Bread and Empire in "Bartleby"

Kyla Tompkins' "She Made the Table a Snare to Them" can be read as a kind of historical primer for understanding the importance of the mouth in the 19th century. At times linked with dietary and consumption habits, at other times a symbolic representation of sexual desire, the mouth is seen as the primary channel for regulating the individual as well as the target of corrective measures for misguided behavior.

The essay centers on a reading of Sylvester Graham, the famous anti-Onanist advocate, whose work links "the cultural history of wheat and bread to vice, morality, and national formation" and allows Tompkins to read Foucault's biopower (thus addressing regulation) into Graham's project (54). Ultimately, Tompkins observes these connections between food and control as an important part of early American discourse: "Antebellum reformist food ways serve as allegories through and against which imperialism and its attendant anxieties are managed and rendered inevitable" (77).

Although Tompkins explicitly cites the relevance of this paper for scholars working on Melville, she only mentions the author twice by name: once at the outset, and once comparing Alcott's periphrasis to Melville's periphrasis in Moby Dick. The lack of Melville analysis after announcing the paper's connection to Melville is either an odd oversight or a suggestion that this work be taken up by others. With this in mind, I would set my undergraduates searching through "Bartleby the Scrivener" for evidence to support Tomkins' claims. Ideally they would locate (a) an episode with bread, (b) one of Bartleby's refusals that is followed by silence, or (c) the physical description of Bartleby that we might be able to speculate about.

I think after letting the students loose in the text, I would reign them in and focus on doing a close reading of a particular passage in relation to "She Made the Table." This passage from "Bartleby" on Ginger Nut cakes and the eponymous office assistant would work well for this activity:

Copying law papers being a proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs, to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake--small, flat, round, and very spicy--after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning, when business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers--indeed they sell them at the  rate of six or eight for a penny--the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his mouth. (14)

Some guiding questions I might ask: does the depiction of the office characters and their consumptive habits seems to align with Tompkins analysis or not? How is this complicated by the lawyer's critical stance on their consumption as getting in the way of the workers producing for him. Further, how can we think of Bartleby's hiring--is this a pro or anti-imperialist gesture, and can we say for sure either way? Why does Ginger Nut take his name from the cakes he purchases for the office, and why might this be significant? What, if anything, can we say about the sexuality of the office workers, and later, Bartleby? Of course, there is much more, but this would be a significant start to the conversation.