Bartleby and Infantile Autism

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain Bartleby's condition. A favorite is that Melville saw in the mean situation of the pale copyist a paradigm of his own positon as a writer. According to this theory, the writer as truthseeker is immured by commercial demand and must serve as a mere scrivener of what baser minds want written.2 Sometimes, the incapacity of Bartleby's lawyer-employer to understand him is compared to the attitudes of the friendly but uncomprehending lawyers in Melville's or his wife's families. The psychiatrist Henry A. Murray concedes the limitations of any one theory by presenting plausible alternatives before finally finding Bartleby "unprecedented, an invention of Melville's creative spirit, the author's gift to psychology, a mythic figure who deserves a category in his own name. Though it is apparently impossible to prove that Melville knew someone exactly like Bartleby, though in fact in Melville's time the syndrome was unknown, undescribed, unrecognized, and unnamed, in fact in Bartleby Melville described a person manifesting behavior it is now possible to identify as infantile autism in the adult phase. Bartleby in every way fits the pattern of a reasonably successful, coping, autistic adult, whose tragedy is that he almost succeeded in finding the structured environment and understanding personal supervisor he needed. In short, the "Bartleby complex" is infantile autism. Melville's interest in madness surfaced in 1849 when he wrote to Evert Duyckinck about the derangement of Charles Fenno Hoffman, former editor of Literary World: "This going mad of a friend or acquaintance comes straight home to every man who feels his soul in him. . . . And he who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains. . . . [E]veryone has his own distinct peculiarity. Depression rather than schizophrenia was a Melville family trait. The term "autism," has the following traits : [I]nability to relate themselves in the ordinary way to people and situations from the beginning of life. Their parents referred to them as having always been "self-sufficent"; "like in a shell"; "happiest when left alone"; "acting as if people weren't there"; Food is the earliest intrusion. Our patients . . . anxious to keep the outside world away, indicated this by the refusal of food. . The distinction between autism and schizophrenia--several readers have mistakenly called Bartleby schizophrenic--vexed for a time after Kanner's definition, appears to be settled. Autism emerges insidiously in early childhood or infancy, whereas schizophrenia begins later. The course of autism is steady whereas schizophrenia often intermittently mitigates to normal behavior. Autistic persons appear to be without the delusions or hallucinations that attend schizophrenia. Autistic persons have more difficulty in communicating than do schizophrenic persons. Autistic children who "succeed" as adults to the extent of holding a paying job are obviously a small minority. They are fortunate that their stereotyped behavior is tolerated and that they are
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gradually able to compromise with the alien social world long enough to learn the basic social grammar of acceptable behavior. Bartleby was not so fortunate in his associations. He was expected to be normal and to fit the Procrustean bed of normal work routine. When too much pressure was put on him, his autistic symptoms were aggravated and he withdrew completely and resolutely, eventually dying of inanition. There is little doubt that Bartleby has the leading characteristics of infantile autism, extreme aloneness, preservation of sameness, and difficulty with communication, and that they are his leading characteristics. The lawyer, finding Bartleby inhabiting his office on Wall Street on a Sunday, is moved to "overpowering stinging melancholy" at "what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness."30 For Bartleby this solitude exists in the midst of people as well. The only initiatives he takes toward people are that he comes to the lawyer for employment and sends Ginger Nut for food, without speaking to him. He rarely speaks unless spoken to. He is almost totally immured except for the voice of the lawyer reaching him from beyond the folding screen. Once established in the office, he wants nothing changed in the environment. By saying he "would prefer not to" do anything but copy, he preserves the environment as originally accepted and resists any intrusion which would change it. The only time Bartleby initiates speech is the time his "hermitage" is invaded, first by the lawyer, then by Nippers and Turkey. The space is small, for even after Nippers leaves, the lawyer describes Turkey as "crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener." "'I would prefer to be left alone here,' said Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his privacy" (p. 261). It is after this incident that Bartleby refuses to do any more copying. When the lawyer asks him why, Bartleby says, "indifferently," "Do you not see the reason for yourself?" (p. 262). Of course the lawyer does not. Later, though the lawyer removes his office from the building, Bartleby clings to it without explanation except to say, "At present I would prefer not to make any change at all". Bartleby's other characteristics are similarly those of infantile autism. There is his obsessive industry: "At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if famished for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candle-light" (251). Later, the lawyer was still struck by "his steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances . . . "(p. 250). "I had a singular confidence in his honesty" (p. 256). His diet is obsessively restricted; he appears to live on ginger nuts and cheese. Yet he remains apparently healthy. Though thin and pale, he never complains of ill health. Like all persons with infantile autism, he appears intelligent: "It seemed to me that while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusion; but at the same time some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did" (p. 253). If Bartleby suffers from double audition and requires more than usual time to absorb a spoken message-- the lawyer had to wait "a considerable time for a reply" (p. 260)-- his apparent normality is a
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meritorious achievement; the "paramount consideration" could be the necessity of averting such painful perceptual situations. His intelligence appears most in his speech, most notably in prison when in response to the lawyer's attempt to portray the prison as a pleasant asylum, he replies, piercingly, "I know where I am" (p. 272). There is no delusion. Bartleby is impervious to irony, for he perceives only one meaning. His guileless honesty and morality are above reproach; he inspires trust. He avoids eye-contact. "He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust of Cicero, which . . . was directly behind me, some six inches above my head" (p. 260). He avoids group activities, such as the summons to join Turkey, Nippers, and the lawyer in order to compare copies. He is indifferent to his effect on others, seemingly ignoring everyone in the office, even when they are angry at him. He has no sense of respect or subordination due to his employer's position, age, or prestige. He seems unaware that it is improper to use the office as living quarters. He seems blandly unaware of the effect of his utterances, mostly negative preferences, on others. He has no interest in women and very little interest in anything. One of his most unusual characteristics is what the lawyer calls his "dead-wall reveries": prolonged, apparently thoughtful, and motionless reveries: "for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall" (pp. 258-59). He lacks initiative in the usual sense and, being passive and noncombative, becomes a victim of other men's wills. The one sense in which he has initiative is negative. He adheres to his own firm resolution as though it were a matter of honor. First, when the intrusions on his "hermitage" become intolerable, he resolves to work no more; second, when he is utterly bereft of compassionate human support and prevented from doing what he can, he resolves to eat no more. He needs compassionate and tolerant human support to survive, yet has no known relatives or friends. In depression he stops eating and dies. The unnamed lawyer-narrator in "Bartleby the Scrivener" inspires a great deal of respect. He is unusually forbearing for an employer of that time, or of any time. For perhaps two months he maintains his uneasy connection with his psychotic employee. Though he finds them difficult to bear, he tolerates for a time "those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard-of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby's part under which he remained in my office" (p. 256). Unfortunately, the necessity of getting the work done leads him to press in on Bartleby's insulation. After the scrivener refuses to compare copy the lawyer does not let him rest; he says, "I burned to be rebelled against again" (p. 255). On the one hand, he is to be admired for the variety of his experimentation, but, on the other hand, he is to be censured for not firmly accepting Bartleby's limitations. George Bluestone notes the lawyer trying "a dozen ways of bending Bartleby to his will." He appeals to the tradition of scriveners, asserts his authority, uses cunning, threatens, delays, offers compassion, actually dismisses Bartleby, tolerates, gets angry, abandons, exculpates himself, and charitably invites him home. "Of course, each fails," says Bluestone, "because each is mistimed, mistaken, provocative or inadequate. Like Captain Delano [he] tries every key but the right one."32 One tactic the lawyer neglects is praise, which autistic persons appreciate. Even when Bartleby works overtime by candlelight, he gets no praise. The lawyer observes, "I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically" (p. 251). Thus, for lack of a ready smile or some other stereotyped social signal, Bartleby did not receive the meed of praise.
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The lawyers's choice of working space for Bartleby seems inspired in light of recent studies.33 It is a corner of a room near a window enclosed by two movable partitions, one a "high green folding screen" (p. 250). The window looks out on a brick wall, ill-lit from above. The effect is sensory deprivation. Recent experiments with autistic children in sensory isolation rooms have improved their behavior. "During isolation, demands and novel stimuli were gradually Melville's intentions in mixing the real with the stylized may have been (he may have expected Bartleby to be taken as a stylized Dickensian humor character), the effect of the discovery through clinical psychology that Bartleby is real indisputably alters the effect of the story on the reader. It is perhaps only a coincidence that the contemporary fascination with "Bartleby" is matched by the contemporary fascination with infantile autism. "Bartleby the Scrivener" teeters between pathos and tragedy for puzzled readers. Some find Bartleby heroic in negation, fully aware of his incompatibility with the world and nobly bringing the relationship to an end. Some readers merely feel sorry for him. Some find him strained and unreal and seek meaning in him as an instrument or a symbol, For my part, I have no doubt of Bartleby's reality as Melville describes him, a man with incurable organic illness who strives nobly against the odds and for lack of one understanding human being falls into the abyss. There is pathos, to be sure, but there is tragedy too, in the resonance of what might have been.