Andrew O’Tuama Literary Genre (ENG10030) 1

Examine how the American short stories approach and represent gender and class. In

responding your answer should pay close attention to techniques of writing.

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids – Herman Melville

Are These Actual Miles? – Raymond Carver

The issues of gender and class have been dominant throughout the development of the

American short story, from its early beginnings up to contemporary works. These stories

represent varying perspectives on the issues of class and gender, partly due to the differing

periods they were written. In this essay I will examine the way in which the issues of gender

and class are approached and represented in The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of

Maids by Herman Melville, and Are These Actual Miles? by Raymond Carver.

In the first of these stories, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids,

Melville examines patriarchal society, and adopts the form of a diptych in order to juxtapose

two very different spheres of life; the “Paradise” that is the luxurious lifestyle of upper class

Bachelors and the “Tartarus” of the exploited working class maids in the industrial age. By

themselves, the two sections of this work are very limited in terms of their scope, but when

combined in the diptych approach, the text takes on far greater meaning. Because of this it is

necessary to deal with the text in its entirety, rather than examining the two sections in

isolation. In this text it is also difficult to separate the issue of class from that of gender as the

two are so closely tied.

Initially what we see in this story is the juxtaposition of the luxurious lives of the

Bachelors of London’s Temple-Bar and the hardship of the lives of young maids working in

terrible conditions in a New England paper mill. The Paradise of Bachelors is laden with

imagery of splendour and luxury. The very area of Temple-Bar is described as “honeycomb

of offices and domicils.” “Like any cheese it is quite perforated ... with the snug cells of

bachelors.”(Melville 73) These comparisons convey the luxury of this lifestyle, and
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Melville’s later description of the dinner he and his bachelor companions share only further

emphasises this. This is given a stark contrast in the lives of the maids of the paper mill,

whose quarters have a “cheap, blank air”, and who serve the machines “as the slave serves

the Sultan”, becoming merely “cogs to the wheels” (Melville 83). The knowledge the narrator

gains from his experience of the mill allows him, as well as the reader, to truly judge the life

of the bachelors, and realise that it is only through the suffering of the working class maids

that their upper-class luxury can be attained and sustained. This realisation is apparent in his

final exclamation of “Oh! Paradise of Bachelors! and oh! Tartarus of Maids!” (Melville 90)

Yet there are similarities between these two worlds in the way that the values of

patriarchal society isolate both the male and the female. The ‘Old Bach’ tells the narrator that

“we will not have married women; they are apt to be off-and-on too much” (Melville 89). His

employees, the maids, work “twelve hours to the day, day after day, through the three

hundred and sixty-five days, excepting Sundays, Thanksgiving and Fastdays” (Melville 89),

until, like the girl with the “ruled and wrinkled” brow (Melville 83), they grow old enslaved

to the mill, and live in a sterility “enforced by the terms of their employment”. “To marry,

become fertile, and possibly have children would mean losing their jobs” (Weyler 465). This

realisation allows us to contrast this enforced sterility with the self-inflicted sterility of the

Temple-Bar Bachelors. They have disengaged themselves from active life in pursuit of

pleasure. They live vicariously through stories of each other’s past, and their pursuit of

pleasure has resulted only in stagnation and sterility (Weyler 464). Through Melville’s

diptych we see the negative effects of a class based, industrialised society in terms of class

inequality and the sterility it imposes on both genders.

In Raymond Carver’s Are These Actual Miles? a brief glimpse into one night in the

life of a middle-class American couple gives a thorough insight into the ideals and bleak

realities of this middle-class lifestyle.

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Carver’s depiction of the materialism and superficiality of the American middle-class

is almost tragic. This materialism seems to have taken the place of genuine affection in the

relationship of Leo and Toni. This absence of affection is palpable in the couple’s first

interaction. Carver reveals the formality of their relationship through careful use of dialogue.

They speak strictly in terms of business:

“‘You have the pink slip?’...‘You’re sure?’ he says. ‘Make sure. You have to

have the pink slip.

‘I have the pink slip,’ she says.

‘Make sure.’” (Carver 584)

When not discussing matters of wealth or material possessions their conversation moves to

superficial topics, such as when Toni asks Leo to tell him how she looks. Leo’s response

“‘You look fine,’ he says. ‘You look great’” is immediately robbed of any sense of affection

when qualified by adding “I’d buy a car from you any day.” (Carver 583) Their goodbye is a

formal affair: “‘Kiss kiss. Here,’ she says and points to the corner of her mouth. ‘Careful,’ she

says.” (Carver 584) From the outset we can see that their relationship is formal and strained,

and seems to lack emotional depth; an affliction caused by the values of their class.

This middle class focus on wealth and material possession is most forcefully conveyed

by the words of the car dealer. Toni tells Leo “he said personally he’d rather be classified a

robber or a rapist than a bankrupt.” (Carver 588) Within this class system bankruptcy is seen

almost as immoral, something to be looked on in disgust. We see that Toni feels the same way

about Leo’s situation. At the stories beginning she remarks “But you don’t have money...And

you’re credit’s lousy. You’re nothing...Teasing.” (Carver 583) Readers can sense a definite

underlying truth to her “teasing”, one which is enforced towards the end of the story when

Toni arrives home and screams in contempt “Bankrupt! ... You son of a bitch.” (Carver 589)

Toni was right. In the eyes of his class Leo is “nothing”. He understands this himself. He even

“considers whether he should go to the basement, stand on the utility sink, and hang himself
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with his belt. He understands he is willing to be dead.” (Carver 586) Without his job, without

a means to provide for his family, Leo is worthless.

This also calls into question the issue of gender roles within this society. The role of

the male is a dominant theme in this story. It is fascinating how Leo’s male identity is so

inextricably linked to his professional life. While we see only one moment of his life, after he

has lost his job and been declared bankrupt, we can tell that there has been a reversal of roles

since this change took place. At the end of this story Leo is the picture of a broken man. He

approaches the man who his wife has returned home with at dawn, infidelity at the front of his

mind, and he avoids any confrontation. He scrambles to pull his torn shirt together, to look

respectable in front of the man who he is almost certain has just slept with his wife, and all he

can muster up the spirit to say is “Monday”, when he plans to piece together his life, like his

torn shirt. The loss of his job has left him emasculated and broken, and by appearing

respectable in front of this man he hopes to regain even a shred of his masculinity. Yet we

know that at one point in their relationship this situation was reversed. Leo had been

unfaithful to his wife while she was away with their two children. Although the reasons for

his infidelity are withheld, we can assume that that Leo was not the emasculated wreck that

we see at the time of the story’s events. If anything, these two events of infidelity show the

absence of affection in their relationship, which is based not on love but on each partner

fulfilling roles that their class and gender dictate.

Issues of gender and class have been present in the canon of American short story

since its beginning, despite the vast variation in approach and representation implemented by

different authors. By examining these two texts, Melville’s The Paradise of Bachelors and

the Tartarus of Maids, and Carver’s Are These Actual Miles? readers will hopefully gain an

insight into, and appreciation for these issues and how they are presented in the American

short story.
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Works Cited:

 Carver, Raymond, “Are These Actual Miles?” The Oxford Book of American Short

Stories. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates, New York: Oxford University Press 1992. 583-590

 May, Charles E. “'Do You See What I'm Saying?': The Inadequacy of Explanation

and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver” The Yearbook of

English Studies, Vol. 31. 2001. 39-49.

 Melville, Herman, “The Paradise Of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”, The

Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates, New York: Oxford

University Press 1992. 70-90

 Rowland, Beryl, “Melville's Bachelors and Maids: Interpretation Through Symbol

and Metaphor” American Literature, Vol. 41, No. 3, November 1969, 389-405.

 Weyler, Karen A. “Melville's ‘The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids’:

a Dialogue About Experience, Understanding, and Truth,” Studies in Short Fiction,

Summer 1994. 461-469.