Confinement and Jouissance in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”

Abstract

This paper offers new possibilities for interpreting the seemingly inexplicable (in)action of Bartleby, the protagonist in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” The author argues that the exploration of Bartleby’s relationship to his physical environment opens up new ways of understanding the protagonist’s famous words “I prefer not to.” In the paper, the author highlights an often-overlooked element in Melville’s story, which is that Bartleby never leaves the premises. His confinement within the walls of the office space is a symptom of a particular kind of jouissance that Jacques Lacan has referred to as a “jouissance of transgression” in his book “The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.” The author focuses on Bartleby’s relationship to his environment to argue that Bartleby was neither adapting nor resisting authority and the implicit laws of the Wall Street office but rather enjoying his environment.