation” (17). In this short scene, Hawthorne

depicts a man remembering seuxal arousal and trying to explain it away as something innocent.

Coverdale may make some rather cliche references to “purity” and a “perfectly developed

figure,” but his psychology is realistic.

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“Bartleby the Scrivener” and The Blithedale Romance both mix fictional conventions and

devices with psychological realism. The effect could be strange and disconcerting to some

readers, but the discordance ought not shock us excessively; unrealistic events but realistic

characters are the norm in much-read genres like magical realism. Even supposing that the

discordance is still troubling, the life and realism of the characters should remedy the potential

flaws of these two works. In a portrait, the face is what matters, not the background; In “Bartleby

the Scrivener” and The Blithedale Romance, we see some fine, hyper-detailed faces that we must

admire whether or not we like the background.