Melville's Paradise of the Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

Close Reading: “The Paradise of the Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”

In Melville’s “Paradise of the Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”, a vivid illustration and comparison of the life of the industrial class and working class is displayed to the reader. The working class slaves themselves silly, while the industrial class sits back and reaps the benefits. In a sense, it is indeed the working class who keeps society running.
The narrator chooses to represent the industrial class by a group of wealthy bachelor lawyers. A unmarried, self-indulgent “band of brothers” (269), they enjoy living a lavish lifestyle “without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fireside” (269), only concerned with satisfying their own needs. Among the many luxuries of the privileged, they take pleasure in traveling and pampering themselves with fine cuisine, consisting of ox-tail soup, turbot, roast beef, mutton, turkey, chicken pie, tarts, puddings, cheese ...