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The Story:
Pierre Glendinning is a young man who lives amid luxury and ease, the heir to vast estates that form the larger portion of two counties in New York State. His time is taken up with outdoor recreation, reading, and the courting of beautiful and well-to-do Lucy Tartan, a woman of whom Pierre’s mother approves completely. Mrs. Glendinning, who is jealous of her influence over her son, sees nothing to fear in quiet, nonaggressive Lucy Tartan.
One evening, however, a strange incident occurs when Mrs. Glendinning and Pierre visit a sewing bee in a nearby home. One of the women there shrieks and faints when she sees Pierre. The incident bothers the young man, but he is totally unprepared for a note he receives from the young woman a short time later. In the note, she requests that Pierre visit her in the evening at the farm where she is employed. Pierre, disturbed by the mystery involved, goes to the farm and discovers that the woman, Isabel, is his half sister, the illegitimate child of his father and a Frenchwoman. Pierre resolves immediately to acknowledge Isabel as his sister, but the question of how to accomplish the acknowledgment is a weighty one.
At first, Pierre intends to tell his mother of his discovery, but his mother’s attitude toward Delly Ulver, a farm woman who had been born an illegitimate child, warns Pierre that he can expect no sympathetic understanding from Mrs. Glendinning. He next thinks of approaching his minister for help with his problem, but the minister follows his mother’s opinion, which causes Pierre to fall back on his own thinking. He also realizes that his mother cannot bear to have her husband proven to be an adulterer, nor can he bring himself to dishonor his father’s name. The only road that seems open to Pierre is to acknowledge Isabel by making her his wife rather than his sister.
When Pierre tells his mother that he has been married secretly, she orders him to leave the house immediately. Disowned and cast forth from his mother’s affections, he also tells Lucy Tartan that he has married another woman. His story throws Lucy into an almost fatal illness.
Having been disowned by his family, Pierre takes Isabel from her home at the farm and goes to New York City. They are accompanied by Delly Ulver, whom Pierre has decided to help. Although he announced that he and Isabel had been married, Pierre and his half sister entered into no such union; the announcement is only a means to permit them to live together. In New York City, they find life barren and difficult, for Pierre has only a small supply of money. He had hoped to find a haven for himself and the two women with his wealthy cousin, Glen Stanly, but the cousin refuses to recognize Pierre and throws him out of his home.
Forced to rely upon his own resources, Pierre resolves to become an author. He has, he believes, acquired quite a reputation by publishing some short poems and some essays in various periodicals. He also thinks he has great talent, sufficient, at least, to enable him to write a philosophical work. After much difficulty, he manages to find a publisher who agrees to take his unwritten novel and to advance him enough money to live. For months Pierre, struggling to write his great work, lives in three miserable, unheated rooms in a vast tenement, along with Isabel and Delly Ulver, who acts in the capacity of servant to them both.
One day, word comes to Pierre that his mother had died just a few weeks after he had left for New York City; her heir is Pierre’s cousin, Glen Stanly. The news makes Pierre very bitter, particularly when he discovers that his cousin is a suitor for the hand of Lucy Tartan, whom Pierre still loves dearly. Despite the feeling of utter helplessness that the news creates in his mind, Pierre keeps working on his book. Pierre is unable to keep Isabel from realizing that she is not alone in his affections, and the woman becomes jealous and dislikes the fact that another woman could claim his attentions and love. Her attachment for Pierre goes much deeper than ordinary love for a brother by a sister.
Sometime later, Pierre receives a letter from Lucy. She had rebuffed Glen Stanly’s suit, and she writes to tell Pierre that he alone has her affections. She tells Pierre that, even though he is married, she wishes to travel to New York City to live near him. Pierre cannot prevent her from joining his household, although he lies to Isabel and tells her that Lucy is his cousin. Lucy arrives the next day. As she enters the tenement where Pierre lives, her brother and Glen Stanly try to take her away by force. Pierre interferes on her behalf, and the two men have to leave without her.
Lucy, listening only to the prompting of her heart, refuses to leave Pierre, even though she is told by Pierre that Isabel is his wife. Having brought along her painting materials, she intends to support herself as a painter of portraits. Isabel dislikes the idea of a third woman in the home, but she is powerless to turn Lucy out. The two women live in a state of distrustful and watchful truce.
Glen Stanly and Lucy’s brother, not wishing to see Lucy remain near Pierre, send him a letter of premeditated insults in hopes of provoking him. Angered by their message, Pierre finds two pistols in the apartment of a friend and sets out to find Stanly and Lucy’s brother. He encounters them on a crowded street. When they meet, Stanly lashes at Pierre with a whip, whereupon Pierre draws his pistols and kills his cousin. The police immediately seize Pierre and arrest him.
In prison, Pierre has no hope of life. Nor does he care to live, for he feels that fate has been too cruel to him. One evening, Isabel and Lucy are allowed to visit him for a few hours. When Isabel reveals that she is Pierre’s sister, the shock of her announcement kills Lucy immediately. Pierre, driven mad by her death, seizes a vial of poison Isabel carried in her bosom. He drinks a portion of the poison, and Isabel empties the vial of the remainder.
A short time later, Lucy’s brother is looking for her, still hoping to rescue her from Pierre’s influence. When the turnkey opens the cell door, Pierre is already dead, lying close to Lucy. Isabel still has sufficient life to say that no one knew the real Pierre. She then dies as well, completing the tragedy of their ambiguous relationship.
Critical Evaluation:
Pierre is the most controversial of Herman Melville’s novels. The work was condemned by contemporary reviewers, and readers since then have had difficulty in understanding the book and in determining Melville’s intent. Critics still differ widely, with some regarding Pierre as a failure and others praising it as Melville’s masterpiece.
Travel books about a world that was still being explored and discovered fascinated mid-nineteenth century readers, and Melville pleased this audience with his first two books about travels in the South Seas, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). The erudite and brilliant Melville could not restrain his intellect and imagination, however, and his third novel, Mardi (1849), was, in the guise of a travel book, really a philosophical satire. This effort confused readers and reviewers, and the book was a failure. Melville returned to relatively simple accounts of sea voyages in his next two books, Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), but in Moby Dick (1851), his interest in psychological and philosophical issues burst forth again.
Pierre was Melville’s next work, and in it he initially appears to give his readers what they want. Melville’s account of the idyllic life lived by Pierre Glendinning and his mother on their country estate is similar in tone and style to the sentimental romances that were then popular, particularly among female readers. Although the first third of the novel is filled with purple passages, and a reader might suspect a leg pull, Melville’s style and story are no different from many nineteenth century novels that present such scenes without irony. Nevertheless, there are some unsettling touches, such as Pierre and his mother calling each other brother and sister. This rhetorical attempt to increase the closeness between mother and son is a foreshadowing of the darker forces that destroy the lives of both.
That Melville does intend the book as a satire becomes clear when Pierre meets his supposed sister, Isabel. It is never established without doubt that Isabel is, indeed, Pierre’s sister—some critics have maintained that Pierre’s interest in Isabel is primarily sexual and therefore incestuous, and that he accepts the “sister” hypothesis to be near her, but also because this arrangement prevents him from acting on a physical urge that frightens and confuses him. Readers of romances expected complications before the obligatory happy ending, but plot changes with such sordid overtones were not welcome.
The middle portion of the novel switches the satire to the gothic novel, another type of fiction popular in the nineteenth century. The mystery surrounding Isabel’s parentage, the dark forest in which she lives, Pierre’s internal struggle when faced with the evidence of his father’s portrait, and his taunting stay under the balanced rock are elements and scenes that suggest the standard plot devices of the gothic novel with its delight in weird plot twists and touches of the supernatural. Before Melville shifts the direction of Pierre again, he has toyed with the excesses of this literary form.
Pierre’s acceptance of Isabel as his sister, which he considers a noble gesture, has disastrous effects for him and everyone he knows. His fiancé, Lucy Tartan, who has also been like a sister because she and Pierre grew up together, is momentarily cast aside for a stranger. The idea that two people who have known each other since childhood and are as close as brother and sister are the best candidates for marriage is another plot device familiar in nineteenth century novels, and, like Pierre’s relationship with Isabel, again raises the issue of incest. Instead of explaining to his mother what he takes to be the truth about Isabel’s parentage, Pierre chooses to spare his father’s reputation (which, if he is correct, he no longer has any reason to respect) by concocting the fiction that Isabel is his wife, a lie that eventually kills his mother, grievously wounds Lucy, and causes the loss of his inheritance. Here the satire of the first part of the novel bears fruit; Melville may be suggesting that people nurtured in sentimental fantasies are so ill-equipped to deal with reality that when they must do so, the result is yet another sentimental fantasy. Incestuous wishes, familiar in literature since the Greeks, are symbolic of human self-absorption.
The last part of the novel has still another orientation occasioned by the philosophical theories of Plotinus, which appear in a pamphlet Pierre finds. Plotinus asserts that there are two measures of time: the chronometrical, or celestial measure, which does not change with changing circumstances (like a clock set to Greenwich time); and the horological, which is a measure set to a specific locality. Plinlimmon argues that although chronometrical time may be more correct in an absolute sense, to attempt to live one’s life according to it at all times (to go to bed at noon in China, for example, because it is nighttime by Greenwich time) is to invite difficulties that will make life impossible. Humans live in a horological world, flawed by all sorts of local customs, and to attempt to live chronometrically is to invite disaster. Pierre fails to understand the meaning of this warning, and in the last part of the novel he is trying and failing to write a chronometrical book. He becomes enraged when Glen Stanly receives what he takes to be his inheritance, and he shoots his cousin. Then, Pierre and Isabel commit suicide, in another attempt to live up to a code of honor only they understand.
In Pierre, Melville gives readers a main character with whom they at first identify, then whose motives and actions they suspect, and finally, from whom they recoil. Although Pierre tries to base his actions (such as his relationship with Isabel) on what he thinks are firm moral principles, his shooting of Stanly and his suicide demonstrate that he is, in fact, thrown by the winds of emotion. The entire novel is riddled with contradictions and puzzles, so it is well to remember its subtitle—The Ambiguities —which might well have been its only designation.
Further Reading
Bloom, Harold, ed. Herman Melville . New ed. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2008. Collection of critical essays analyzing Melville’s works. Includes the essay “We Are Family: Melville’s Pierre .”
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His World and Work . New York: Knopf, 2005. Delbanco’s critically acclaimed biography places Melville in his time, with discussion about the debate over slavery and details of life in 1840’s New York. Delbanco also discusses the significance of Melville’s works at the time they were published and their reception into the twenty-first century.
Dillingham, William B. Melville’s Later Novels . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. In two essays—“The Wonderful Work on Physiognomy: Pierre ” and “Convenient Lies and Duty-Subterfuges: Pierre ; or the Deceptions”—Dillingham discusses Melville’s satirical treatment of Pierre as a victim of several strange nineteenth century theories, including physiognomy, or reading character through facial expression.
Dimock, Wai-Chee. “Pierre: Domestic Confidence Game and the Drama of Knowledge.” Studies in the Novel 16, no. 4 (Winter, 1984): 396-409. Considers Pierre a battleground for Melville’s investigations of theories of epistemology and psychology, with no clear conclusions being reached about either field in the novel.
Duban, James. “Subjective Transcendentalism: Pierre .” In Melville’s Major Fiction: Politics, Theology, and Imagination . DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983. Regards Pierre as Melville’s comment on the disastrous consequences of what the Transcendentalists proposed, using intuition as a guide to action. The notes contain an excellent review of criticism.
Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker. Reading Melville’s “Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities .” Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Chronicles the disappointing publishing history of Pierre . Publishers, concerned with the treatment of incest and other controversial subjects, offered to pay him only half of the normal royalties. Melville amended the manuscript, adding passages denouncing the publishing industry and reflecting his sense of despair about his literary career. Higgins and Parker try to reconstruct the original version of the novel to analyze the book and demonstrate how the additions marred the original.
_______, comps. Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s “Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities.” Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983. A collection of critical essays about the novel. Contains a dated, but still useful, bibliography of other works on Pierre .
Kelley, Wyn, ed. A Companion to Herman Melville . Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006. Collection of thirty-five original essays aimed at twenty-first century readers of Melville’s works. Includes discussions of his travels; Melville and religion, slavery, and gender; and the Melville revival. Includes the chapter “Artist at Work: Redburn , White-Jacket , Moby-Dic k, and Pierre .”
Spanos, William V. “Pierre’s Extraordinary Emergency: Melville and the ’Voice of Silence.’” In Herman Melville and the American Calling: Fiction After “Moby-Dick,” 1851-1857. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. Analyzes Melville’s major works after Moby Dick . Argues that these works share the metaphor of the orphanage: a place that represents both estrangement from a symbolic fatherland and the myth of American exceptionalism.