I and My Chimney
Herman Melville
Read by Louise J. Belle
Herman Melville (1819–1891) is best known for his epic novel Moby Dick (1851), as well as the short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) and the novella Billy Budd, Sailor (pub. posthumously, 1924). “I and My Chimney” is a short story originally published in March 1856, in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art. The chimney in the story is based (at least physically) on the central chimney in Arrowhead, the Melville family home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
The story has been analyzed from many perspectives, including as an autobiographical episode, a meditation on shifting social and political standards, and resistance against challenges to patriarchal family structures. From the outset, the chimney is presented as a virtually human character, described as “the one great domineering object … of the house,” and with whom the narrator identifies as a fellow “grey-headed old smoker.” The narrator is continually at odds with his wife and daughters, who wish to demolish the chimney in order to build a grand entrance hall. Employing considerable dry wit and subtle wordplay, Melville takes us on a bittersweet domestic adventure, through a series of clashes of ideas and principles, including old vs. new, tradition vs. innovation, inertia vs. industry, and “masculine prerogative” vs. evolving gender roles. (Summary by Louise J. Belle)