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The Tartarus Of Maids By Herman Melville

497 Words2 Pages

Herman Melville allows us to join his narrator into “The Tartarus of Maids” on a quest to retrieve paper for packaging his seeds. Growing demand for the seeds came from Missouri, North and South Carolina who used them to repopulate forests like the Eastern and Northern States (1503). The economic climate pushed our seedsman narrator to leave behind the industrious wholesale market of the villages, “among bright farms and sunny meadows” (1502) sprouting upon the New England landscape. The seedsman narrator drove horse and sleigh to the foot of Woedolor Mountain into the Devil’s Dungeon and the Devil’s Dungeon paper-mill. There he purchases his paper from the bachelor proprietor Old Bach and his boy servant Cupid. Business is also good for Old Bach. The need for paper grew with the booming economy thrusted by a swelling population. His wood shed is full and there are plenty of fresh cut cords stacked outside the mill, accompanied by many female workers ready to feed “the great machine” (1508) that produces foolscap. …show more content…

Blanketed in snow white the sepulcher like mill betwixt Blood-River and Woedolor Mountain embodies the womb of industrial capitalism like an incubator of a tuberculosis charged tomb. The Paradise of Bachelors serves as the simile of what must be heaven and its counterpart The Tartarus of Maids which is the depths of hell (1504). Industrial capitalism, the private sector and profit supersede fair and reasonable housing, personal protection equipment, safety, workers’ rights and OSHA is far away from delivering hope to these wage

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