It lies not far from Temple Bar.
The opening line of the “Paradise of Bachelors” section—and the work as a whole—is both an ironic commentary on just how far the modern day Temple inhabitants are from the legendary Knights Templar and a subtle underlining of the two-part structure of the work as a whole. The Temple Bar is a reference to what used to be the ceremonial entrance to the city of London during the Middle Ages. In its place was built an arched gate designed by noted architect Christopher Wren which served to separate Fleet Street from the Strand. Fleet Street eventually became synonymous with the publishing district of London while the Strand became an entertainment thoroughfare packed with stores, eateries and hotels.
It lies not far from Woedolor Mountain in New England.
This is the opening line of the “Tartarus of Maids” section. It is both symmetrical and asymmetrical to the opening line of the “Bachelors” section which is in keeping with the comparison between the two entire sections. While the language is a perfect imitation of the other section’s opening, there is one very distinct and significant difference: the Temple Bar actually exists while Woedolor Mountain is entirely fictional. This difference mirrors the way in which the first section is semi-autobiographical and realistic while the following section is highly symbolic and far more fictional.
“Why is it, sir, that in most factories, female operatives, of whatever age, are indiscriminately called girls, never women?”
This question posed by the narrator to the factory proprietor is significant to the thematic concerns of gender exploitation as well as the more abstract considerations of labor and the relations of production. Melville examines a variety of issues in this story that may be considered well ahead of his time. Few male writers ever spoke out on the issue of sexism, but Melville makes it a centerpiece of this work. As for labor relations, “The Tartarus of Maids” section could quite comfortably fit within a volume of Marxist fiction and it is interesting to note that his actual visit to the Temple Inn in London coincides with original publication of “The Communist Manifesto” just one year earlier.
“Sir. Sir, this is the very Paradise of Bachelors!”
The closing line of the first section is dripping with irony. The narrator has endured an evening with a gaggle of bachelors London lawyers who consider themselves the offspring of the Knights Templar and inhabit a magnificent city within the city, yet who do nothing but lounge, eat, drink and trade stories of the past to which they have little or no connection.
Then, shooting through the pass, all alone with inscrutable nature, I exclaimed— Oh! Paradise of Bachelors! and oh! Tartarus of Maids!
The final line of the second section and the work as a whole is also an example of symmetrical union between the two, but with differences. The irony of the Temple Inn being a paradise is contrasted with the sincerity of the narrator’s view that the maids working in the paper mill are living in a modern day Tartarus; a section of the Greek underworld reserved for torturous punishment. Another divergence is that this line is not directly spoken to another in dialogue, but recollected by the narrator as a solitary exclamation made in isolation.
