The Narrator’s Vulnerability in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

This paper discusses middle-class men's vulnerability by focusing on the narrator of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener."The narrator is a moderately successful lawyer.He appears far from being vulnerable due to his social status and economic success.However, his position is destabilized when he notices he unwittingly uses Bartleby's set phrase, the verb "prefer."When he realizes the scrivener's influence over him, he feels he is becoming unreasonable and, like him, unmanly as being reasonable had been regarded as manly in American middle-class society in the 19th century.Along with his other experiences, such as his sudden loss of position as Master in Chancery, his unwitting use of the verb "prefer" implies the insecurity of his identity as a middle-class man.Describing his relationship with Bartleby, he involuntarily reveals his vulnerability.This story shows the vulnerability of a middle-class man who is supposed to be exempt from it because of his seeming adaptation to a capitalist society.