Narrative Point of View and Romantic Irony in Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”

Abstract

The short fiction “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” is written in first-person narration as a diptych in which Melville ponders the human spiritual crisis in the industrialized world. This article explores the contradiction of the narrator’s spiritual liberation and others’ exclusion employing the narrator’s shifting experiencing and retrospective viewpoints, with the engagement of Romantic Irony. Through the dual viewpoints, the subjectivity and uncertainty of the first-person Romantic ironist manifest the uncertainty of the human spiritual crisis in industrialization. Melville questions human spirits and technology to elevate his ambiguous narration and philosophical concerns.