In Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville targets our nation’s capitalistic system and authority. While the Transcendentalists often wrote of our American identity with a very optimistic tone, Melville wrote with the purpose of giving readers more of a reality check. Nevertheless, Melville eventually rose to fame with his calls for social reform and creative writing style despite his often cynical attitude. This manner of writing did not sit well with a lot of people at the time, so Melville received a lot of criticism toward his works when they were first published. Though he wasn’t as staunch of an activist as many of the Reform writers we have studied, Melville portrayed characters defying authority in some of his most famous works, including Moby Dick and Bartleby the Scrivener.
Melville still believed that change was needed in American culture, and he viewed America at the time in a much more pessimistic manner than the Reform writers and Transcendentalists. As was typical of the Dark Romantics, Melville often criticized Reform writers from the earlier part of the century.
Widely known as the “man who lived among the cannibals,” Herman Melville was one of the most famous Dark Romantic writers of the 19 th century.
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