A Reader's Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne

INSCRUTABLE CHARACTERS:

A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

MASTERARBEIT

Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Master of Arts (MA) an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Christoph HOFER

am Institut für Amerikanistik Begutachterin: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Roberta Maierhofer, MA

Graz, 2014

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION: The Phenomenon of the Inscrutable ...... 3 2. EDGAR ALLAN POE: Man of Mystery, Terror, and the Supernatural ...... 4 2.1. The Man of the Crowd – “It does not permit itself to be read” ...... 5 2.1.1. The Pursuit of the Inscrutable ...... 6 2.1.2. Readings of The Man of the Crowd ...... 12 2.2. The Fall of the House of Usher – “Doubling of the Inscrutable” ...... 15 2.2.1. The Narrator’s Perception ...... 16 2.2.2. The Relationship between Roderick vs. the House and the Narrator vs. the Reader .... 21 2.3. Ligeia – “An Unreadable Woman” ...... 25 2.3.1. The Familiar yet Inscrutable Lady Ligeia ...... 26 2.3.2. The Aftermath ...... 29 3. NATHANIAL HAWTHORNE: Explorer of Evil, Sins, and the Extraordinary ...... 33 3.1. Wakefield – “An Ordinary Man” ...... 34 3.1.1. What Man is Wakefield really? ...... 35 3.1.2. Wakefield’s Homecoming ...... 39 3.2. Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment – “Science, Supernatural, or Fraud?” ...... 42 3.2.1. Who is Dr. Heidegger? ...... 43 3.2.2. The Ambiguity of the Tale ...... 46 3.3. The Minister’s Black Veil – “A Priest Gone Astray?” ...... 51 3.3.1. The Black Veil as Part of the Inscrutability of the Tale ...... 51 3.3.2. Interpretations of the Minister’s Behavior...... 55 4. HERMAN MELVILLE: Representative of Riddles, Secrets, and the Abnormal ...... 59 4.1. The Lightning-Rod Man – “Struggle between Two Worlds” ...... 60 4.1.1. Who is the Lightning-Rod Man? ...... 61 4.1.2. Man of Faith vs. Man of Science ...... 64 4.2. The Fiddler – “A Truly Inscrutable?” ...... 67 4.2.1. The Story of Hautboy ...... 68 4.2.2. Who is the Fiddler? ...... 72

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

4.3. Bartleby, the Scrivener – “A Famous Inscrutable Character” ...... 74 4.3.1. The Inscrutable Scrivener ...... 75 4.3.2. Readers' Response to Bartleby ...... 79 5. CONCLUSION: A Comparative Analysis ...... 82 6. WORK CITED ...... 85 6.1. Bibliography ...... 85 6.1.1. Primary Sources ...... 85 6.1.2. Secondary Sources...... 86 6.2. Webliography ...... 94

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

1. INTRODUCTION: The Phenomenon of the Inscrutable

One of the most interesting questions about human nature is why people act the way they do, and the search for answers to this question drives human beings to try to understand and read other people’s behavior and motivations. In this quest, one particular mystery is those individuals who are inscrutable, unreadable, or simply unfamiliar. People are intrigued by such enigmatic phenomena and try to make sense of characters who act in strange and mysterious ways. In literature, the reader often encounters different types of unreadable characters who have a significant influence on the reading process and on how the reader perceives a text. The aim of this thesis is to examine how inscrutability is represented in the first place, and, additionally, to look at what ramifications the analysis of inscrutable characters has on the reading process. This thesis will explore nine different delusive personas created by three American authors: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Herman

Melville.

These three famous authors are representatives of the genre of dark Romanticism and share, besides having lived in the nineteenth century, numerous stylistic and personal similarities.

Their lives were full of trauma and change, not only on a personal level, but also as members of a changing American society that faced chaos and instability. In the 1800s, the United

States was still very young; however, the nation had already faced depression, uncertainty, and its citizens lived in a world in which slavery was still legal. Later, the nation's struggles would come to a head and lead to a new era, beginning with the Civil War in 1865. In addition to this outer turmoil, each of these authors had traumatic childhoods, including the deaths of family members, abandonment, and poverty. Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville each went through such difficult times, which only added to their already burdened personal lives.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

For this reason, when looking at their respective works, it is easy to understand why they mostly dealt with dark, uncanny, and mysterious themes. This thesis will examine one aspect of their mysterious themes, namely, as mentioned above, the inscrutable characters that commonly appear in their stories.

Another significant aspect of this analysis is the relationship between the reader and inscrutable characters. This thesis will examine how the reader becomes interested in such peculiar personas and how readers are lured into the mystery while trying to categorize and understand enigmatic characters. In this examination, the reader mostly relies on a first person narrator who also has a significant relationship with the ‘unreadable’ characters. This thesis will investigate how far the reader and the narrator are able to make sense of these characters, and, additionally, explore whether or not it is possible to fully read those characters.

Furthermore, another aspect that will be dealt with in this thesis is how inscrutable characters influence the reader’s interpretation of the stories and finally contribute to various readings of the tales. Therefore, it is important to understand how Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville's inscrutable characters differ from one another. This analysis starts with tales by Poe, followed by Hawthorne, and ending with Melville. A comparative analysis at the end of this text will then conclude this investigation of the differences and similarities between these three authors and their cryptic protagonists.

2. EDGAR ALLAN POE: Man of Mystery, Terror, and the Supernatural

Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809, provides numerous inscrutable characters in his tales. He is one of the early authors of the Romantic period and considered to be one of the inventors of

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

the genre of short fiction. Poe’s troublesome youth, with a father who left him early and a mother who died when he was three, contributed to his stories of terror and his unique writing that includes the supernatural and the unknown (web). The themes of the unknown and the supernatural play a crucial part in this examination of Poe's inscrutable characters, and the themes of gothic and terror can be recognized in many of his characters in his tales (web), which makes his work very suitable for an analysis of such mysterious characters. Poe’s ability to confuse the reader and to show insane thoughts is explicitly discussed in his short story, which starts as an essay named “The Imp of the Perverse”. In this work, the narrator explains that sometimes people act against their own best interest, which already points to the insane and uncanny behavior of Poe’s interesting characters. The following tales discussed in this thesis are “The Man of the Crowd”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “Ligeia”. The first story was chosen because it serves as a prime example of inscrutability, while the second story is probably the most famous of Poe's short stories. “Ligeia” was chosen because it provides insight into an inscrutable female character. All three short stories contain an enigmatic character, and demonstrate crucial characteristics of Poe’s dark Romantic writing, which includes a gothic setting, terror, and the uncanny.

2.1. The Man of the Crowd – “It does not permit itself to be read”

The first work discussed in this thesis is Poe’s short story, “The Man of the Crowd”, first published in 1840. The story provides not only a splendid example of inscrutability as a major theme; Poe also explicitly raises the question of the characters' inscrutability in the first line of this text. The quotation from a German book “es lässt sich nicht lesen – it does not permit itself to be read” (179) promptly states the problematic structure of the tale as well as its overall theme. This quotation can be applied to most of the inscrutable characters discussed in

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

this thesis, but one must be aware that the degree of inscrutability varies from story to story.

However, depending on the number of hints given by the narrator, the reading experience, identifying elements of inscrutability in the text, and resulting insights into these figures help to shed light on the problem. The question of whether one can interpret the meaning of such unreadable characters is a major point that is discussed in the first story.

2.1.1. The Pursuit of the Inscrutable

The unnamed narrator of "The Man of the Crowd" is driven to make sense of a peculiar old man – seemingly an unreadable character that the narrator is about to meet in the course of the story. However, not only the narrator is confronted with his inscrutability; as the story unfolds, the reader is invited to try and uncover the old man's secrets as well, and even deeply challenged trying to figure out this mysterious person. Even the beginning pulls the reader into the mysteries and secrets of Poe’s challenging tale: the introductory paragraph outlines the problematic endeavor that the narrator and the reader are faced with, and this self- referential commentary continues throughout the whole story: “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told” (179). Of all the works discussed in this paper, this tale refers to the tragedy and burden that the reader has to deal with most intensively. Poe’s quote from this German book also foreshadows1 the misfortune in the tale and warns the reader not to try to uncover the secrets of a character who is, according to Poe, meant to be unreadable. It is nevertheless exactly this premise that heightens the reader’s curiosity in the first place, and encourages him to defy the narrator’s warning and follow him in his journey to try to read the unreadable. According to Martin Gutierrez (159), the first paragraph is considered very vague and does not provide any real expectations for the reader. Gutierrez further states that the

1 For a definition: Nünning 2007

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

reader only gets a peak at the consequences of studying such characters, but is warned that these secrets can end in misery and crime. However, one can argue that this warning is also a trigger for the reader to dive further into the text, and consequently to make the readership more curious.

The first person narrator shifts from the general introductory paragraph to a very specific event not too long ago, in which he was sitting in a coffee house in London. It is important to examine the narrator because he is the only source of information about the unknown man in the crowd that the reader can rely on. The narrator says that “he had been ill in health, but was now convalescent” (179) and claims to be highly interested in everything right now. Poe further describes the narrator as very sensitive, in a heightened state of awareness, and specifically interested in the people that walk by the coffee house (cf. 179). Poe’s narrator is filled “with a delicious novelty of emotion” (180) and starts by making general and abstract observations from his spot. He watches all the people passing by, and begins to carefully categorize the passers-by in terms of class, appearance, and other significant attributes. After that, the narrator decides to focus more on details and becomes interested in the “innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, and expression of countenance” (180). Being within the coffee shop allows him to remain anonymous and thus to freely and unobtrusively observe the strangers for his own pleasure. The window of the coffee shop can be considered a threshold between the character’s secure position inside the shop, and the diverse and exciting world outside, with which the narrator becomes intensely preoccupied. He seems to be able to read and understand all those human beings without questioning his own judgments. With regard to the narrator’s over-confidence in reading people, Hayes states that the narrator is convinced he can read every single person (cf. 38). He also states that the narrator is having difficulties with his own observations and what is really happening. This may also apply to

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

the fact that the narrator’s self-described heightened awareness is in fact rather distracting or connected with his former illness, and therefore highly subjective. Hayes ultimately concludes that the narrator “uses the seen to imagine the unseen, [and that] it ultimately cannot reveal what remains hidden” (38).

The narrator, however, continues undeterred and is able to identify the classes to which people belong and through his self-described heightened awareness (cf. 180) to know their motivation as well. However, the ordinary merchants, clerks, and noblemen do not impress the narrator as he might have hoped, and he soon loses interest in them. Nevertheless, he keeps watching out the window as evening approaches, and claims that “there were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily understood” (181), as he points out the emergence of thieves and gamblers and the night draws near. One could argue that after regaining his health, his keen senses have been sharpened, and thus he is now able to read all the people wandering around in London. Interestingly, he states that he absorbs “darker and deeper themes for speculation” (182) and begins to become affected by Jewish pedlars, street beggars, drunkards, and other obscure individuals who stroll through the streets as day turns into night. The short story shows that the narrator is more fascinated by the extraordinary folk than by ordinary merchants or clerics. Because of his flustered psyche and sharp observation skills, the narrator is easily able to point out the differences between them all, and to understand their behavior. Through the reading process, the reader learns his skill of reading people and thus becomes entangled in the intriguing world of the narrator. The storyteller also mentions the “rays of the gaslamps” (183) that contribute to the enchanted atmosphere in that place. As nightfall continues, he further describes the mysterious lighting of the scenery, and becomes drawn to the individual faces in the crowd, which are highlighted through the low lighting. He then complains that the fast moving faces makes it hard for him to get more than

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

a quick glimpse of the strolling crowd. The dark and dreary atmosphere also mirrors his

“peculiar mental state” (183), although he argues that he is still able to “read […] the history of long years” (183) in each individual face. The scenery provides a certain dreamlike or even unreal situation, which seems to correlate with the narrator’s exceptional awareness and originality. Kennedy states that the narrator “falls under the influence of vague sensations”

(188), which means that his rational mind is constantly subverted by illogical constructs.

Those “irrational impulses” contribute to the narrator’s determination to read people, in addition to making him feel exceptional in his awareness.

As the narrator scrutinizes the moving crowd, he all of a sudden discovers a human being of peculiar interest. He describes this significant discovery as follows:

“suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepit old man, some sixty- five or seventy years of age,) - a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression. Any thing even remotely resembling that expression I had never seen before.” (183)

The narrator’s curiosity comes to its peak after the observation of this peculiar fellow. Up to this point in the story, the narrator’s point of view was limited and he had not been able to follow any of the people he had studied. Poe’s narrator had only indulged his affection for voyeurism from the coffee house window, and his position had been limited to the table he was sitting in that coffee shop. He, and therefore also the reader, rely only on his powers of observation, as he is not yet part of the moving crowd; however, the unfamiliarity of this mysterious person awakens in the narrator a “craving desire to keep the man in view – to know more of him” (184), and this desire relates back to the beginning of the story, in which the man can be compared to a book that does not permit itself to be read. Suddenly, the narrator decides to leave his secure position, as his desire to read that peculiar unknown man overwhelms him, and he heads into the crowd. He crosses the threshold of distant observation

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

and is lured by curiosity to become part of the crowd as well. He is able to keep track of the strange fellow and starts to follow him. At the same time, the narrator is able to examine that mysterious man and thus provides the reader with more detailed information about him: he is

“short in stature”, his clothes are “filthy and ragged”, and there is a glimpse “of a diamond and of a dagger” (184). This examination further increases the narrator’s curiosity, and his inability to categorize the stranger leads to him being lured deeper and deeper into the streets of London.

As the night progresses, “a thick humid fog hung over the city, soon ending in a settled and heavy rain” (184), which makes the pursuit more difficult. Again, the external atmosphere of the city life mirrors the internal mental state of the narrator because his vision is also foggy and clouded as he pursues the inscrutable character. His quest to follow the man becomes even more complicated as a huge wave of umbrellas emerges on the streets as he is pursuing the stranger. The narrator follows the man for hours, and it seems that the stranger does not really have a certain destination in mind; the narrator states that he is astonished “to see him repeat the same walk several times” (185). He also wonders why the man is not having any conversations or why he only stops briefly at certain shops without showing particular interest in them. This observation contributes to the narrator’s amazement and he becomes “firmly resolved that we should not part until I had satisfied myself in some measure respecting him”

(186). This commitment also applies to the reader and the enchantment that is created by the story. The reader’s curiosity can be compared to the narrator’s persistence as everyone expects a resolution regarding the man in the crowd. As the observation continues, an exhausted narrator tells the reader, “I was at loss to comprehend the waywardness of his actions” (186). The two characters reach the outskirts of London and the narrator’s perception of the environment turns into an “atmosphere teemed with desolation” (187), which again

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

mimics the psychological and physical state of the puzzled follower. A new day dawns, and the pursuit continues back and forth “in the wildest amazement” (187) until the narrator realizes that he is back at the starting point where the journey has begun. The sun is about to set again, and the reader experiences the narrator’s exhaustion and frustration as his own, but the peculiar stranger simply “resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation” (187f). At this particular point, the narrator comes to one final conclusion about the old man, which in fact is that this particular character is inscrutable and impenetrable:

“This old man, […] is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.” (188) With that knowledge, the narrator surrenders to the man of the crowd and also to the reader.

He remains baffled while the man of the crowd continues his walk. In the end, Poe’s narrator refers back to the German quotation at the beginning of the short story and reinterprets the quote by stating “perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that es lässt sich nicht lesen” (188). According to Nicol, the repetition of that quote suggests that the text can be read as “a kind of parable illustrating the points made at the beginning about mysteries which cannot be revealed” (467). The effects of that mysterious man are that the narrator feels compelled to actually tell the story in the first place. Another factor is a certain criminal aspect of the man of the crowd. As mentioned above, the narrator claims to have spotted a dagger and refers to the unreadable man as “a genius of deep crime” (188). Thus, the idea that this man is involved in some kind of criminal activity cannot be denied. This may also play a role in the narrator's diagnosis of the man's inscrutability. His personal conclusion is that sometimes inscrutability should be considered a mercy and not a burden.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

2.1.2. Readings of The Man of the Crowd

The narrator’s journey is symbolic of the mental process of a search for answers that people do not know. Nicol emphasises the comparison between the narrator and the reader (cf. 479).

Additionally, he states that it is crucial to understand the relationship between the narrator’s behavior and the readers confronted with the story. He claims that there is a significant bond between the reading process and the actual inscrutable character (cf. 479). Nicol further refers to “the effect of the story’s complex, self-reflexive structure – a dimension of ‘The Man of the

Crowd’ which is overlooked by Gunning and many other critics” (479). As mentioned above,

Nicol is also convinced that the pursuit of the unreadable character is comparable to the pursuit of knowledge. Since the result of the narrator's pursuit is rather disappointing, one can argue that the search for answers itself is presented as a major challenge in the short story.

Although the story starts in an ordinary coffee shop, trying to read the unknown lures Poe’s narrator into the wild streets of London and keeps him busy for more than 24 hours. His extraordinary pursuit shows, not only the obstinacy of the narrator, but also his peculiar or even not entirely sane state of mind. The story then goes back to the beginning without presenting an explanation for the behavior of this old man. Tally states that being left without a proper solution at the end of the story is part of Poe’s terror that is more explicitly known in his writings as “horrifically unfamiliar, as well as bizarre and complicated” (1). In this short story, however, “such terror is associated with the unknown […] what is at first merely unfamiliar and perplexing is actually inscrutable” (Tally 1). In this text, there are no bizarre situations; Poe’s ability to create a delusive character is the terror both the reader and the narrator are confronted with. Therefore, the mystery remains and the narrator confesses to the reader that this man is nothing but a “genius of deep crime” (188). This means that the reader

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

is left with the same emptiness as the narrator. However, when the narrator gives up and concludes that maybe it is because of the mercy of God that this character is unreadable, the reader, on the other hand, may continue to speculate and find his own reading of the man of the crowd. However, it is significant that the reader must depend solely on a narrator who presents himself over-confidently at the beginning of the story and seems to be forsaken by his own high awareness and peculiar ability to read people. His recovery from his sickness and the heightened senses he claims are its result contribute to the fact that this narrator must be considered as at least partially unreliable. The dream-like walk through the streets of

London that mirrors the mind of the narrator contributes to the fact that the reader is drawn into a more mysterious and blurred world. Furthermore, Poe manages to keep elements of

Romanticism in the story despite the spatial setting in a realistic urban landscape. To this,

Martin Gutierrez states that the visual depiction of the gaze of the city also serves as a certain distraction for the reader in the text. (cf. 166). The author states that “Poe uses several strategies to perform ‘hieroglyphic writing’ –signature analysis, phrenology, physiognomy- as means of reading characters” (166). This means that the purpose of the mirroring between the human narrator’s mind and the physical forms of the landscape is meant to confuse the reader and eventually creates the difficulty of reading the peculiar man of the crowd. Gutierrez also mentions the term “hieroglyphic doublings” (166), a form of doubling2 that functions as a cipher in a literary text. Additionally, Brevda argues that Poe divides “psyche into pursuer and pursued, self and other, ego and id, ‘detective’ and criminal, past and future” (360). Such a doubling creates an uncanny effect that also affects the reading process and creates significant parallels between those two phenomena. Most of the gothic elements in Poe’s story can be associated with the uncanny. It becomes obvious that because of the unreliable narrator and the mysterious old man, associated with the uncanny, a partly unrealistic and fairytale-like

2 Term coined by Freud, for a definition see: Freud - The Uncanny

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

atmosphere is created. Interestingly, Tally draws a connection between “Germanism” and terror (cf. 5). The elements of the unreadable character can also be labeled as unheimlich,

“after Freud and Heidegger, who emphasize the not-at-home-ness implicit in the uncanny"

(5). Furthermore, the story is a form of Poe’s early detective narratives, which, however, remains unresolved. Tally again states that Poe highlights the unreadability of the character.

The reader is placed in the “position of the perplexed observer” (6) and is confronted with the struggles of the narrator to figure out the man. As mentioned above, the narrator gives up but the reader is still able to read this peculiar character. Fink argues that, according to the narrator, the man of the crowd is inscrutable, but the readership may be able to recognize and use contemporary knowledge to interpret the man of the crowd (cf. 18). He also states that there are numerous clues in the text that “the narrator observes but is unable to interpret”

(Fink 18). Fink nevertheless provides similarities between Poe’s inscrutable character and the legendary Wandering Jew (cf. 18). The crucial question remaining is that of human motivation. One reason why the narrator becomes obsessed with the man of the crowd is that he has tried, unsuccessfully, to understand his behavior and actions. Thus, he also concludes with the fact that some things do not permit themselves to be read. The reader, at last, is left with a romantic atmosphere, which boils down to a specific but huge theme: the mystery of human nature.

The search for answers to human behavior and human motivation has always been one of the most important questions for mankind. Brevda, for instance, mentions a quotation by

Nietzsche which states that if there is something to be understood, there is also something to be despised (cf. 360). In addition, Nietzsche’s preface to On the Geneology of Morals states that “we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves […] we are not ‘men of knowledge’ (1). This means that we have to

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

become strangers to ourselves before we are able to actually ‘read’ others. Thus the narrator in this story is driven by such questions about mankind and leaves the reader only with minimal and subtle hints about the answers. In the end, the reader is challenged by a partly unreliable narrator and typical Poe-like atmosphere to come up with a plausible solution to this enigma.

This short story provides more information about the process of reading a character than an actual satisfying result. Tally says that Poe’s inscrutability is a hidden menace and a constant in most of his tales that depict individuals who follow their craving for sense-making and are troubled by hunger for knowledge (cf. 8). Fink describes the story as rather modern because, firstly, Poe does not solve the mystery, and secondly, he attempts to “engage the reader as an active participant in the construction of the narrative story” (32). While some authors claim that the reader is only a distant observer, others claim that the reader is more actively involved. Nevertheless, the reader is agitated by the inscrutable characters enough to try to read them, and to question their motives and behaviors. The following stories discussed in this thesis vary in their degrees of inscrutability, and provide different results in the reading experience.

2.2.The Fall of the House of Usher – “Doubling of the Inscrutable”

The second work discussed in this thesis is Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”. This examination of the text not only focuses on the inscrutable character Roderick Usher, but also his close connection to the house itself. As mentioned in the chapter above, Freud’s uncanny effect of doubling contributes to the unreadability of Roderick and the building. The unnamed

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

first person narrator describes the inscrutable character and the house in detail. Through the use of personification3, one can argue that the house in the story becomes a character of its own, which has strong parallels to the protagonist. Both the house and Roderick are therefore, to a certain degree, delusive characters, which the narrator is confronted with. The narrator, on the one hand, seems to be a reliable and sane person who, over the course of the short story, comes to be affected by Roderick’s disease and to suffer from insomnia. Bailey argues that the narrator is “a rationalist and a skeptic regarding the supernatural” (445) and that he seems to provide the reader with rational explanations for the mysterious happenings in the house. The following analysis provides examples of how the narrator is affected by those inscrutable characters and the effects they have, both on him and the reader.

2.2.1. The Narrator’s Perception

The story starts with the arrival of the narrator at the Usher family mansion. His first impression of the mansion is described as a “sense of insufferable gloom” (138). The narrator then goes into detail and begins to describe the house on the outside, as well as the surrounding threatening landscape. The view encompasses “bleak walls” (138), “white trunks of decayed trees” (138), and “the silent tarn – a pestilent and mystic vapour” (140).

Interestingly, he mentions the “vacant eye-like windows” (138) of the house several times in his narration, which serve as a first indication that the house is more than just a regular mansion because it seems that the building itself is watching the approaching narrator.

Furthermore, the use of personification serves to introduce the house to the reader as something living and also irritating. The observer feels rather uncomfortable and states that

“there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart – an unredeemed dreariness of

3 For a definition see: Nünning 2007

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

thought” (138). The reader feels immediately drawn into that unknown setting, firstly, by the detailed description of that gothic setting and secondly, by the narrator's openness about his inner emotional state of mind as he approaches the mansion. He continues to observe the house and feels immersed in the peculiar atmosphere that seems to cover the whole landscape.

The atmosphere, he claims, has “no affinity with the air of heaven” (140). He even speaks of a

“vivid force of sensations” (140), which seem to bother the narrator. The narrator explains that there “are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth”

(138). One can argue that this quotation already indicates that the mansion may not be an ordinary house from the beginning onwards because of the dark atmosphere, perceived by the narrator as something beyond human perception. The atmosphere of the outside once again mirrors the narrator’s mental state. As in “The Man of the Crowd”, this literary device is used not only to involve the reader more closely in the story, but also to question the narrator’s sanity in his observations. Timmermann argues that mirroring is a huge theme in the story, which can be seen in various examples. The house is mirrored in the tarn outside, the paintings that mirror Roderick, and, finally, the destruction of the house mirrors the downfall of the whole Usher family (236).

The question of inscrutability cannot only be applied to Roderick, but also to the ‘House of

Usher’ itself. One can argue that the house is more than the spatial setting of the story but something more vital and mysterious. De Vore argues that the spatial setting in Gothic tales has a high tendency to become a character of its own (web). This is certainly true for the house in Poe's story, which makes the house itself an inscrutable character. Supporting this claim is the fact that the building is strongly connected to Roderick Usher, which can be identified via the uncanny effect of doubling that will be discussed in detail below.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Concerning the landscape, Soliña Barreiro argues that the setting “shapes the emotion in the spectator; […] the feeling is not elaborated by the mind of the observer but induced by the landscape” (204). This is reflected in the way that the narrator’s emotional state is highly influenced by his observations about the mansion. Barreiro continues by stating that the outside objects are not simple natural but have a persona on their own and are therefore considered to be alive.

After describing the outside of the house, the narrator enters the house and again provides a detailed description of his first impressions. He perceives the inside of the mansion as equally frightening as it is outside. He observes the stairway and the rooms as the narrator comments on the dark mood by stating, “[d]ark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered” (142). He also seems to be frightened by the objects in the house, such as books and musical instruments, which he claims have “failed to give any vitality to the scene” (142). Furthermore, the narrator doesn't well because he seems to have “breathed an atmosphere of sorrow” (142). The reader experiences the horror that originates from the inside of the house as the narrator gets closer to its source, which seems to be the unreadable character Roderick Usher. All these observations contribute the themes of horror and terror that originate from the center of the house. Evans argues that the reason the reader also feels absorbed by those gothic themes is because “the work consists of images rather than incidents, of description rather than narration” (139). Such images allow the reader to draw their own pictures and create more room for imagination and creativity, which in turn lead to more opportunities to read the inscrutable elements in the story.

After analyzing the outside and inside of the mansion, the reader is finally introduced to the lord of the house, namely, Roderick Usher. Roderick and the narrator have been friends since

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

childhood. However, he claims to “[know] little of [his] friend” (139). Interestingly, during his approach to the house, the narrator has already mentioned the reason he has been called to immediately come and see his friend. It was of “importunate nature” (139) and the letter states crucially that Roderick suffers from an “acute bodily illness – of a mental disorder which oppressed him” (139). Roderick has requested a personal meeting, and the narrator has agreed, although at the beginning of the story he already shows some doubt about his endeavor. For the reader, the first information given about Roderick is crucial. If he is a man who has lost his sanity, that may already serve as one explanation for a certain unreadability of his character. Cock states that Roderick is a character who has “undergone a physical and psychological breakdown but who exhibits the distinguishing features of the artist and intellectual” (16). In that case, Roderick’s inscrutability can be linked to his illness, but also suggests at the same time that he has not gone completely insane. Back on the inside of the house, the narrator finally meets his childhood companion and begins to describe his odd appearance, concluding that he is not able to “connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity” (143). As the narrator begins to examine Roderick’s mental state, he soon discovers a “habitual trepidancy – an excessive nervous agitation” (143). The narrator describes his old friend as “lost drunkard” or “irreclaimable eater of opium” (143), however

Bailey claims that there is no evidence of drug or alcohol abuse (cf. 446). Such observations may lead the reader down the wrong path when trying to figure out Roderick. The narrator further states that there is something in him that “was alternately vivacious and sullen” (143), and points out his peculiar voice. Roderick explains to the narrator that he has “suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses” (143), which the narrator has been aware of since he met him in that mansion. Butler states that Roderick’s illness show numerous parallels between “medical theories about the progressive derangement of the mind and romantic theories about the growth if the mind perspective powers” (1). Butler further points out an

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

important fact concerning Poe’s inscrutable characters: those persons often suffer from a mental limitation, but at the same time have a higher awareness which makes it more difficult but at the same time more interesting for the reader to interpret their actions. As Roderick continues to explain his mental state in his own words, the narrator realizes that Roderick is living in pure fear. Not only is Roderick afraid of his own mental state, he further explains that he is worried about the illness of his sister Madeline, with whom he has lived in isolation for years. By investigating his mental insanity, the reader learns that not only Roderick seems to be a delusive character, but furthermore, that his sister’s illness has confused several doctors. Roderick states that the doctor’s diagnoses have been included “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and a frequent although transient affection of a partially cataleptical character” (145). The narrator only gets a glimpse of Madeline and seems to be more worried about his dear friend. He spends the next couple of days in the house consoling

Roderick and spending time with him, playing the guitar or reading poems to him. After a time, Madeline dies and Roderick states that they should keep the body in the house because he is unwilling to let any doctors examine her strange disease. After this unusual burial, the narrator learns for the first time that “the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them” (151). The reader might be surprised by the fact that the narrator was not aware that his childhood friend had a twin sister. This fact may indicate that the narrator does not know his friend as well as he claimed at the beginning of the story. Furthermore, this information contributes to the unreadability of Roderick's character. Roderick's condition worsens over the few next days.

He wanders around the mansion without a purpose, seems to be worn out, and the narrator surmises that his mind “was labouring with some oppressive secret” (151). Additionally, the narrator claims to have been infected with Roderick’s mental state, and therefore feels worse and worse. The uneasiness continues and the narrator is not able to sleep because he is

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

overcome by a “sentiment of horror” (152) that makes him wander around the corridors at night. He meets Roderick, also sleepless, and states that “there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes” (152), and the lord of Usher confesses that he is afraid of his own house. Both become obsessed with a strange glowing fog, but the narrator assures Roderick that it is a normal phenomenon and not at all supernatural.

In the end, the story takes a twisted turn as the believed-dead twin sister crawls out of the tomb. She causes fear and terror, which lead to the immediate death of Roderick. At the same time, the house begins to collapse and the narrator escapes before he is buried inside as well.

The abrupt ending of the short story and the death of the siblings doesn't provide a clear solution for either the narrator or the reader. According to Frey, many have tried to scrutinize the reasons for the breakdown (cf. 215). Some believe that the death of Roderick has destroyed the bond between the house and him, while other interpretations claim that there are logical explanations for the collapse of the house. The following section will investigate the relationship between the house and Roderick, which is significant when trying to read and understand this character.

2.2.2. The Relationship between Roderick vs. the House and the Narrator vs. the Reader

As mentioned above, the building and the main character share some crucial elements, which may be significant when trying to understand the inscrutable Roderick. The narrator reveals that the house seems to be alive because it exudes a dark atmosphere that seems to be closely related to Roderick’s mental illness. This analysis has already dealt with Freud’s uncanny effect called doubling, and, in order to be able to create a meaningful reading of Roderick, one

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

can assume that the house and Roderick are in fact doubles. By using this interpretation, the reader is actually partly able to read Roderick and to try to make sense of his behavior.

The analysis provides evidence that Roderick and the house of Usher are doubles. Both characters seem to be infected with some kind of illness and the narrator realizes that there is a close connection between the house and his friend. Firstly, the house and the protagonist share the name of Usher. Poe successfully creates confusion between the actual physical house of Usher and the genetic family line, with special regard to Roderick. Poe plays with the term because he both uses the term metaphorically and to describes a real house as well.

Roderick’s illness seems to be closely connected to the mansion and he even claims that the building itself is unhealthy. Interestingly, the setting creates a claustrophobic scenario whereas Roderick’s state of mind seems to be similarly closed off. In addition, the fact that

Roderick’s sister Madeline also seems to be sickened by the house, can be seen as another evidence of the uncanny effect of doubling. The building and the family suffer from an extraordinary interconnectedness, which can be identified from the beginning to the ending of the short story. Furthermore, Wilbur states in his critical essay “The House of Poe” that the setting described is nothing more than the mental landscape of Roderick’s mind (cf. 813).

Wilbur goes into more detail and claims that “The House of Usher is […] the physical body of

Roderick Usher, and its dim interior is, in fact, Roderick Usher’s visionary mind” (813). It can be argued that one purpose of this house is not only to mirror the mental state of the protagonist, but to really become one with it as a persona. This effect reaches its peak at the end of the story when Roderick dies and the house eventually collapses. When Roderick, the last surviving member of the Usher line finally dies, the house also collapses into pieces. This inevitably relates the death of Roderick to the breakdown of the old house and seals the end of the family line of Usher.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

This interpretation can be used to understand the ending of the story and also helps the reader to understand Roderick’s behavior and the origin of his illness. It seems that the whole family line suffers from a genetic illness and is therefore doomed. According to Cook, the House of

Usher is affected by an unknown curse, which has corrupted the family line and the decaying house as well (14). One can argue that the connection between Roderick and the house is a form of disease which seems to have spread. The only question that remains is the origin of the illness. One possibility is that the Usher clan has infected the mansion with the disease, or that the dreary house has driven the Usher family into madness. Nevertheless, the narrator is confronted with a mentally disturbed friend and a house of terror. He soon becomes affected by the delusive character’s odd behavior and also feels frightened by the dreary house he is living in. This means that the doubling effect not only contributes to the uncanny atmosphere, but also provides an angle for the reader to read the inscrutable lord of Usher. Robey uses a different approach in reading Roderick. He compares the whole tale to a prophecy such as the

Holy Land. According to Robey, it is evident “not only that Roderick was a prophet, but also what his obscure words foretold: a resurrection (Madeline’s) that ushers in an apocalypse”

(66). This approach strays from the idea of Roderick as an insane character and compares him rather to a biblical person. As many prophets in the bible are delusive characters, so Robey argues that Roderick is necessarily unreadable for the sake of this interpretation. Nevertheless, it is again up to the reader to trust Poe’s unnamed narrator and use that information to develop his own ideas about the readability of that character. Bailey argues that the reader is supposed to not only rely on the narrator, but rather that one “must look beyond the narrator […] and to understand we [the reader] must observe Roderick and his theories” (447). However, this thesis so far has shown that all of the information conveyed about Roderick is only from the unnamed narrator's point of view. The reader can use his observations and develop ideas in

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

order to understand the story, but all of those ideas nonetheless originate from the only source given in that text – the narrator.

The relationship between the narrator and the reader is a crucial element when analyzing unreadable characters. Besides questions such as the reliability of the narrator, it is often Poe himself who gives hints to the readership in order for them to gain a deeper understanding of his characters. Bieganowski argues that an active reader can contribute a new perspective to the text:

“Seeing Poe’s reader as actively mediating presences suggests a new perspective to the stories: as a set of responses by the narrator to the creative, imaginative, poetic word. The reader represents Poe’s ideal narrator, and Poe’s narrator represents his ideal reader.” (185)

The real narrator of the story is thus its readership. This again emphasizes the fact that the reader can go beyond the narrator, and use his imagination and experience to read Poe’s characters. One can even go so far as to claim that if the reader becomes the true narrator of the story, the reader is a double of the narrator just as Roderick and the House of Usher are as shown above.

To conclude, the second Poe story discussed in the thesis allows more room for speculation about the inscrutable. The protagonist, Roderick, is introduced as a man suffering from a mental illness that the narrator cannot make any sense of. The reader, however, is able to use various interpretations of the story to go beyond the narrator’s observations and to be able to read the inscrutability. Again, it is crucial to be aware that the information given to the reader is only given by the narrator and should therefore be acknowledged as limited. Furthermore, the effect of doubling and the vivid narration contribute to the use of the reader's imagination and creativity when reading Roderick. Additionally, the house itself is an inscrutable

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

character closely connected to the protagonist. Interestingly, the abrupt ending denies the narrator a solution, and again forces the reader to develop his own ideas about the events that take place in the story.

2.3. Ligeia – “An Unreadable Woman”

The third and final work analyzed by Edgar Allan Poe is the short story “Ligeia” published in

1838. In this work, the unnamed narrator’s relationship to the inscrutable character differs significantly from the previous tales by Poe discussed in this thesis. The tale contains numerous aspects regarding the pursuit of knowledge, insight into human life, and experiencing the fantastic. Mücke provides an essential description for the reader, namely that

“Ligeia” is “a philosophical tale about the nature and limits of the mind, the human body, thought, and the will” (58). These aspects all come into play when analyzing the inscrutable character of the story in relationship to the narrator. One exception in this story is that the narrator is in fact familiar with the mysterious person. That unreadable character in the tale is the narrator’s beloved lady, Ligeia, the first female delusive character dealt with in this paper.

This analysis will assert that Ligeia, although she is married to the narrator, is in fact a mystery to both the narrator and the reader. Whereas, in the previous tales, the narrators have not been familiar with the inscrutable characters, this story provides a different kind of inscrutability because of the pre-existing intimate relationship between Ligeia and the narrator. However, the reader soon realizes that the narrator doesn't seem to know much about his wife and, therefore, struggles to understand Ligeia in the same way as the reader.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

2.3.1. The Familiar yet Inscrutable Lady Ligeia

The short story starts with a significant quotation from the narrator about his lady, wherein he states that “I CANNOT, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia” (110). The fact that he does not remember basic information concerning his wife creates a certain ambiguity for the reader at the beginning of the tale. Upon a first impression, one might argue that the narrator’s mind is failing him, as he comments further that “my memory is feeble through much suffering” (110). However, as he continues, he also mentions that her peculiar character is so unique and so eloquent that this knowledge of her has simply gone “unnoticed and unknown” (110). This means that the reader is, on the one hand, dealing with a narrator who might suffer from memory loss, but on the other hand, and far more importantly, the first paragraph introduces an enigmatic delusive character named Ligeia who embodies crucial elements of inscrutability. Gruesser states that the narrator “is struggling to compose the story and failing to recall all the details” (147). The reason for his missing important information concerning his wife can either be accounted for by the narrator’s lack of memory or by Ligeia's inscrutability. Either way, the missing information contributes to the creation of inscrutability in the first place. Gruesser further argues that, “it crosses the reader’s mind that Ligeia may be nothing more than a scholar’s fantasy woman […] more spiritual than physical” (148). This means that perceptions of

Ligeia might differ between the narrator, who sees her as alive and unique, and the reader, who might question her very authenticity.

As the narrator continues, he remembers only vaguely that his wife’s origin might be somewhere “in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine” (110). Poe sometimes uses

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

references to Germany or German quotes4 to refer to something unknown, disturbing, or to induce terror. Introducing Ligeia as a woman of German heritage from a decaying city further contributes to her mysterious past. Ligeia seems rather familiar to the narrator because he states she has been “my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom” (110). Regardless of that, he is troubled by the Ligeia's persona because he fails to retrieve basic information about his wife. He claims that “I have never known the paternal name of her” (110). The narrator is so infatuated by this passionate and wonderful woman that he has never initiated to question her origin and figure out her mysterious and inscrutable character. In contrast to the other Poe narrators discussed in this thesis, he seems rather to accept the unreadability of his wife, and declares that romance is more important than knowledge. However, he recounts specifics about his wife’s appearance and voice in great detail, claiming that “no maiden ever equalled her” (111), and he speaks of extraordinary love for that woman. At the same time, he emphasizes her peculiar character as well. He has “felt that there was much of ‘strangeness’ pervading it” (111) and he has “tried in vain to detect the irregularity” (111) without success. Frushell also mentions her romantic qualities as a wife that the narrator falls for, but points out the mysteriousness of Ligeia, and underlines her connection to a world full of magic and insanity (cf. 18). The narrator is, in fact, puzzled about his wife’s strangeness, but seems to have learned to accept her unknown past by foregrounding her kindness and eternal love. He blames his emotional involvement for his lack of knowledge about her, which we attributes to a mystery that simply underlines her strange character. The most interesting aspect of their relationship is that although Ligeia is familiar to him, she still seems to hide certain aspects about her life and her personality from him. These mysterious characteristics seem to make her even more interesting for the reader, although the narrator is only blinded by his endless love and has accepted her

4 See “The Man of the Crowd”

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

mysterious persona. As the story progresses, he continues to describe the beauty of Ligeia.

The reader is provided with detailed descriptions of her face, especially about the shape of her mouth, eyes, and chin. The narrator becomes fixated on her “large eyes” (112), where he claims that her secret can be found. After idealizing her body, he states that “in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression”

(113). The only feature mentioned, besides the black eyes, is her long and dark hair that the narrator seems overly impressed by as well. Interestingly, Bieganowski compares the narrator's impressions of Ligeia to the effects of the tale on the reader. (cf. 181). Bieganowski explains that “the text calls attention to itself as narration, as an action going on in the present time of its being read” (181). The use of such present time may have an interesting influence on the reader for of two reasons: first, the focus is fully on Ligeia and puts additional emphasis on her beauty, and secondly, the reader is confronted with present and past tense in the story, as the narrator also talks about Ligeia's own past and the time when he and Ligeia became husband and wife.

The narrator then moves on by describing how Ligeia has helped him during his scattered metaphysical studies, with which he has been occupied since their early years in their marriage. However, the narrator then confesses to the reader that, “Ligeia grew ill” (115) and even states that “I saw that she must die” (115). He is with her in her final hours and mourns the unfairness of life and “her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away” (116). The narrator reads a poem to her, and being fully exhausted, he has to experience her last breaths until she dies. He mourns “she died; - and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow” (118). After her death, she not only leaves a suffering narrator who has sworn eternal love to his departed wife, but takes, all her secrets and mysteriousness with her as well. At this point, the chance of reading this character seems to

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

be null. However, the narrator is not even remotely interested in figuring out her inscrutability; rather, he feels betrayed because his Ligeia is no more. However, Eakin argues that even the narrator is interested in knowledge and explaining the unknown. Eakin refers to the detailed examination of her image and states the following:

“To examine the narrator’s preoccupation with the image of Ligeia, however, is to recognize that his drive to recall her is not merely the counterpart of her ambition to triumph over death but the expression as well of his own desire for ultimate knowledge.” (12)

This quotation emphasizes the fact that the narrator is interested both in knowledge and in figuring out his wife, although the text primarily indicates his affection to Ligeia, followed by sorrow for her loss. The following section focuses on the second part of the short story, including his sorrow, remarriage, and the already foreshadowed resurrection of Ligeia.

2.3.2. The Aftermath

After Ligeia's death, the narrator realizes how much she has contributed to his life. He knows how much guidance and help his deceased wife gave him. After a period of “weary and aimless wandering” (118), the widower decides to move away and purchase an abbey in a remote region of England. His progress in his studies is slow and without success, as the narrator claims to be “a bounden slave in the trammels of opium” (118). After a while he marries a woman with blue eyes and blond hair named Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.

One can argue that Rowena seems to be the complete opposite of his former true love Ligeia.

Sadly, the narrator realizes after a short time that this lady does not love him at all, and additionally, he still keeps thinking of his “unforgotten Ligeia” (118).

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

As their lives move on, Rowena eventually falls ill as well and seems to be bothered by certain sounds and movements in the tapestries of the new mansion. As Rowena becomes sicker and sicker, the narrator becomes more and more addicted to opium, which can be seen as a crucial threshold with regard to the narrator’s reliability in the story. At the point that he starts smoking opium, one can argue that the narrator makes a transition from a reliable, sane person to a grieving and unreliable storyteller. As his addiction progresses, he notes that an

“invisible object had passed lightly by my person” (122). He keeps watching over Rowena and states that “I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw […] drops of brilliant and ruby colored fluid” (122) falling into her glass of wine. From then onwards, her condition worsens and the narrator is filled with shadowy, wild visions potentially caused by the overconsumption of opium. Rowena’s life is almost gone, and the narrator, once again over-exerted, is fighting for her life. However, at the same time he keeps having visions of his long lost love Ligeia. After trying to save Rowena’s life, the narrator seems to be completely worn out through this terrifying night. At the moment Rowena seems to be gone, the narrator is shocked to see the corpse stand up and move away from the deathbed. The narrator questions the identity of that person, as it seems that the corpse has become taller than Rowena. As the narrator removes the cerements, he makes a shocking revelation. The person’s hair “was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight!” (126). The end of the story may therefore be surprising, but after this analysis, one can argue that Ligeia has never completely left the narrator’s mind, nor his opium-obscured view of life. Since the narrator can be seen as unreliable at this point, one can still question the ending and whether or not Lady Ligeia really returned. The narrator describes the return of his lost wife as follows:

“And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. ‘Here then, at last,’ I shrieked aloud, ‘ can I never – can I never be mistaken – these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes – of my lost love – of the lady – of the LADY LIGEIA’” (126)

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Bieganowski states that the resurrection is a “linguistic event” (182). He argues that Ligeia is not only been brought to life plot wise, but furthermore also linguistically, through the narrator’s observations, and thirdly, by the reading process itself. Bieganowski argues that the reader “is led by the text to actively experiencing the creation of the imagined Ligeia” (182).

This active experience affects the whole reading process and can therefore lead to different conclusions of the story. This thesis will now explore two major theories concerning the ending. Gruesser argues that one reading is to take the text literally and “accept the revivification of Ligeia in Rowena’s body” (145) while the second reading allows one to

“argue for psychological realism and claim the tale is an investigation of erotic obsession”

(145). The following section examines both possible readings and explains the reader’s effect on the unreadable character Ligeia.

The first reading allows for the interpretation that Ligeia is in fact a supernatural character.

This theory explores aspects of coming back to life, shadowy creatures that are perceived by the narrator, and her mysterious past. Sweet argues that “Ligeia’s death serves for the narrator as both confirmation of the existence of a supernatural dimension and of the impotency of normal man” (86). This reading clarifies the narrator’s uncertainties about Ligeia and explains her mystery by shifting the plot into the fantastic5. Ligeia is, therefore, as this examination has shown, a rather unreadable and fantastic character that perfectly fits into Poe’s gothic setting, which includes themes of death and resurrection. This means that Ligeia’s love and affection for the narrator has proven stronger than death and indicates that Ligeia inhabits a sphere beyond human perception. Therefore, the reader’s understanding might be especially crucial in examining parts that include Ligeia and the unknown. Additionally, the fact that the narrator has a particular interest in metaphysical studies gives credence to the idea that Ligeia

5 For a definition see: Todorov – The Fantastic

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

might have some powers that are concealed to the narrator and reader. Therefore, it is certain that inscrutable characters are closely connected to the supernatural elements in Poe’s tales.

The ending also allows for a second approach, which is the interpretation that the narrator’s opium abuse and exhaustion have created a huge illusion. In this reading, Ligeia is still considered to be an unreadable character but the ending is seen as vague and highly untrue because of the unreliable narrator. As his second marriage does not work out, the narrator starts consuming opium, which turns into a heavy addiction. Furthermore, he becomes totally exhausted during the night as he tries to save Rowena from dying. The combination of opiates, exhaustion, and the experience of two wives' deaths might have caused him to reach a state of insanity. Therefore, if the reader chooses this reading, one might argue that the last paragraph is not real and only happens in the narrator's mind, because of his narrator’s mental and physical state.

Nevertheless, Ligeia is a delusive character because of the information shared in the first part of the short story, in which the narrator was clearly reliable. The only difference is that the second interpretation does not provide evidence for Ligeia’s connection to unearthly themes.

The second approach also examines how the narrator perceives her as an unreadable character, which can have a huge influence on the reading experience. One has to keep in mind that besides the two interpretations, there is a vast amount of academic literature on the topic, which combines both camps and introduces entirely different readings. For example,

Jones' provides applies a literal and psychological reading by comparing Ligeia to the myth of the sirens (cf. 33). He argues that Poe’s intention was for the tale to be able to work on a supernatural level but also to allow a reading without heading in the direction of the fantastic.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Regardless which interpretation of the ending is accepted, the whole story centers on the mysterious persona of Ligeia. According to Shi, the story contains numerous enigmas that refer to the inscrutable character. (cf. 490). The first enigma is Ligeia, the second is her possible resurrection, and the third is the question of reliability of the narrator. However, the first of these is the central point of this analysis. As Shi suggests, concerning her persona,

“this enigma is the aporia, the navel of the text” (491). At least for the reader, questions about her persona and her origins become even more interesting after the abrupt and the possible fantastic ending of the story.

As in all three tales by Poe discussed in this paper, the reader is confronted with an unexpected ending that not only leads one to re-read the tale, but also widens the speculations for those peculiar characters that are involved in abrupt and supernatural endings. The readership is affected by the gothic setting, the first person narrator, and those peculiar characters which all add up to the theme of inscrutability.

3. NATHANIAL HAWTHORNE: Explorer of Evil, Sins, and the Extraordinary

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived from 1804 to 1864, is the second author of the Romantic period discussed in this thesis. Like Poe, Hawthorne also had a difficult upbringing since his father died when he was four years of age and he lived with his mother and siblings in the house of his grandparents (web). Hawthorne’s work explores also themes of the supernatural, the unknown, trauma, and often Puritanism, which makes him also part of the Romantic

Movement. Hawthorne and Poe never met in person but they had an ongoing correspondence in which they reviewed and criticized each other's work (web). He is often considered to be one of the main authors of dark Romanticism and has created numerous inscrutable personas

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

in his work. Tharpe describes how “Nathanial Hawthorne is enigmatic in all respects both in his life and in his work […] one is inclined to leave him with whatever quite personal secrets he may have had, as he tended ultimately to do with his characters” (40). Hawthorne’s approach focuses less on terror and fear than Poe's, but elements of the uncanny can still be found in his texts. In contrast to Poe, he takes a more mixed approach between a fantastic and realistic world. The inscrutable characters are nevertheless deeply connected to Romanticism and are therefore interesting to compare with Poe’s ‘unreadables’. The short stories discussed in this section are “Wakefield”, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”, and “The Minister’s Black

Veil”. The stories “Wakefield” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” are rather famous tales, while

“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” provides insight into an inscrutable persona that has sadly never gained fame among fans and critics.

3.1. Wakefield – “An Ordinary Man”

The first work discussed by Nathaniel Hawthorne is his short story “Wakefield”. The protagonist is the unreadable character Wakefield, who is analyzed in this tale. Wakefield is possibly one of the best examples of Hawthorne’s characters in terms of inscrutability.

Wakefield is described as an ordinary man, who lives a happy life with his wife in London, until he suddenly decides to leave his apartment, and does not come back for over twenty years. As in the stories examined by Poe above, Hawthorne’s short story is also told by an unnamed first person narrator. Interestingly, the first paragraph provides information for the reader about how the narrator has heard of a rather peculiar incident that involves this persona. He recalls an article from an “old magazine or newspaper” (63) and introduces the protagonist by stating, “let us call him Wakefield” (63). He summaries for the reader the outline of the story and calls the incident as “the strangest instance on record, of marital

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

delinquency” (63). The narrator only remembers that Wakefield leaves his wife and home for twenty years and rents an apartment in the next street. After a long period of time, Wakefield spontaneously decides to come back to his wife and “became a loving spouse till death” (64).

The narrator spends considerable time emphasizing that he finds this odd behavior, which he considers “unexampled, and probably never to be repeated” (64). One significant aspect of the beginning is that the narrator addresses the reader directly by inviting him to join the narrator in the twenty year journey of Wakefield. He also promises a rewarding moral at the end of the story, in addition to the following option: “if the reader choose, let him do his own meditation” (64). The beginning of the story shows some explicit elements that underline the peculiar relationship between a narrator and reader when trying to read such strange characters. On the one hand the reader is welcome to follow the narrator’s information concerning Wakefield but he also states that the reader can follow his own ideas when figuring out that persona. Either way, the narrator continues to describe Wakefield and his journey.

3.1.1. What Man is Wakefield really?

After the introductory paragraphs, the narrator poses the major question of this analysis, that is, “What sort of a man was Wakefield?” (64). Both the narrator and the reader are interested in what sort of characteristics a man must have to be able to leave his wife for such a long time and be able to return as if nothing had happened. The narrator begins his examination by repeating that everyone is “free to shape out our own idea” (64). The following description provides a profile of a man who seems to be stuck in his daily routine life. He is described as being “in the meridian of life” (64), “never violent [...] sobered into calm, habitual sentiment”

(64) and most interestingly, described by his friends as a person “who was the man in

London, the surest to perform nothing to-day which should be remembered on the morrow”

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

(64). Weldon says that Wakefield “has a well-defined social role but can no longer accept it, or, at least, needs to reevaluate its worth before he can continue on his way” (69). As the narrator states, he is in the midst of his life and still feels that something is missing. The reader can compare the situation in a way that Wakefield is also in a midlife-crisis in his life.

By taking this first information into account, it seems hard to believe that such a man is actually capable of leaving his wife and his ordinary life for over 20 years. Wakefield is further described as “intellectual, but not actively so” (64), which also contributes to the mystery of why this man pretends to go travelling, but in fact lives on the next street, completely abandoning his family and friends, for such a long time. However, the narrator points out that only his wife is aware of a “little strangeness” (65) in his character. She “was partly aware of a quiet selfishness […] of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy attribute about him” (65). The question that arises is thus whether those observations provide enough of an explanation to account for such an insane behavior. One could argue that because

Wakefield is so tired of his daily routine, he feels suppressed in his personal life, which steadily contributes his longing for independence and freedom. Therefore, he overcomes his own limitation and crosses his threshold by moving into a new flat alone, but is still close enough to keep watch over his wife. This paper focuses on the fact that Wakefield is an unreadable character that may allow room for interpretation because of some significant passages provided by the narrator. The interesting fact that Wakefield is an ordinary man may also prove that deep inside this man is stuck in his life and uses an act of spontaneity to escape his everyday boredom. This example of Wakefield’s behavior might be a chance to provide a starting point to read and also to understand Wakefield’s motivation.

In the following, the narrator portrays a scenario in which Wakefield says goodbye to his wife, pretending to go on a business trip, and leaves by saying that he will be back in a week.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

He then mentions that after Wakefield has been gone for years, his wife has been a widow longer than she was a wife, but that “she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow” (65). The narrator moves on and provides a precise summary of Wakefield’s time in his personal exile.

He describes, as mentioned above, Wakefield’s new home in the next street. Wakefield is described as a “feeble-minded man” (66), who becomes oddly interested in how his absence might be perceived by his wife. The narrator states that a “morbid vanity” (67) keeps

Wakefield from going back, plus that night away might indicate a change of heart after which he decides not to come back home at all. Wakefield steps out from his normal life but keeps watching his wife from the window sometimes. The implied reader is supposed to make sense of Wakefield and try to understand his behavior. Kelsey, however, provides a feminine approach to Wakefield’s inscrutable character. According to Kelsey, the protagonist “could be read as a voyeur who sets up the scene of his absence in order to make his wife the object of his persistent and sadistic gaze” (17); Kelsey goes on to suggest that both the narrator, whose imagination is primarily responsible for the detailed descriptions, and the reader, who has chosen to read Wakefield, participate in that gaze, and thereby collude with Wakefield as a pervert who is satisfied watching his wife suffer. The narrator refers to himself in the first person at the beginning of the story (63), and also includes the reader in his narration by the use of "us", when he makes the generalization that “none of us would perpetrate such a folly”

(64). One problem with that approach is that it might seem that Wakefield is a sadistic husband, but in the end he is the one who suffers the most and gives up all privileges of life.

What follows Wakefield's disappearance from his former life is a complete transformation of the man. The narrator firstly mentions that he undergoes “a great moral change” (67) and then also begins to change his appearance by using a wig and wearing Jewish clothes. Finally, he says that “Wakefield is another man” (68). Wakefield keeps himself hidden in his apartment

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

for weeks and the narrator explains that he becomes bound to this place for many years. After ten years of separation, the narrator describes a random encounter between Wakefield and his wife in the streets of London. Both have changed in their appearance and even though their hands touch and they look into each others eyes, the wife moves on. She is not able to make sense of that encounter, but Wakefield recognizes his wife and questions his actions by crying to himself “Wakefield! Wakefield! You are mad!” (70). The narrator states that he might really be an insane person and refers to the “singularity of his situation” (70) as the cause of the sudden revelation of what he has done. Polk states that Wakefield’s wandering around the streets of London can be compared to Poe’s tale “The Man of the Crowd”, which was examined above (cf. 555). Both inscrutable characters wander through the streets and are driven by their strange behavior. Whereas the “Man of the Crowd” seems almost entirely unreadable, Wakefield allows the reader to be more creative in their interpretations. The narrator in “Wakefield” underlines his strangeness and reveals that although Wakefield keeps saying that he will return home, he has been gone for over twenty years. The narrator describes his disappearance from the ordinary world as follows:

“He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from the world – to vanish – to give up his place and privileges with living men, without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his” (70).

This quotation emphasizes how Wakefield has cut himself off from the living world. Perry states that Wakefield withdraws from his self and is therefore able to change, not only his appearance, but also his attitude (cf. 618). Perry speaks of the wish everybody sometimes has:

“to be invisible, to observe the events of the world without the contamination of one’s presence” (618). However, the problem that is created by his disappearance is that he does not only live a solitary life, but has also given up all rights as a human being. He seems to be living a life as a dead person without being physically dead. According to the narrator, the twenty years have been not longer than the week Wakefield wanted to stay away in the first

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

place. He may have lost his sense of time as well. Wakefield has ceased to exist in life and has become stuck in that illusionary existence. Additionally, he has become empty in terms of his emotions, a factor that is decisive when it comes to his return home.

3.1.2. Wakefield’s Homecoming

As mentioned in the beginning of this tale, the inscrutable Wakefield returns home after twenty years of being in his personal exile. Without any human interactions for such a long time, Wakefield wanders through the streets of London during a rainy night in autumn. He suddenly stops at his former home and beholds his wife through the window. A quick thought makes him suddenly enter his old home: “Shall he stand, wet and shivering here, when […] his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes” (71). The narrator states that

Wakefield is no fool, and enters the door and approaches his poor and surprised wife. The narrator states that the reader and the narrator shall not cross the threshold with him and ends the tale with Wakefield finally coming back home. However, the narrator concludes with a final paragraph, which again, as in the beginning, is addressed solely to the reader. He first refers to the happy ending of the story by arguing that this reunion has only been possible because it “occurred at an unpremeditated moment” (71). This suggests that only Wakefield's spontaneous act has made it possible for him to step back into life and return to his spouse.

Kevorkian states that Wakefield’s return home is out of his control (cf. 184). Kevorkian further argues that Wakefield is unknown to himself: he was not aware that he was going to leave his wife for that long, nor was he aware that he would return to her on that particular evening twenty years later. Those crucial decision are, firstly, spontaneous and secondly, not even predictable by Wakefield himself (cf. 185). The quotation by Nietzsche mentioned in

“The Man of the Crowd”, can be used to read Wakefield as well. Nietzsche claims that “we

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

are unknown to ourselves” (15) and that “we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves” (15). In the case of Wakefield, one interpretation clearly shows that he was doing something unpredictable, which he had never done before in his life. Therefore, one can argue that as described in Nietzsche’s preface, Wakefield has misunderstood himself and has become a stranger of his own identity. In other words, he has chosen to do something no one has expected of him, not even himself. By doing so, he has overcome his daily routine and has gained his freedom. He needed to take this selfish step in order to realize what he is missing and the fact that he could no longer intervene in other people’s life. It is for this reason that he is then able to make this spontaneous return. Therefore, a long planned return, as he claimed to want throughout the story, would never have worked for Wakefield. Finally, the narrator also fulfills his promise with regard to the moral introduced at the beginning of the text. He tells the reader that this peculiar character and his unique endeavor “has left us much food for thought” (71). With that, he explicitly refers to the reading process and the ability of the reader to actually be able to understand Wakefield’s behavior. However, in the moral, the narrator provides his own conclusion and his attempt to read Wakefield:

“Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like, Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe” (71).

The final paragraph of the short story can be accepted as the narrator’s interpretation of

Wakefield’s behavior. He reads the person as the “Outcast of the Universe” (71), a statement which underlines Wakefield’s apathy about the world's affairs. However, if one takes a closer look, the statement that Wakefield is a total outcast may not be entirely true. Bunge argues that a close analysis of that statement is in fact contradictory. The narrator states that

Wakefield becomes a loving husband after his return and until the end of his days; he refers to the reunion as a happy return (cf. 39). Bunge states that “Wakefield’s behavior doesn’t isolate

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

him, his emotional emptiness does” (40). This means that after twenty years of absence his affection for Mrs. Wakefield has increased and it has only taken that one moment in the rain to see his folly. He is able to return and step back into life. He may have become the “Outcast of the Universe” (71) but he has managed to come back. However, one should be aware that the reader does not cross the threshold back into his life with him, but is rather left with the fact that he “became a loving spouse till death” (64). This ambiguity also creates confusion for the reader. Bunge states that the narrator’s purpose for using this moral is to distance himself and every other person from Wakefield (cf. 64). Furthermore, he warns the reader that such behavior, as Wakefield exhibits in the tale - that “stepping aside for a moment” (71) - leads to a solitary life, from which is hard to find the way back. In the case of Wakefield, he can be considered an odd person because of his longing to “step aside” which makes him an unreadable character. Although this story ends with a happy ending, the question of his primary motivation remains for the reader. As previously mentioned, one possibility is that

Wakefield has become sick of being an ordinary man, which results in him doing something he has never done before. In addition, his wife has noticed a certain strangeness in him, which contributes to the theory that this man is possible less ordinary than previously thought.

Hawthorne’s story provides unique access for the reader. One must keep in mind that the narrator is elaborating on an article as mentioned in the very beginning. This means that most of the short story is already the narrator’s commentary about a man who has left his wife and returned after twenty years of absence. It is the narrator’s imagining of the details, which the reader is invited to follow. Therefore, the most part of the story is already a possible reading of the inscrutable. The ending simply allows further investigation of this unique case and goes beyond the narrator’s imagination. Swope states in his article that the narrator deals with a common problem: to find one’s place in the world (cf. 209). He compares “Wakefield” to the

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

detective stories by Poe and states that the tale is one of the earliest about missing persons (cf.

209). As for Wakefield, who chooses, on his own terms, to step out of society, his case inspires the reader to ask questions about, “how am I to know my place in the world?”

(Swope 209). Weldon even argues that the story is “both freakish and disturbingly familiar”

(74). Therefore, the story seems to easily attract the reader’s attention because of Wakefield disturbing behavior, but at the same time, it is also realistic and possible in everyday life.

Then again, this philosophical approach goes hand in hand with the narrator’s moral at the end which states that one who decides to step out of society may never be able to enter again.

Interestingly, Wakefield’s story shows exactly the opposite. The unreadable protagonist flees, becomes the “Outcast” and manages to re-enter life. In terms of inscrutability, the reader might rethink the idea of understanding Wakefield’s behavior and go further and ask why the narrator warns the reader about a character who actually succeeded in stepping back into social life. This chapter has shown that the real mystery lies in Wakefield’s return, and counter to the narrator’s moral, Wakefield succeeds in stepping back into life.

3.2. Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment – “Science, Supernatural, or Fraud?”

The second work examined by Nathaniel Hawthorne is his short story, “Dr. Heidegger’s

Experiment” which was published in 1837. The narrator tells the story of a man named Dr.

Heidegger. In this chapter, the reader is challenged not only by Heidegger, as an inscrutable character, but furthermore his profession as a doctor is called into question. The narrator focuses on Heidegger, as will this examination, and the following analysis will discuss the enigma of Heidegger and his puzzling experiments.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

3.2.1. Who is Dr. Heidegger?

As with most of the tales dealt in this thesis, the first sentence often gives away a particular piece of information concerning the protagonist of the story. Dr. Heidegger is described as a

“very singular man” (99), who has become old but is still practicing in his field of study. The beginning already gives away the fact that Heidegger is not an ordinary person, and over the course of this analysis, one has to question what kind of doctor he really is. At the beginning one might believe he is an ordinary medical doctor, but in the course of the short story,

Heidegger can be read in various ways. This examination provides evidence that he might be, besides a medical doctor, a scientist, an alchemist or even a fraud. His peculiar field of study is also part of the mystery that involves that unreadable character. In this story, the narrator’s relationship to the inscrutable character is part of the mystery because it is not clear how the two know each other. The narrator knows quite a few intimate details about the man, he has a sarcastic tone, but seems not to reveal from where he knows that man. One piece of evidence is that the narrator mentions that some stories of Heidegger’s practices might “be traced back to my own veracious self” (101). This hints that the narrator might have been a patient of

Heidegger a long time ago and therefore had insight into that peculiar character.

Heidegger has invited three old men to his chamber: a merchant, a Colonel, and a politician, and “a withered gentlewoman” (99), of whom the narrator states that their “greatest misfortune [..] was that they were not long ago in their graves” (99). This quotation already indicates that the experiment in the story is about those four guests. The three gentlemen were all in a romantic relationship with the widow in their youth, but have since become old, and mourn for the good old days. The unnamed narrator then also mentions that “Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves” (99) which he argues is nothing extraordinary when dealing with old people. However, that hint at the

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

beginning of the story provides the first evidence of the strangeness of the characters involved.

The narrator continues by describing the peculiar room in which the doctor is doing his experiments. He begins by stating that it is a “very curious place” (100), depicted as a “dim, old-fashioned chamber” (100), which seems not to have been cleaned for a long time. In the chamber are lots of bookcases filled with books, articles and letters. The narrator points out a

“bronze bust of Hippocrates” which Heidegger often used for consultations in his cases. This indicates that Heidegger’s field of study is connected to medicine since Hippocrates6 was a

Greek philosopher who became the father of medicine. The observation then moves to

Heidegger’s closet in which the narrator claims that Heidegger has a skeleton. Then he focuses on a mirror in that room which seems to be magical. He states that the looking glass provides numerous stories and contains the spirits and visages of Heidegger's dead patients

(cf. 100). A portrait of a young woman can be found on the other side of the chamber. The narrator then explains to the reader that Heidegger was in love with a woman a very long time ago, who accidently “had swallowed one of her lover’s prescriptions” (100) and then died on their wedding night. This insight shows that the narrator knows numerous intimate details about Heidegger’s life, but it is still not clear to the reader what kind of relationship the narrator and the doctor share. Nonetheless, it becomes evident that many of the doctor's patients have died and that the pills from his prescriptions may either have been drugs or poison. At this point, the reader is already aware that Heidegger must have had a dark past because of those many dead patients, his wife who died by his own prescriptions and a skeleton in his closet. However, the narrator never explains any of those happenings. Then the narrator claims to reveal the most curious item in Heidegger’s study: a big black book without

6 Ancient Greek philosopher and father of medicine

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

a title. The narrator refers to it as a “book of magic” (100), which might be the most crucial evidence that Heidegger is not an ordinary medical doctor. The footnote in Hawthorne’s Short

Stories remarks that this particular book is also referred to in Hawthorne's story "The

Birthmark" and is connected to the use of alchemy. As mentioned above, Heidegger might be an alchemist who deals with supernatural phenomena. Alchemy7 is considered to be the link between medicine and magic, and goes beyond the field of common medical doctors.

Therefore, one can argue that Heidegger, who uses such a book, is not only an alchemist, but that he might have already conducted experiments in that field before. The fact that Heidegger is connected to alchemy contributes to his perception as an unreadable character and to the mystery of his persona. The following examination concentrates on the major plot of the short story, namely, his experiment with his four guests.

After the first speculation about Heidegger’s persona and the uncanny description of his chamber, the narrator returns to the tale’s plot. As mentioned above, the old doctor has invited four friends to his place and asked them if they would participate in an inquisitive experiment.

Doctor Heidegger opens his old book of magic and takes from the pages an old, withered rose. The three old men and the widow watch as he puts the old flower in a vase full of water on the table. He claims that his one true love gave him that flower half a century ago. The participants watch closely as the withered rose slowly turns back into a true flower and begins to blossom again. The audience remarks on it as a nice trick but question Heidegger’s purpose in showing it to them. The protagonist replies with a question “Did you never hear of the

‘Fountain of Youth’?” (102). The doctor further explains that an acquaintance of his has discovered the true place of the fountain and he has retrieved the elixir which can be found in that vase on the table. Heidegger states that he is willing to share the elixir with his four

7 Often in connection with an Elixir of Life

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

fellows in order to observe its effects on human beings. He pours the elixir into four champagne glasses which he has also put on the table. The narrator states that the fluid “was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas” (102) and seems also to have a pleasant scent. The participants note that “it possessed cordial and comfortable properties” (102) and despite a certain skepticism, they agree to drink the elixir. This information about the elixir implies that Heidegger has added one of his own substances to the water and the reader might question what the substance really is. Without further notice, the participants start to drink the elixir and immediately gain improvements in their vitality. The narrator describes that “they gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows”

(103). The participants have doubts about the effects but soon discover that they are really back in their youth again. However, they also state that “the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities” (104). The three men try to dance with the widow, who is now blessed again with a beautiful young appearance. Just as they did in their youth, the men start to fight over her and suddenly the vase falls to the floor and the valuable elixir is gone. At the end of the tale, the participants become old again and realize that the effects of the elixir do not last long enough. Heidegger warns them that being young again brings back old problems and seems to be trying to teach them a lesson. However, as the tale ends, the old people are obsessed with the idea of finding the fountain for themselves, and they leave the doctor’s residence.

3.2.2. The Ambiguity of the Tale

As the story has shown, there are various ways of reading "Dr. Heidegger". In contrast to

Poe’s inscrutable characters, Hawthorne’s Heidegger allows for many different angles to figure out that character. In addition, the question of the authenticity of the elixir is related to

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Heidegger’s own agenda. All in all, the atmosphere of the story, including the chamber as a spatial setting, contributes to the various ambiguous readings of the story. To begin with,

Heidegger might, at first look, be considered a medical doctor because this seems the easiest conclusion. The book of Hippocrates and his treatments might hint that he has helped patients with all kinds of diseases. However, as the narrator continues he points out all kinds of experiments the man is doing. Thus, the reader might come to the conclusion that Heidegger’s primary purpose is not to help people but to experiment with them. This reading allows the reader to perceive this character as a scientist who is interested in the use and effects of prescriptions and less on the wellbeing of his patients. The fact that many of his former patients are dead supports the interpretation that he is a reckless scientist who does research for his own purposes. However, the tale does not provide a proper solution, so, again, the reader’s approach to the story affects how he actually reads this character. What is more, the variety of readings is not limited to those mentioned above, for the narrator introduces the

“book of magic” (100) and by that the reader dives into a more magical approach to the story.

The question of whether the doctor is an alchemist or even dealing with supernatural powers might confuse the reader even more when trying to understand Heidegger. As the story progresses, the reader is confronted with a more and more fantastic aspect: the mysterious death of Heidegger’s wife by his own prescriptions. In this approach, one might argue that

Heidegger is grieving for his wife and blames himself for her death. Because of that he began to experiment with alchemy, and enters a dark path of science that goes beyond a realistic reading of the story. Another approach to Heidegger is that he is neither a doctor nor a scientist but only a fraud. He uses fake magic and illusion to confuse his patients and is only interested in his own gain. All of these different readings of Heidegger have a significant impact on the interpretation of the story and the question of whether the elixir is real or not.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

The following paragraph concentrates on the plot about the elixir, and examines whether the reader’s response to Heidegger might affect the overall conclusion of the story. The plot contains themes of illusion, doubt and magic. Depending on how the reader sees Heidegger, one might argue that the elixir is real, a drug, or just water. The story provides evidence for all of these theories and it is precisely that which makes it hard to pin down one true reading of

Heidegger. Firstly, one interpretation is that Heidegger is a doctor who has learned to use alchemy and in fact found the fountain of youth. This approach leads the reader in a supernatural direction, but would prove that his four participants really have aged backwards for a short period of time. This means that Heidegger is successful in his experiments and the events in the story truly happened as they are told. However, there are numerous facts that indicate the elixir is not real at all. The first example can be found in the beginning of the story when the narrator states that, “if all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger’s study must have been a very curious place” (100). The narrator questions his own statement and starts to confuse the reader at the same time as Heidegger seems to confuse his participants. When

Heidegger first refers to his experiment, he says that “I amuse myself here in my study” (100) which show that Heidegger might already be aware of the outcome and is playing with his participants. Furthermore, the participants are skeptical about the elixir since it is often compared to alcohol and has a very distinct smell. In the story, the elixir is often referred to as liquor, and not even the narrator provides the reader with information about whether the elixir is real or not. Also, as mentioned earlier, the doctor has used drugs on his patients before and is interested in the illusionary reactions of the four people. According to that reading,

Heidegger is a selfish scientist who is ‘amused’ by the conflicts that arise amongst his friends who believe they have gained back their youth. In fact, the fountain of youth does not exist, and Heidegger uses drugs and alcohol to create an illusion for his friends. Furthermore, this reading supports the idea of Heidegger as an impostor: it is possible that he is not a real doctor

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

and is only interested in making fun of his friends and may even charge them for his counterfeit youth elixir. According to Hastings, the skeleton in the closet is often seen as a metaphorical piece of the story that something is kept in secret or hidden (cf. 410). He calls the experiment as “pseudo-scientific” (410) and states that Heidegger is neither a real scientist nor a real doctor. This argument goes hand in hand with the approach that he is a fraud and a delusive person who has his own agendas. The skeleton refers, as just mentioned, to something secretive and does certainly not contribute to the idea of Heidegger as an honest of medical doctor or a credible scientist who is interested in serving humankind. Heidegger seems to profit by inviting guests to participate in his experiments and is simply pleased by the entertainment of his four attendees. In this reading, Heidegger is not involved in alchemy or any other magical components that involve elements of the fantastic. He is simply a genius of crime or a fraud, who is interested in fooling his friends.

In terms of inscrutability, this story works slightly differently than those previously discussed.

The characters analyzed in the tales above have provided rather few clues for reading them.

Poe’s “Man of the Crowd” was almost entirely inscrutable, and the story demands lots of creativity on the part of the reader in order to figure out that character. In this story however, the reader is challenged by a different phenomenon. The narrator confuses the reader in the same way as Heidegger confuses his participants. According to Scanlon, Hawthorne has created many characters that are meant to confuse the reader in the same way as Heidegger fools his friends (cf. 262). Scanlon states the following:

Dr. Heidegger creates for his friends an illusion, entertainment; Hawthorne also his readers with illusion, for illusion is the essence of art. A master of illusion, Hawthorne recalls his characters from the past and presides over their doings much as Dr. Heidegger presides over those of his friends (262)

This quotation shows the parallels between how Heidegger plays with his guests to create an illusion just as the author does so for the reader. The reader is also confronted with the

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

possibility of an inauthentic protagonist, and encouraged to question who Dr. Heidegger really is. Scanlon refers to the illusion as the core part of art, which is highly crucial for this thesis question. Inscrutable characters are therefore not only challenging for the reader, but the creation of such characters contributes to the positive effects of story-telling as well. Such characters foster the reading process and increase the intensity of those stories. A reader response reading offers a wide field of interpretations, especially in this story. Therefore, it is recommendable to reread such stories a couple of times to be able to get the most out of them.

By doing such close readings, one is confronted with numerous pieces of information which help with trying to figure out Heidegger. Such an overflow of information is responsible for the possibility of so many readings, and makes it even harder to pin down the true nature of

Heidegger. Scanlon argues that not being able to come up with one solution is the beauty of the short story in the first place (cf. 260). In addition, the mystery of that character is connected to the general and dubious atmosphere of the tale. Although Hawthorne’s tale is set in more realistic surroundings than Poe’s gothic settings, Hawthorne also manages to question

Heidegger’s profession by using elements of the uncanny. The questions that are raised regarding whether he is a doctor, a scientist, or a fraud contribute to the great ambiguity of the story. Furthermore, the issue of whether the elixir is real or not also has a significant impact on the reading process. Such questions make this story very memorable and therefore make

Heidegger another inscrutable character.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

3.3. The Minister’s Black Veil – “A Priest Gone Astray?”

The last short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne examined in this thesis is the short story “The

Minister’s Black Veil”, published in 1836. In Hawthorne stories, the inscrutable characters have so far been an ordinary man named Wakefield and a doctor called Heidegger whose true profession is questioned; and lastly this chapter focuses on a priest and minister, namely

Reverend Mr. Parson Hooper, who is the protagonist in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Hooper, the reverend of a town called Milford, decides one day to wear a black veil over his face, is confronted with suspicious and anxious townsfolk, and does not remove this particular veil until the end of his days. This investigation of Hawthorne's tale concentrates on the unreadable character Hooper and how his mysterious veil is perceived by the townsfolk and, ultimately, the reader.

3.3.1. The Black Veil as Part of the Inscrutability of the Tale

The story starts on a Sunday in front of the town meeting-house as the townsfolk are waiting for their reverend. The sexton is ringing the bell as Mr. Hooper slowly marches towards the crowd. The narrator describes the reverend as “a gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still a bachelor” (11). The narrator notes that something in his appearance has changed and the astonished townsfolk question whether that person is really their reverend. Upon closer examination, they recognize him, but he “ha[s] on a black veil” (11). The narrator then provides a close description of the new, particular veil on the minister’s face:

“On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crepe, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things” (11)

This detailed description already underlines the negative atmosphere that the veil creates from the beginning onwards. The townsfolk are shocked by his appearance and his greetings elicit

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

no response from any of the people. An old lady even argues that he has turned into something disturbing and frightening, while others claim he has gone insane. Those first paragraphs already indicate elements of inscrutability, as no one knows why Mr. Hooper has decided to wear such an uncommon piece of clothing, especially when he plays such a crucial role in the public life of Milford. The minister faces his congregation, does not react differently than on any other day, and seems not to be bothered by the townspeople's amazement. His normal behavior adds to the mystery of this inappropriate veil. The strangeness of the situation reaches its peak when he recites from the Scriptures with his veil on. The people feel deeply bothered by this incongruous addition to the holy ceremony and it also seems that this scene creates a threshold between that holy ceremonial act and that

“darkened aspect” (11) of this disturbing new item for the reader. Furthermore, the narrator claims that his words and behavior seem to be “rather more darkly than usual” (12), makes explicit reference to the veil as a “secret sin” (13), and as some air almost blows away the veil the townsfolk “almost believ[e] that a stranger’s visage would be discovered” (13). This raises the question of whether the Reverend's change in appearance has also changed his personality.

One can argue that he has become a different person upon donning the veil. Hawthorne turns an ordinary priest into an uncanny person with an unusual appearance. While many critics refer to his behavior as sacrilegious or blasphemous, Stibitz argues in her essay that Hooper is by no means an antichrist (cf. 184). His behavior may have altered, but according to Stibitz, he is acting on behalf of the humans and does not show any signs that connect him to the devil. However, the black veil is a symbol of sinners, and, therefore, people are frightened of him and not able to make sense his behavior. Stein argues against the goodness of the minister and states that “Hooper plays havoc with the nobility of man” (392). Creating fear and terror is not the answer to show people the right path; similarly, Stein states that love is the only way to reach out to people (cf. 392). However, the analysis of the minister does not come up with a

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

clear answer to his belief system, so the reader has to make use of other resources in order to understand the protagonist.

The narrator explains the reason for the villagers’ fear by the fact that “the preacher had crept upon them” (13) and that he has discovered every single thought or sin of the people.

Additionally, the transformation of the protagonist affects the reader in questioning who Mr.

Hooper has become. After the ceremony, the townsfolk begin to speculate about the reason for this veil and conclude that “though it covers only our pastor’s face, [it] throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghostlike from head to foot” (14). From the beginning, the narrator uses particularly dreary phrases when describing the minister and his veil. Words such as “dark”, “secret”, and “ghostlike” emphasize the minister's state as an unreadable and mysterious person. In addition, German claims that Hawthorne's choice of words is crucial when analyzing this story (cf. 42). German argues that the townsfolk’s wish to reveal the protagonist’s face is a play of juxtaposition (cf. 42). The word "reveal" is connected to the “veil” and means to unveil. The people’s response to the minister’s new appearance is the same in the afternoon ceremony which is followed by a funeral. One of the mourners makes a strange discovery when she states “that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in hand” (15). In the evening of the same Sunday, Mr. Hooper is assigned to wed a good-looking couple of the town. Again, he is wearing the veil, which has been perceived, as earlier at the funeral, as “nothing but evil to the wedding” (15). Interestingly, as the veil is reflected in a wine glass, the Reverend himself becomes frightened as he sees “his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others” (15). This line shows that even the minister is not fully aware of how the veil creates such a dark atmosphere. Concerning inscrutability, one can argue that this particular item is mainly responsible for turning this man into a delusive character.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

On the next day, the townsfolk argue about the veil and decide to send men of the church to talk to the Reverend about that obvious matter. However, no one is able to address the matter directly and the narrator describes the veil as a “symbol of a fearful secret between him and them” (16). That secret hangs also between the reader and the protagonist as readers are eager to discover the Reverend’s secrets, but are only lead further into the mystery of the text. Even the minister’s fiancée, Elizabeth, fails to solve the mystery of the veil or even to persuade him to take it off. He only responds that “there is an hour to come […] when all of us shall cast aside our veils” (17) and refuses to tell his fiancée the truth about the veil. Elizabeth is puzzled about him and even questions his sanity by stating that wearing the veil is “a symptom of mental disease” (18). He asks her to be patient, but Elizabeth is not able to deal with the strangeness of the situation, and so she says goodbye to Reverend Hooper. The veil’s horror is too much to bear as it is “drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers” (19). The minister accepts a life of loneliness and gives up all happiness rather than remove his mask.

The mask that accompanies this inscrutable character serves not only to create confusion in the town, but can also be identified metaphorically as an object that serves to hide Mr.

Hooper's true self. One can even argue that the once ordinary Reverend has become obsessed with the veil and the usage has changed his personality as well.

As the times goes on, people stop attempting to remove his unsuitable piece of clothing. The veil becomes a symbol of horror and fear to the townsfolk as they keep running away as soon the minister appears in public. The narrator states that “a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black cape” (19) and even the minister avoids looking at himself because of the dreary veil. The narrator further describes the veil as “an ambiguity of sin or sorrow” (19), and refers to the minister’s “self-shudderings and outward terrors” (19), which

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

emphasize the veil’s “dreadful secret” (20). One positive effect of the veil is that Mr. Hooper becomes a very efficient clergyman, which definitely contributes to the fact that the church council does not intervene to remove him from his status. The minister works until the end of his days and never removes that veil. Towards the end of the story, Mr. Hooper becomes weak and lies in the death chamber waiting for his final judgment. The narrator once more emphasizes the crucial meaning of that veil:

All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity” (21)

The veil has created a threshold between the protagonist and the rest of the world, in the same way as it has between the reader and the character. Mr. Hooper suffering from being separated from the rest of the world as the reader is separated from the minister as well. The veil is responsible for the reader's inability to make sense of that character and the reasons why he wears that piece of clothing. Even in his final hour, the minister refuses to remove his veil, and, with extraordinary strength, puts his hand before his veil. He claims that everyone wears a black veil and that people are not aware of their sins. Freedman states that one reason for not removing the veil is that by refusing to do so, he turns the symbol of evil into a moral that affects all the residents of the town (cf. 361). Mr. Hooper dies and is buried with the veil on and no one ever sees his face again. Possible morals of the story can be found in its readers' interpretations, and these will be analyzed next.

3.3.2. Interpretations of the Minister’s Behavior

The story has shown that one item can turn an ordinary priest into an inscrutable person associated with sin and terror. The story links the veil to words such as sin, terror, secretive,

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

and even monster. The narrator’s use of such words creates a dreary atmosphere and puts the protagonist in a role that is connected to evil and the unknown. The question for the reader is thus: what makes Mr. Hooper decide to wear the black veil from one day to the next, and for the rest of his life? Although the text provides only a few and mostly implicit indications for the reasons behind his behavior, the reader may use numerous cues to understand this character. Bunge argues that “Hooper’s veil does educate” (18) because it serves as an example of evil for the townsfolk. The minister’s agenda is to make the people aware of their own evil sides, and he uses this piece of clothes to represent sin; therefore, the veil is a symbol of evil. However, although Hooper wants to raise awareness of people's dark sides, the veil excludes him from having a normal life. Davis compares the minister’s behavior of explicitly showing everybody’s sins to Jonathan Edwards’8 words, “sinners in the hands of an angry God” (454). The God the minister refers to is, according to Davis, not a forgiving but rather a punishing God. The punishment for Mr. Hooper is that he is no longer able to have a relationship with Elizabeth, that he is not welcome at weddings anymore, and that people avoid him. The minister is primarily connected with fear and terror. The theme of evil and terror also contributes to the mystery of the protagonist. He decides to suffer to be able to show the others their true faces. The narrator provides evidence that Hooper manages to show the sins to all the people. The minister’s quotation “there is an hour to come […] when all of us shall cast aside our veils” (17) becomes true in the final hour before his death. Mr. Hooper shouts out that in fact everyone is wearing a veil. The people around him seem stunned and stop trying to remove his veil. The minister has thus succeeded in raising awareness of their sins. However, he has also paid a price for this by becoming the outcast of the town. Boone even states in his article that the minister is “the scapegoat, exiled from the community” (168) and that if he removes the veil, he will have failed in his mission to educate. His mission is to

8 A Christian preacher and philosopher (1703-1758)

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

represent the people's sins, and, in order to do that, he needs to become an outsider, a person who is a mystery and at the same time hated and feared. With that interpretation, one can argue that the clergyman has acted with good will and in favor of the people. Although he has given up his own social life and happiness, the narrator describes in several passages that beneath that veil he has a “sad smile” (14). He accepts the veil as a part of him and never takes it off. The minister’s unusual methods of making people aware of the evil in the world prove to be successful. Only he himself has suffered. The question of his personal torment needs to be examined in more detail in order to be able to read this inscrutable character.

This analysis has shown that the veil has a huge impact on the community in which Mr.

Hooper is active. Most of the passages in this text suggest that the minister is an altruistic person, whose only purpose is to educate his congregation to fear the evil and become conscious of their own sins. However, the question that remains is why the minister decides to wear the veil in the first place. The reader can find evidence that there is in fact some reasoning behind his change in behavior. What seems at first glance an act of randomness and selfishness, might, upon a close reading, lead to some hints about what has happened in the minister’s life. A theory that is hinted at by the text is that the minister has gone insane. As described by the narrator, “he has changed himself into something awful” (11). However, there is not much evidence for that interpretaion as there is no indication of substance abuse, nor are there any connections to supernatural elements that would contribute to insanity. The only observation supporting this view, according to Barry, is that Elizabeth believes she sees possible madness in him (17). However, she is afraid of losing her future husband, and may not be thinking rationally enough for the reader to categorize him as a madman. Furthermore, the story contains a rather realistic plot, in which terror and fear are conveyed simply through the black veil. A minister of god who decides to wear such a piece of clothing is simply

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

uncanny and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, one passage allows for speculation about the reasoning behind his punishment. As mentioned above, the first day he decides to wear the veil, the minister attends a funeral. One of the residents sees “that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in hand” (15). This sentence raises suspicion about a possible liaison between the minister and the maiden. The narrator then introduces Mr.

Hooper’s fiancée, Elizabeth, who leaves him because of the veil. This supports a reading that the minister is punishing himself because he is the one who has sinned in the first place. As mentioned by Freedman, wearing the veil is a way to expose his crime and to provide a moral to his fellow residents. The reader does not find any explicit support for that interpretation; however, it is possible to assume that the minister was having a relationship with someone else while engaged. If, as a man of faith, he has committed the sin of adultery, and no longer able to deal with it, the only way to redeem himself is to wear the veil. The veil is therefore not only a symbol of his own sin, but rather an explicit symbol of the whole town's sins.

Wearing the veil for the rest of his life is his own way of representing his failure, and, at the same time, of showing the townsfolk the moral that no one is without a sin. Saunders, however, argues that the knowledge of the Reverend's sin is limited to the readership (cf.

423). Saunders states that the townsfolk are not able to make sense of those cues and are therefore not able to create a meaningful understanding of the minister’s behavior (cf. 423).

As in all the stories analyzed before, the readership has a crucial advantage in analyzing such unreadable characters, in comparison with other characters on the level of story. The mystery of the minister is never solved in the story, and the townsfolk are left puzzled, even when Mr.

Hooper is on his deathbed.

The reader, however, is challenged to accept him as a sinner who bears his crime visibly for the rest of his life, and, at the same time, as a man who tries to educate and warn his fellow

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

citizens about how easy it is to become a sinner oneself. As claimed by many critics, the moral of the story can be interpreted as that every single person is already a sinner, and Mr.

Hooper’s new appearance tries to make them aware of that fact. One might argue that the people do not understand his agenda, but this story serves as an instance when the readership is actually able to figure out, at least to a certain degree, an inscrutable character. Barry speaks of a certain ambiguity with regard to the moral because there is still the option that the minister has simply gone insane, isolated himself from social life, and devoted himself to the business of the church (cf. 20). A certain mystery still remains for the reader, but there is enough evidence to actually pin down the motivations of that character, who seems from the beginning onwards rather unreadable. Also, as in the previous tales, his inscrutability is closely connected to themes of darkness and fear, which again shows that the unknown is often found in places full of evil and sin.

4. HERMAN MELVILLE: Representative of Riddles, Secrets, and the Abnormal

Herman Melville (1819-1891), the youngest of the three authors discussed in that thesis, also suffered the loss of his father when he was twelve years old (web). He was also a mysterious and obscure person, and the changing American society of his time also had a significant influence on his writing. Just like most of his inscrutable characters, Melville himself lived most of his life out of the spotlight and remained a mystery until the end of his days (web). He also was part of the Romanticism Movement and became acquainted with Nathanial

Hawthorne. Melville even wrote a famous piece called “Hawthorne and His Mosses”, which became an important commentary in the field of critical reviews. Melville’s inscrutable characters are less magical and do not share the supernatural aspect of Poe and Hawthorne's,

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

but take rather a more realistic approach that also tends to criticize society. Besides realism,

Melville’s characters often demonstrate elements of parody, mystery, and are self-referential.

Melville started working on short fiction only in the later years of his career, and he created numerous enigmatic characters. This thesis focuses on the unreadable characters in the short stories “The Lightning-Rod Man”, “The Fiddler”, and “Bartleby, the Scrivener”. Although

“Bartleby, the Scrivener” is the most famous short story by Melville, it is still a delicate endeavor to analyze such a famous but enigmatic protagonist. “The Lightning-Rod Man” and

“The Fiddler”, on the other hand, are rather underestimated stories that have never become prominent among Melville's readership, although both stories provide excellent examples of inscrutable characters.

4.1.The Lightning-Rod Man – “Struggle between Two Worlds”

The first story by Herman Melville to be discussed is “The Lightning-Rod Man”, which was published in 1856. In this tale, the first person narrator invites a strange salesman into his home, who claims to sell lightning rods. As in the stories of Poe and Hawthorne discussed in this thesis, this narrator and the readership is also confronted with an inscrutable character.

Although the story has never been a favorite of critics or readers, the story provides numerous potential analyses about the identity of the lightning-rod salesman. However, Melville creates a significant contrast between the narrator and the nameless lightning-rod man. As this analysis will assert that those two characters are complete opposites, the reader is also able to make the assumption that the confrontation between those men is about much more than simple lightning-rods.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

4.1.1. Who is the Lightning-Rod Man?

The story starts with an unnamed narrator who is watching an ongoing thunderstorm from a window in his home, surrounded by mountains. He is amazed by the natural spectacle as he points out the “grand irregular thunder” and “scattered bolts” (213). The narrator’s admiration is interrupted by a sudden knock at the door. He wonders who has approached his house during the thunderstorm, and, as he opens the door, he is confronted with a complete stranger whom he welcomes into his home. The narrator states that the unknown man is carrying a

“strange-looking walking-stick” (213), as he begins to observe this strange persona. The man enters the house and positions himself in the middle of the room; the narrator describes how

“his singularity impelled a closer scrutiny” (213). This line already indicates that the narrator is curious about this delusive character and examines him further by immediately inviting him to his home.

The narrator begins to describe his appearance as he stands completely wet in the room, but seems more drawn to the strange stick than the man who carries it with him. The narrator describes the stick as a “polished copper nod” and mocks the stranger by asking if the

“illustrious god, Jupiter Tonans” (214) has decided to visit him. The reference to a Greek god who strikes lightning is no coincidence, as the narrator seems obsessed with lightning and thunder. Mastriano argues in his essay that the red staff does refer to the god Jupiter, but also points out that the rod could also resemble the “pitch-fork scepter associated with Satan” (30).

The ambiguity of an unknown intruder, and the question of whether he has good or bad intentions, creates a certain inscrutability in the reading process. Mastriano states that at this point of the story, the reader is not able to read this character because the man can be seen as either good or evil (cf. 30). The second part of this analysis will provide a more detailed approach to the man’s worldview that will show that the stranger can in fact be connected to

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

the evil. The strange man seems frightened by the ongoing thunderstorm and warns the narrator to stay in the middle of the room, where, according to him, it is the safest spot in the house. The Lightning-Rod Man argues that “heated air and soot are conductors” (215) and prompts the narrator to move to his position. The beginning of the dialogue already indicates the extremely divergent attitudes of the narrator and the strange intruder. As the narrator calls him again by name of the Greek god, he replies that he does not want to be called “by that pagan name” (215) and further refers to the thunderstorm as a “time of terror” (215). The contrast, again, is conveyed in terms of description of the weather. For the narrator, the ongoing storm is something wonderful and unique, while the strange man is frightened and refers to the weather with words of fear and terror. The narrator’s curiosity makes the man question what he actually wants from him, and the stranger replies that he is a salesman of lightning rods. The strange intruder turns out to be a stubborn salesman who continues to attempt to persuade the narrator to buy his valuable copper rods in order to be protected from what he claims is deadly lightning. He advertises his product as “of life-and-death use” (216).

The narrator does not seem convinced and accuses the salesman of having chosen to travel in such weather on purpose. The strange man replies that he guarantees safety with his rods and continues to flog them to the house owner. Additionally, he commands the narrator to move into the middle of the room because his “one stand-point” (218) is the safest, but the narrator refuses to change his position. The lightning-rod salesman explains that wet clothes are better than dry ones and points out further dangers of being in a thunderstorm. The narrator still seems interested in the man, but does not seem willing to change his position or to be impressed by the salesman’s warnings. The salesperson becomes more aggressive and keeps pushing the narrator to buy one of his rods to be safe. The lighting-rod man urges him further by stating “Will you order? Will you buy? Shall I put down your name?” (220). The narrator is offended by his directness and tells him that his house has always been safe and that he is

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

not in need of such a fraudulently effective item. He expresses himself in a violent and direct manner as well:

Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? […] In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, go away! (221)

The salesman is shocked by these words and attacks the narrator, who, after a short fight, throws the salesman and his rods out of the house. The narrator concludes that despite his cruel behavior, the salesman will carry on selling such dubious rods in stormy weather with the help of fear and terror.

Upon closer examination, the reader is, in the course of the short story, soon able to make sense of that strange intruder. The story starts off as an unknown person enters the home of the narrator, and the reader is as surprised as the narrator that the man turns out to be a common salesman of lightning rods. The lightning-rod man is obsessed with the idea of selling his copper rods and convinces the narrator to stay safe from the thunderstorm. The seller has a remarkable fear of thunderstorms and uses the rods for his own safety as well.

Compared with the tales discussed previously in this thesis, Melville’s protagonist seems not to be that unreadable at all. However, there are still numerous aspects that contribute to the fact that he is an inscrutable character. The story raises questions about his origin, his real name, and his fear of thunderstorms. The reader and the narrator lack the information to account for these traits, which contributes to the mystery of the strange salesman who decides to walk around during such severe weather. By investigating more closely, the reader is able to draw a bigger picture when looking at the conflict between those two men. Therefore, this paper will analyze the dispute between the mysterious protagonist and the narrator. The inscrutability of that salesman can be identified particularly through an analysis of the different worldviews that clash in this tale.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

4.1.2. Man of Faith vs. Man of Science

The narrator and the unreadable protagonist do not only argue about whether the use of lightning-rods has a purpose or not. This analysis will show that those characters have two completely different attitudes, and what seems at first sight like a failed sales pitch is in fact a battle between two completely different worldviews. The salesman continuously tries to persuade the narrator to stand in the middle of the room, and that only his “stand-point” (218) is the safest place. The narrator however, decides not to move and remains near the walls of the house. The fact that these two characters have taken different positions in the house also mirrors their different attitudes. Neither of them is willing to move or to accept the arguments of the other person. The strange lightning-rod man, however, tries several times to coax the narrator into the middle of the room, but the house owner does not yield. This example illustrates how both are convinced of the validity of their own values, and are by no means willing to accept the opinion of their opponent.

The beginning of the story introduces the narrator who is fascinated by the ongoing thunderstorm, lives alone in the woods, and has a strong connection to God. The line at the end, “I stand at ease in the hands of my God” (221) emphasizes his strong beliefs and also his certainty that the lightning will not harm him. He can be considered a man of faith who also shows his appreciation for nature. The statement at the end of story not only conveys the sense that the narrator is more committed to the proof of God than the world of science; he neglects rational values completely and is committed to his own beliefs and feelings. Those feelings also play a significant part in the narrator's worldview, as he seems easily offended by the strange salesperson who warns him about the lightning with which the narrator is so

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

obsessed. The narrator represents the views of Romanticism, by showing his love for nature and claiming that it is beautiful. In addition, he is considered an emotional person, and, as mentioned above, strongly connected to his religious beliefs. The reader feels usually drawn into the narrator's world, which makes it easier to understand his character. The narrator is therefore seen as the good guy, who represents nature and harmony. Interestingly, Melville’s inclination towards romanticism can be clearly identified in this story, which contributes to the fact that the reader might favor the narrator rather than the salesman, who is described as an intruder whose only purpose is to spread fear.

The lightning-rod man on the other hand, sells exactly such items that are meant to prevent people from being harmed by that storm. This strange character is fearful of the weather and at the same time tries to spread this fear to the narrator. He is considered an intruder, and, as the reader favors the nature-appreciating narrator, the salesman is connected to the unknown and fearfulness. He spreads fear in order to sell his rods and survive with his business.

However, the way he acts not only contributes to his mystery; it also places him in a position diametrically opposed to the narrator. The strange salesman can therefore be described as a scientific person who argues in a rational way and tries to make others aware of possible threats. At the beginning, the reader may feel badly for the salesman, but as the story continues, one seems to doubt his intentions and begins to question the honesty of his original intentions. Unfortunately, the reader never learns his true purpose. These characteristics not only distinguish him from the narrator, but also make him an inscrutable character. One approach even considers the fearful man to be wicked and therefore an evil person. He is the one who starts attacking the narrator in his home, does not accept the narrator's attitude, and is so persistent in his beliefs that the narrator throws him out of the house. One approach, following Romanticism, even sees him as a manifestation of the devil. As mentioned above,

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

the lightning rod may serve as a symbol connecting him to Satan. One reading of the two characters is therefore that of a struggle between heaven and hell. According to Werge, the story represents a fight between good and evil (cf. 7). Werge’s interpretation of the story is based on a religious approach in which the ultimate battle is between Science and Puritanism.

Although the narrator sticks to his own values, Werge states that the peculiar lightning-rod man continues to wander around. Verdier points out that the narrator has won the battle and good has succeeded over evil. This means, according to Verdier, that “evil and temptation will always be present, and each man must meet and defeat temptation on his own (279).

For the reading process, it does not matter whether this inscrutable character is a possible satanic follower, or simply a scientific fellow who has disregarded the old values; the delusive character continues with his business. Gallagher argues that the antagonist’s perspective is

“antithetical to the narrator’s, as well as to the transcendentalist’s, perspective” (149).

Gallagher further provides oppositions between those two worldviews and comes to the conclusion that the lightning-rod man serves as a foil to the narrator. (cf. 150). This scenario leads one to the battle between faith and science, and to Romanticism versus Rationalism, and the threshold that has been crossed by letting that man into the narrator’s home. In the end, this man is not able to convince the narrator or the reader with his purpose, and he is thrown out; nonetheless, the narrator remarks that the lightning-rod man will continue on his journey and that he “drives a brave trade with the fears of man” (221). The last line of the tale also indicates that although the narrator has rejected the strange man’s offer, he knows that he will continue to spread fear and that there will always be people who are willing to make a bargain with that man. Verdier states that this is meant to be seen as an allegorical text dealing with the temptation of men (cf. 275). He also argues that this text is an allegory because of the

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

mythical descriptions of the weather and the landscape (cf. 276). The narration itself therefore contributes to the fact that this dubious figure acts in collusion with evil forces.

The reader is confronted with that character as a mystery, and the unreadable aspect again allows for different approaches, which lead to different conclusions for the reader. The lightning-rod man is not totally inscrutable, but also does not allow for one clear reading. The narrator puts emphasis on the values of Romanticism to convey carefully the sense of a dominant romantic view against the peculiar, strange rationalist view espoused by the salesman, in order to show that one’s belief will succeed over scientific proof. Interestingly, the reader is invited to follow and understand the narrator’s ideology and therefore eventually side with him against a pure rational world view, which is represented by that peculiar salesman. As already pointed out, the story provides various ways of interpreting this character. For this analysis, it is crucial to understand that the lightning-rod man seems, at the beginning, not to be a typical unreadable character as discussed in the previous chapters of this thesis. The main focus in this story is the identity of that intruder, which can be interpreted in many ways, depending on if the reader uses a scientific, economic, or a religious approach to the story. The varieties of possibilities for interpretation are the reason the lightning-rod man is and remains an inscrutable character.

4.2. The Fiddler – “A Truly Inscrutable?”

Melville’s short story “The Fiddler” also provides a significant example of an inscrutable character, which is will be examined in this chapter. The story was published in 1854 and involves a frustrated narrator who meets a peculiar character named Hautboy. In contrast to the previous stories, the inscrutable “Fiddler” may not seem that mysterious at all. Only when

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

looking into the past of that character, is the reader confronted with the mystery of the story.

The Fiddler was a famous person before he has transformed into Hautboy. This analysis looks into the development of the Fiddler, and how the narrator and the reader are invited to figure out are the reasons behind that character's transformation. Furthermore, this short story provides a moral, which affects the narrator and might also have an influence on the reader in deciding whether the Fiddler is really inscrutable after all.

4.2.1. The Story of Hautboy

The story starts out with a first person narrator called Helmstone, who is being criticized for his latest poem that he has written. He is about to meet his friend Standard at a circus near

Broadway, and to talk about the negative criticism of this poem. In contrast to most of the tales discussed before, this story does not introduce the inscrutable character immediately.

The first few paragraphs focus on the devastated narrator and his upcoming meeting with his old friend. After an introduction, the old companion introduces the narrator to a peculiar character named Hautboy. The first clue that Hautboy is a rather strange character is how the narrator reacts to the approach of this fellow. Helmstone has been enraged by the negative critics, but claims that as soon as he encounters Hautboy “[he] was instantly soothed as [he] gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so unceremoniously introduced” (233). This line shows that the presence of Hautboy has a strong influence on the narrator’s behavior and feelings. From this point on, the narrator seems strongly curious about that person. This change of nature also draws the reader’s attention to Hautboy and what follows is a detailed description of that mysterious character. The narrator begins to describe his appearance by stating that he is “short and full […] his complexion rurally ruddy; his eye sincere, cheery and gray” (233). The narrator claims that the man seems youthful, but by one look at his hair, an

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

onlooker would realize that he is “not an overgrown boy” (233). He therefore thinks the man must be in his forties, yet still youthful in his appearance. The narrator later repeats this significant aspect of his appearance by stating that he “saw a boy of twelve” (234) that conveys a “sort of immortal air” (234). Interestingly, also in this Melville story, the narrator compares the mysterious character to a Greek god. Whereas in “The Lightning-Rod Man”, the narrator references a Greek god of wrath, in this story, the narrator identifies Hautboy as a

“youthful god of Greece” (234). Another crucial phrase that contributes to the inscrutability of

Hautboy is the fact that the narrator seems to be immediately interested in the behavior and manner of this character, as he states that “this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like magic” (234). In the course of this analysis, this thesis has discussed numerous inscrutable characters that are identified as being a very ‘singular’ kind of person. Hautboy definitely catches both the narrator and the reader’s attention in that passage, and both become more curious about him. As the narrator, his old friend Standard, and his new fellow Hautboy visit a nearby circus, the narrator admits that he keeps his eye more on Hautboy than on the actual performance on stage. After the circus, the three visit a bar and the narrator’s observations continue. Helmstone now begins to describe Hautboy’s behavior and statements in their discussion. According to the narrator, this mysterious person is able to “hit the exact line between enthusiasm and apathy” (235). In addition, Hautboy’s conversation skills are excellent as he has a good humor and a realistic worldview that seems to be neither too positive nor too negative. Furthermore, this shadowy new acquaintance seems also to be able to give the right answer and be very pleasing to his fellows in their conversation.

After a while, Hautboy leaves the bar, and the two friends continue to talk about this strange new fellow. The narrator repeats the significant phrase that he is “one of the most singular men I have ever seen” (236), claims that he loves him, and even utters the obscure statement

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

that “[he] wish[es] [he] were Hautboy” (236). This assertion shows how the narrator has become obsessed with that fellow and, additionally, drawn into his unique appearance and character. He is not able to figure him out and therefore states that he wants to actually become Hautboy himself. However, his friend Standard replies that “there’s only one

Hautboy in the world” (236) which contributes to the perceived uniqueness of the character.

The narrator’s negative attitude returns once Standard says that there is only one of that kind.

Throughout the tale, the reader is confronted with the two artists who seem to be familiar to each other. As Helmstone wants to be like Hautboy, one can argue that Hautboy is already the persona that Helmstone is trying to become. According to Thompson, the parallel between the narrator and Hautboy is clearly presented in the story. The story provides two artists, one who is the narrator, and the other the mysterious protagonist (cf. 500) Thompson claims that this dualism is responsible for the ambiguity in that tale (cf. 500). This ambiguity can be observed until the very end when Helmstone follows Hautboy's example and learns to play the fiddle as well.

As the story continues, Standard asks the narrator whether he thinks that Hautboy might be a genius or might have been one a long time ago. The narrator denies that and states that

Hautboy is a simple cheerful person, which is what makes him so special. The narrator then goes into depth and tries to analyze the unreadable person:

“Your cheery Hautboy, after all, is no pattern, no lesson for you and me. With average abilities; opinions clear, because circumscribed; passions docile, because are feeble; a temper hilarious, because he was born to it – how ca your Hautboy be made a reasonable example to a heady fellow like you, or an ambitious dreamer like me?” (237)

The narrator is convinced that Hautboy is not a genius, but that his simple-minded persona is the main reason that he is so mysterious. This paragraph also shows how the narrator has analyzed this new friend, seems to have read him, and therefore admires him the way he is.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Hautboy then returns to the bar and invites the two men to his room and begins to fiddle for them. At this point, the title is finally explained and it is revealed that Hautboy is in fact not only at the center of the mystery, but that he is also the title character. The narrator is surprised that Hautboy is actually a fiddler and his interest in that fellow increases once again.

The narrator observes Hautboy’s apartment and seems impressed that everything is neat and clean. As Hautboy begins to play, the narrator feels overcome by a pleasant atmosphere and his negative mood dissipates completely. Finally, the narrator states that “my whole splenetic soul capitulated to the magical fiddle” (239). The delusive Hautboy seems to have used magic to enchant the narrator with his tunes. After that, Standard and Helmstone are walking home when the narrator insists on being told who this incredible Hautboy really is, guessing that

“there is some mystery here” (239). Standard then provides insight into the mystery by stating that Hautboy is in fact “an extraordinary genius” (239) although the narrator was convinced that he was not. Standard explains that years ago Hautboy wandered from town to town and gained fame and triumph. Nowadays, no one knows him anymore; when the narrator asks for his real name, Standard whispers it into his ear. Helmstone remembers now who that fellow is and claims that he used to shout that name as a child. Importantly, the reader does not learn the true name of Hautboy. Standard reveals that Hautboy has a better life now, “crammed once with fame, he is now hilarious without it. With genius and without fame, he happier than a king” (240). The narrator realizes the nature of Hautboy's act, and, although he is not fully able to read him, he learns that turning away from fame might be of real advantage.

Therefore, the short story ends without a full explanation of Hautboy's character or history, but rather focuses on the narrator and his new ambition to learn how to fiddle and discard his poetic ambition. In the end, Hautboy has shown him what really matters, namely that fame and triumph do not lead to a happy life.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

4.2.2. Who is the Fiddler?

The short story has shown that Hautboy is not only a mysterious character, but, despite

Standard revealing to the narrator who he was in his earlier years, the fiddling man still remains a mystery to everyone. One can argue that this particular character has a certain power over the narrator and his friend. He seems able to spread a special mood to his fellows, and, furthermore, the narrator seems to be fond of Hautboy’s magical presence. Dillingham argues that Helmstone even moves from a realistic world into a world of dreams, in which a secretive atmosphere prevails (cf. 148). Dillingham states that in order to create such a mysterious and puzzling character, it is important to the story that Hautboy’s identity, occupation, and background are never revealed at all (cf. 148). By not revealing such crucial information, not only does the story's magical quality increase, it also enhances the Hautboy's inscrutability. In addition, his fiddling is also associated with a magical tune, which also confirms that Hautboy is able to enchant or bewitch his friends. The reader’s impression of

Hautboy is a crucial part of this analysis because the narrator is not only deeply interested in that fellow, but he also wants to be just like him. Even before Standard reveals Hautboy's past fame to the narrator, they have already been drawn to the magical person, he is now after having let go of his even stranger past.

In the last part of the story, Hautboy is revealed to be the fiddler whose enchanted music makes the narrator question his friend about who Hautboy really is. Not only the narrator but also the readers are faced with that question. In contrast to many other inscrutable characters, the narrator of Melville's "The Fiddler" is actually rewarded with an answer in the end. His friend is able to tell him about the fame that Hautboy once had and that he was once celebrated. In this story, this formerly well-known person has turned into Hautboy, a magical genius, who has consciously become a inscrutable persona himself. At this point, the reader

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

and the narrator are introduced to the moral of that story, as mentioned above, that “with genius and without fame, he is happier than a king” (240). Hautboy’s transformation into an unreadable character therefore also has the positive effect of distancing him from his prominent past. He is now a fiddler and earns his living by teaching people how to fiddle.

Ultimately, not many facts are revealed about the fiddling Hautboy; the narrator only learns his former name. The reader, however, is not given that crucial piece of information.

According to Dillingham, there is evidence in the text that although the name is not explicitly revealed, the reader can learn who Hautboy was before. Standard states that Hautboy's fame can be compared to Master Betty9, a young famous person from England (cf. 149). Collins dedicates a full analysis to the relationship of Master Betty and Hautboy. According to

Collins, Master Betty is a cipher that enables the reader to understand the story. He argues that the introduction of Master Betty is a “master-key that not only unlocks ‘The Fiddler’ but offers new perspectives on the wider aesthetics of Melville’s fiction” (762). However, upon a closer analysis, one can argue that it does not even matter if the reader knows Hautboy’s real name or not. The reader can use the narrator and Standard’s information to create their own background for this fiddling character. Since it is not revealed what Hautboy was famous for, the readers in this story must again rely on their creativity and imagination. Gupta states that the reader should be careful when trusting the narrator in the story. He argues that the narrator does not learn the truth about Hautboy by gaining the information about his famous past; rather he simply entraps himself in a false perception of that unreadable character (cf. 441).

Gupta further claims that the narrator’s “absurd extravagance” (441) in the end supports the idea that Helmstone has also wrongly interpreted the idealness of Hautboy. In this interpretation, Hautboy is neither an ordinary man nor a complete genius. The most important character is, according to Gupta, the narrator himself, whose obsession with the mystery plays

9 A famous child actor in the 19th century

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

the central role in the story. This can also be applied to the reader’s perception as no one is able to fully figure out who that Hautboy formerly was or what he is famous for.

The story has shown that although there are several ways for Hautboy to be understood by the narrator, the overall impression of that character is still a mystery. The reader has to rely on a narrator who has become obsessed with the mysterious individual and therefore lacks reliable information on Hautboy. Only the narrator's friend provides some information which contributes to his and the reader's understanding of his puzzling persona. To conclude, the story is a significant example of the fact that inscrutability prevails even when the reader is provided with sufficient information concerning Hautboy. Melville manages to tread the line between allowing for several interpretations of that man and maintaining the unreadable mystery until the end of the story.

4.3. Bartleby, the Scrivener – “A Famous Inscrutable Character”

The last story discussed in this thesis is Herman Melville’s famous short text “Bartleby, The

Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” which was published in its final version in 1856. This tale provides probably the most famous cryptic protagonist dealt in this thesis, namely Bartleby, the Scrivener. Since this short story was published, many interpretations of this character have been suggested, but Bartleby still remains a unique example of inscrutability. The unnamed narrator becomes obsessed with his new employee Bartleby, who gradually refuses to fulfill certain tasks until he completely stops working for the lawyer, using the constant refrain “I would prefer not to” (14), which he repeat twenty-two times throughout the story. Neither the narrator nor the reader are able to make sense of Bartleby, and his odd behavior lacks any

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

rational explanation, except for the final paragraph, which may provide at least a clue to the protagonist’s odd behavior.

4.3.1. The Inscrutable Scrivener

The story starts with the unnamed narrator, who introduces himself as an “elderly man (3) and a lawyer. He claims to be in contact with a “somewhat singular set of men” (3), as he introduces himself as the boss of a variety of interesting employees, who are copyists or scriveners at his own law firm on Wall Street. He introduces Bartleby to the reader as an employee who is “the strangest I ever saw, or heard of” (3). Bartleby responded to a job advertisement, and it seems, according to the narrator, that he “did an extraordinary quantity of writing” (12) and is described as working “silently, palely, mechanically” (12).

Interestingly, he starts out as a promising copyist for the lawyer’s office but ends up in doing nothing at all because he simply “prefers not to”. In addition, the narrator observes Bartleby regularly and becomes frustrated by trying to figure out his strange behavior. Ginger Nut, another co-worker, even states "I think, sir, he's a little luny" (16). The narrator thinks that

"the scrivener was the victim of an innate and incurable disorder" (25). However, the narrator fails to give him new orders and must repeatedly return to the stubborn fact that "Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable" (3). This is, he writes, "an irreparable loss to literature" (3). Abbott claims in his article that this comment is “as understandable, given our evolved narrative expectations, as it is ironic, given the tale's achieved canonicity”

(450). One important passage that provides an excellent point about how the narrator is puzzled by the peculiar Bartleby is the following:

“But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendency, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity” (32).

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

The most important remark in this quotation is that the narrator explicitly refers to Bartleby as an inscrutable persona. Except for the first story by Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”, no other narrator in the stories discussed here mentions the inscrutability in such an obvious and explicit manner. Additionally, this passage demonstrates how the narrator is obsessed with

Bartleby and his strange behavior. He is not able to make sense of him and seems therefore drawn into madness as well. Craver and Plante state in their article that Melville manages to create “worthy opponents for his protagonists” (134) in order to keep the plot engaging to the reader. In this investigation, one can clearly see how the narrator and the unreadable protagonist struggle with each other’s presence. This particular struggle or conflict is also a crucial element in distinguishing between a curious or doubting narrator and a mysterious and inscrutable protagonist. In Bartleby, the reader can identify an active narrator in contrast with a passive and “luny” (16) protagonist. Such interplay not only contributes to the plot, but also serves to force the reader to side with one of those characters. However, one must be aware that this clash of characters does not merely help the reader read the inscrutable character, but also helps highlight the unique and mysterious qualities of that character.

Another crucial aspect of this analysis is, in addition to Bartleby’s repeated phrase, the name of Bartleby’s office which is nicknamed by the narrator as his “hermitage” (14). It is often mentioned that he “emerge[s] from his hermitage” (35) or else he is described as “standing at the entrance of his hermitage” (14). The hermitage is the place in which Bartleby is not peculiar, as he claims it for himself and he can actually live there according to his own rules.

However, when he crosses over the threshold of his small realm, he enters the world of the narrator and is questioned about his strange behavior. As in most of the stories discussed in this thesis, not only the narrator becomes interested in the delusive character, but also the reader begins to become obsessed with him. Therefore, one can argue that exactly this border

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

also symbolizes the reader’s own experience of being urged to try to make sense of Bartleby.

One of the reasons why the reader and the lawyer are frustrated by Bartleby, or in other words, what actually causes the effect of the inscrutability is the repetition of Bartleby’s phrase. One can argue that the strange Bartleby also embodies elements of the uncanny.

According to Freud's essay The Uncanny, uncanny effects result from a repetition10 of the same thing, which includes examples that a person becomes confused and tries to retrace the happening. This further means that Bartleby’s peculiar attitude not only affects the reader in terms of his inscrutability, but that he also strikes the reader as a particular uncanny character.

In the course of the story, Bartleby changes more and more from an already strange employee into a human being that simply exists. The narrator is confused by his passivity (cf. 17), but still seems to care about his employee. Giles comments that his passivity is not caused by melancholy or sadness, but rather that he has deliberately chosen to act that way because he is a person without any emotions (cf. 89). Therefore, it is possible for him to be a person without preferences and to be able to actually become nothing. As Bartleby becomes even more cryptic, the narrator notices that “Bartleby never left the office” (19) and often appears “like a very ghost, to the laws of magical invocation” (19). These descriptions already suggest to the reader that Bartleby’s condition is worsening as the story progresses. He becomes less of a human being and more of an object that refuses to interact with anyone in this world. As the lawyer keeps watching over him, he realizes that Bartleby never leaves the office and seems to always be around. He even stops working completely and the narrator remarks that he “did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery” (28). Anderson describes in his journal that the narrator’s pity for Bartleby emerges from his life in solitude, which is characterized by no tasks and no enjoyment (cf. 483). Bartleby simply stays in his hermitage

10 For a definition see: Freud – The Uncanny

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

and does not respond to any input from his co-workers or employer. Anderson further states that the more energetically the narrator reacts to Bartleby’s loneliness, the more the protagonist responds with even fewer words and the more his passivity increases (cf. 484).

After some attempts to get rid of Bartleby, who has become almost mute, the narrator first allows him to stay in his office but then decides to move his lawyer’s office and leave

Bartleby behind. Bartleby only replies that “I like to be stationary” (41) and refuses all offers the narrator proposes to him. Jaworski argues in his essay that “Bartleby is a chair, and the only company which can be proposed to a chair is that of four walls” (152). Jaworski concludes his interpretation by stating that Bartleby is simply nothing and that the narrator’s actions, from hospitality to charity cannot change his character (cf. 152). After the narrator has finally moved offices, Bartleby is removed by the police and taken to a prison. The narrator visits him and realizes that Bartleby is only staring at a wall again and refuses to eat.

The narrator pays a guard to take special care of him and states that “I think he is a little deranged” (45). When the narrator visits him for the second time, Bartleby is dead. He has starved to death because he preferred not to eat. Interestingly, the narrator never gives up on the strange fellow, and is puzzled by him until his own death.

The final paragraph of the short story allows one crucial insight into Bartleby’s earlier life, which may provide a glimpse of understanding as to why he acts so oddly. The narrator hears of a rumor a few months after Bartleby’s death, which states that “Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office” (46). The narrator feels for Bartleby as he claims that working in such a department makes people “prone to a pallid hopelessness” (46).

According to Sten, those letters symbolize the poverty of men and also a certain disappointment in mankind (cf. 42). He states that the content of those letters remains unknown to those people who were supposed to receive them. One can argue that the

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

symbolic meaning of this might indicate that the narrator and reader will never truly understand what caused Bartleby’s mysterious behavior in the first place. Melville only hints at this rumor to provide further fodder for interpretation for the reader. Exactly this rumor may help the narrator and the reader to understand Bartleby’s behavior at least to a certain degree; however, the fact that this is only considered a rumor means that the question of whether this is enough evidence to account for why Bartleby’s life has gone astray must arise.

For the narrator, this piece of information may help him to finally make his peace with

Bartleby, but for the reader it simply raises more questions about this character and his past.

Therefore, although this final paragraph provides at least kind of explanation, Bartleby still remains an inscrutable scrivener. The reader is able to interpret Bartleby in many different ways, which will be analyzed in the following chapter.

4.3.2. Readers' Response to Bartleby

Bartleby’s descent into his nothingness can also be compared to the reader’s journey into this character's incomprehensibility. One significant aspect of all the information the reader has about Bartleby is delivered from the perspective, knowledge, and observations of the first person narrator. The fact that this has been observed in most of the tales further complicates the reader’s observations, as the question of reliability seems always to play a crucial role.

According to Khodambashi, Bartleby “represents a deep and troubling sense of alienation that affects all other characters in the story as well as the reader” (214) which clearly supports the ideas raised in this analysis. This means that Melville emphasizes Bartleby's originality by telling the story in the first person, but also by affecting the reader’s psychology in processing the overall motivations of this character. Khodambashi states that the lawyer-narrator does not have any knowledge about this character and therefore continuously tries to understand

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Bartleby alongside the reader. During this search for answers, the narrator understands more and more about himself, which can also be applied to the reading process and the reader.

Khodambashi goes even further and claims that although Bartleby remains unidentifiable, the reader might be able to understand his own condition as a human being through the reading process of that tale. Therefore, with regard to this approach, Bartleby is a mirror through which everyone can see some aspects of his own nature and life, but still struggle to figure out

Bartleby. As the lawyer searches for his own personal experience in work, literature, and also philosophy throughout the tale, it seems likely that the reader also hopes to find clues about

Bartleby’s strange preferences. This strange preference is created because of the various readings of that character and renders him unreadable through its sheer repetition. The repeated gesture of this negative preference depersonalizes him, deflating him of any will or choice, and he is therefore seen as inscrutable. According to Jonik, he is associated with a homo tantum, a person without reference or content whose depersonalization affects the narrator and ultimately the reader (cf. 35). Jonik claims that this movement across material / immaterial or human / inhuman thresholds only happens because Melville’s characters are not developed as personalized, perceiving subjects, but rather as processes of dislocation into the ambient elements of the text (cf. 35).

Melville has created a number of ‘unreadables’, such as in the stories discussed above, “The

Fiddler” and “The Lightning-Rod Man”. Cook states that in most of Melville’s works inscrutability comes in to play. He provides, besides Bartleby, characters such as Captain

Ahab in Moby Dick, or the insane Claggart in Billy Budd as examples (cf. 555). Cook argues that those mad characters often have a crucial role in the plot and must therefore be closely examined. Furthermore, as this thesis has shown, he points out that it is important to analyse the significant relationship between the narrator and the inscrutable character (cf. 556). The

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

narrators are usually fond of those delusive characters as, for example, in “The Fiddler” and

“Bartleby” have shown. However, in “The Lightning-Rod Man”, the narrator is enraged by the mysterious salesman and does not enjoy his company. According to Jonik, such characters as Bartleby or the Lightning-Rod man are “set free to restructure the world, to make possible new configurations of affect and thought” (35). However, the problem of reading such characters and actually understanding them remains mostly unresolved. Jonik further claims that one must recognize the unreadable part that accompanies every act of reading (cf. 41).

Jonik also mentions that every interpretation of an unreadable work redirects readers to a new domain of sensation and can develop something new and unknown for the reader.

Interestingly, Jonik also refers to the line “I am not read, I will not be read” (42) which ironically refers to a misreading of Nietzsche’s work by a great number of his readers. This reference to Nietzsche’s preface has already been discussed in Poe’s “Man of the Crowd”. In this context, the preface of Nietzsche can be applied to the communication between the text and the reader, that says, “we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves” and therefore misunderstand the inscrutable character of Bartleby; which leads to the fact that the readers “are unknown to ourselves” (15). However, Jonik claims that although the characters maintain their inscrutability, it is in fact such unreadable characters as

Bartleby that provide the story with its narrative tension and makes it worth reading over again.

The dramatic relationship between the lawyer and the inscrutable character in "Bartleby, the

Scrivener" is the bond that holds the reader captive, and that Melville does not release with any kind of resolution. Abbott claims in his article that “he would prefer not to, and it is this preference that makes the story work as well as it does” (453). The fact that the narrator reveals a rumor that provides a certain amount of readability to the unreadable Bartleby can

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

also, according to Abbott, have the opposite effect, namely “that the unreadable is, by and large, unendurable, and that, one way or another, readers will find some strategy to make it go away” (454). However, most of the stories discussed in this thesis have shown that the information in the text is at most certainly only an attempt to begin to understand such characters. The reader's most useful tool for finding answers can only be found within each individual reader, as they use their own creativity to fill the gaps left in the story. However, the purpose of this analysis has not only been to show how readers may understand a mysterious character, but rather how inscrutability can be identified in the first place and how it is used in narrative fiction. Therefore, the story of Bartleby clearly shows how inscrutability is represented and how this affects the reading process by creating mystery and tension for the reader. Although Bartleby allows for numerous interpretations and approaches, the inscrutable scrivener has remained a mystery to the narrator and the entire readership for the last century and will probably be so forever.

5. CONCLUSION: A Comparative Analysis

The aim of this thesis has been to analyze several inscrutable characters and their relationships to their readers. The analysis has shown that inscrutability can be represented in numerous ways and does in fact differ between the works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville.

The most important aspect is that in all of the texts examined, the reader relies primarily on a first person narrator when trying to read such delusive personas. Therefore, one always has to keep in mind that the only source of information may be corrupted when the story shows signs of an unreliable narrator. Secondly, the use of ambiguity has also been seen to contribute to the inscrutable nature of these characters. This means that ambiguity creates

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

inscrutability because the reader will struggle to find one definite approach to the plot. In most of the stories, the reader’s choice between belief and his or her own imagination plays a crucial role in solving the character’s mystery and thus being able to settle on one specific interpretation.

Firstly, this thesis has shown that Poe’s enigmatic characters are usually connected to themes of the supernatural or terror. Such mysterious themes contribute to the inscrutability of his texts and characters, and create for the reader questions about whether to truly believe the supernatural elements in the story. Furthermore, most of Poe’s narrators are considered to be unreliable because they often show signs of substance abuse, insanity, or having suffered some kind of trauma. This means that the reader is mostly affected by the narrator’s mood, which makes it even more difficult to read the unreadable. Overall, Poe’s ‘unreadables’ do not provide enough material to find proper answers to the questions they pose because the primary purpose of his tales is to create ambiguity and leave the reader with a twisted ending that leaves much room for speculation.

Hawthorne’s inscrutable characters show a strong connection to elements of the fantastic and the unknown. However, on the other hand, he uses personas that seem more realistic and therefore more comprehensible than Poe. Of Hawthorne's characters, this thesis has dealt with an ordinary man, a doctor, and a priest, who allow for more interpretations than Poe’s

‘unreadables’. The reader can relate more easily with those characters, since Hawthorne uses more realistic settings. Nevertheless, Hawthorne successfully maintains the mystery of his characters by using themes such as sin, deception, and exploring the unknown.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

Last but not least, Melville’s characters are discussed in this thesis because they embody the enigma of the tale. The narrators seem rather reliable and the reader is confronted with a rational plot which does not include supernatural or fantastic elements; rather, Melville uses obscure and abnormal characters to confuse the reader and manages to help the reader go beyond the actual plot and gain a deeper understanding of his tales. Another interesting aspect of Melville's tales that has been shown is the fact that the reader might think he is able to read

Melville’s ‘inscrutables’, who turn out, upon a closer examination, to be more ambiguous than previously expected. Most of his characters have secrets of their own that impede the reader in choosing one true reading of the text.

To conclude, this thesis has provided not only elements that contribute to the creation and the maintenance of inscrutability in a text, it has shown that such a mystery inevitably enhances the reading experience. I believe that the enigma of these tales needs to be foregrounded rather than its solution. The mystery of these inscrutable characters contributes to the tension of a literary text, which is what makes literature so valuable and enjoyable. In my opinion, the future will offer numerous new approaches to such classical American authors such as those dealt with in this thesis. One must be aware that even time does not allow us to be fully capable of reading the unreadable because of the elements discussed above. However, as society is changing, people will always be able to develop new approaches to and interpretations of literary texts because the human mind is always changing. This means that although one true reading is never possible, secondary sources on these texts will continue to proliferate, which will definitely brighten the future of their literary analysis.

Inscrutable Characters: A Reader’s Response Reading of Selected Works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville

6. WORK CITED

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