LITR 5535: American
Romanticism
Sample Student Research Project 2005
Danny Corrigan
April 27, 2005
Washington Irving and the Birth of American Romanticism
“...gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. It’s vanished trees...had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Many authors write about history, but only a select few are allowed to not only witness momentous events, but also to participate in them and shape them. Washington Irving had the unique opportunity of helping a new nation forge its own identity. America, fresh out of the Revolution, looked for an author to take charge and create something that seemed to be missing from the newly born nation. He took this responsibility seriously and crafted a mythology that can arguably be seen as the foundation of an American literary tradition, particularly in the genre of American Romanticism.
Irving took scattered bits and pieces of legends and folktales from the Old World and incorporated them into the New in such a manner that what he wrote appeared original, and yet tied into traditions that were centuries old. Furthermore, he did this in a manner that astonished many Europeans who believed an American could never produce literature with such a strong English foundation. Although Irving relied heavily on European influences, he was able to draw distinct lines between American and European values, as evidenced by his plots which often illustrated the post-colonial struggle between the United States trying to forge its own identity separate from that of England. This amazing period in the nation’s history provided an excellent backdrop for Irving’s work.
With his publication of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon in1819, Washington Irving produced “the first literary work by an American to win world-wide acclaim.”(Hoffman 83). That is not to say that Irving wrote the tales in a distinctly “American” way. For “Rip Van Winkle” he actually drew heavily from European folk traditions (particularly German ones), and The Sketch Book consisted primarily of short works dealing with English subject matter. What mattered most to contemporary audiences was that Irving had vividly portrayed American scenery and culture in a genre that had not hitherto received much notable use on either side of the Atlantic: the short story. Some critics have argued that Irving “invented” the short story, which has had a distinguished tradition in American literature. Although that claim is obviously open to debate, at the very least, we can say that he “popularized” the genre and gave it its “American” affiliation.
In “Rip Van Winkle” and “Sleepy Hollow” Irving went far in defining an American essence of myth, legend, and superstition where no such folk traditions had ever been well articulated. “Hendrick Hudson” was actually Henry Hudson, who in 1609 discovered and explored the New York Valley and River that were named after him. On a subsequent voyage in 1611 his sailors mutinied and abandoned him near Hudson Bay, and he was never seen or heard from again. As Philip Young observes, “he is like the heroes of myth and legend who sleep in mountains; no one knows where, or if he was buried, and it is easier to think of him as not entirely dead.” (Young 231). The headless horseman of “Sleepy Hollow”, as the tale tells us, “is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war”(Irving 2094). Both figures are tied to important “American” events of discovery and revolution; their supernatural qualities bespeak the presence of an American mythology.
Irving’s introduction of Ichabod Crane defines a particular problem of the early American writer. “In this by-place of nature,” he writes, “there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name Ichabod Crane” (Irving 2095). The archaic substantive wight serves to emphasize the incongruity of the introduction; only in the America of the time could a remote period of history be defined as thirty years (Martin, 336-337). Irving took this peculiarity and used it to his advantage in a humorous way. He allowed Americans to laugh at the newness of their government while helping them realize the exceptional nature of the time period they had just experienced. He also uses humor in creating his American mythology, while scoffing at those who believe in such supernatural occurrences.
Haskell Springer gives validity to the imaginative elements of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. “What Irving does is show us the value of imagination in bringing wonder and enjoyment into our logic bound lives,” (483). Martin disagrees with this notion. Crane “loses all chance for the double prize of Katrina and the wealth of the Van Tassel farm when, terrified by his excessive imagination, he is literally run out of the region by Brom Bones impersonating the Headless Horseman. Brom Bones—the scoffer at superstition, who boasts that he has ridden a winning race against the Headless Horseman—triumphs and marries Katrina and is the victor of the tale,” (337). Therefore, the true winner in the story, the true American (i.e., Brom) wins by playing on the superstitions of his opponent. “The telling effect of “Sleepy Hollow,” (and) “Rip Van Winkle,”…arises from the fact that the legendary is so firmly interwoven with earthy realism,” (Snell, 383). The entire concept would fail if these two aspects were not so delicately worked together.
Irving relied on older mythology as a source for his work. “Rip Van Winkle,” for instance, uses the age-old story of a character falling asleep for long periods of time and then reawakening. The sleep-motive in “Rip Van Winkle” has roots which run very deep in world literature. There is the classical story about Epimenides, who retired into a cave to escape the heat of the day when he should have been watching his flock, and slept there for fifty-seven years,” (Wagenknecht, “The Work” 363). This phenomenon serves as a way of showing that although American culture was fairly new, it had its roots in the ancient lore of the Europeans. At the same time, Ichabod Crane’s obsession with Cotton Mather served to demonstrate that Americans had formed their own witch tales, even in the short time spent in the New World. “But Ichabod reasserts the dominance of evil over American self-reliance: he quotes Mather on witches, and describes the ghosts he has seen himself,” (Hoffman, 351). Although the puritan belief in witches traveled the Atlantic with the settlers, Americans had taken this belief and formed a very unique and embarrassing American story/history shortly after their arrival. With this in mind, he went on to separate American folklore from European by using images that were purely American.
Washington Irving used America’s European connection as a source of history, while highlighting differences in order to create an authentic American identity. He praised the landscape and the bounty of the nearly virgin earth, which England lacked. Brom Van Brunt chose the pumpkin, a purely American fruit, as a substitute for his head, which he threw at Ichabod Crane to drive him out of Sleepy Hollow. The pumpkin symbolizes America’s separation from Europe, because it enabled the Pilgrims to remain on this continent as demonstrated through the annual Thanksgiving festival. Crane can be seen as the representation of England in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” thereby giving credence to the pumpkin theory. He incorporated corporal punishment into his curriculum at the school where he taught. “Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, that ever bore in mind the golden maxim, “spare the rod and spoil the child.”—Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled,” (Irving 2096). Although he abused his pupils, he was just kind enough to prevent losing the sustenance he received from their parents. “Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an Anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he…boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers, whose children he instructed,” (Irving 2096). Similarly, the English abused their American subjects until they were driven out by the brute force for which this country is so well known.
Ichabod also resembled England in his perception of Katrina Van Tassel. “As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burthened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash,” (Irving 2099). Crane witnessed the American bounty and wished to tap into the unlimited resources. He did not love her for who she was on the inside, but rather, what she could do for him. Katrina represents America because whoever wins her also wins the treasures of her father.
Crane recognized this fact as well as Brom Van Brunt, the story’s symbol of the American people. Crane wished to take Katrina, as well as their children and possessions, and travel to new territory, away from Sleepy Hollow, where she was born and raised, much as England had taken America’s resources away from her people in order to replenish depleted funds. Van Brunt recognized Crane’s self-interest and therefore fought to keep the treasure where it rightfully belonged. Ichabod’s destructive tendencies were shown through Irving’s description of him riding to the party. “He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers’; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as the horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of wings,” (Irving 2103).
The grasshopper image is humorous, but grasshoppers are renowned for their ability to destroy the wealth of the land. This particular insect had his eyes set on the land of Van Tassel. The imagery of the whip resembling a sceptre brings to mind the monarchy, which the pedagogue represents. The borrowed horse, upon which he rode also produces thoughts of England. Gunpowder, the “broken-down plough horse,” had one good eye which “had the gleam of a genuine devil in it,” (Irving 2109). This worthless, mean-spirited beast provided a stark contrast to the lusty young steed that carried Brom Bones. Daredevil easily overtook gunpowder as Brom chased Ichabod, pretending to be the headless horseman. The old way of doing things (Gunpowder) simply would not suffice in the New World (the world of Daredevil), and therefore the culinary symbol of America (the pumpkin) came crashing onto Ichabod’s head.
“Rip Van Winkle” also celebrates the abundance and vitality of the New World. It has been hailed as “…a celebration of the bounty of the United States,” (Bowden, 72). This bounty fueled the fire of social change that was burning in the U.S. at the time. Philip Young comments “If we ever had a period during which social progress was not retarded then it was exactly the period Rip slept through. In that generation we were transformed from a group of loosely bound and often provincial colonies into a cocky and independent republic with a new kind of government and—as the story itself makes clear enough—a whole new and new-fashioned spirit,” (Young, 466).
Irving took full advantage of the new scene around him, and immortalized himself by demonstrating the importance of what he saw. “‘When I first wrote the Legend of Rip Van Winkle,” as Irving remembered it in 1843, “my thoughts had been for some time turned towards giving a color of romance and tradition to interesting points of our national scenery which is so generally deficient in our country,’” (Wagenknecht, 174). Irving used his characters as depictions of American ideals and emotions in order to show the drastic change that had recently occurred.
Sleeping through the American Revolution forced Rip Van Winkle to cope with the amazing changes that had taken place while he was asleep. “Rip’s country has changed its name. On the hotel sign, George III has given way to George Washington. Rip is no longer even Rip Van Winkle; his own son now answers to that designation,” (Hedges 140). “From Rip’s point of view, the village he left represented private turmoil and public tranquility. At the story’s end, Rip enjoys private tranquility in a village given over to public turmoil. It is almost as if the one is the price that Rip has to pay for the other,” (Roth 158-159). Rip’s world had undergone unpredictable changes, but he quickly got back into the swing of his old easygoing life swapping stories outside of the hotel. Irving also demonstrated the volatility of the times by his definition of history.
“Rip Van Winkle” has strong European influences as well. Irving tied European explorers into “Rip Van Winkle” showing that although America had formed its own identity, an identity that could not be separated from those who made it possible. The story introduced Rip as the descendant of “The Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant,” (Irving 449). But after Rip awoke, there is no mention of the Europeans, or the wife who is symbolic of England. Irving painted a colorful picture of Rip’s home life by saying, “Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long suffering,” (Irving 450).
Perhaps Rip would have been more productive at home without his wife breathing down his neck, just as America would have been more satisfying to Britain, had it not been held beneath the English thumb. The liquor of the little men pushed Rip into a twenty-year stupor, just as the propaganda of men such as Samuel Adams forced Americans into the mental snooze that necessarily accompanies war. Just as Rip awoke to view the trickery of his short companions, the Americans awoke to realize that no government is perfect. Otherwise there would be no men arguing over politics. These busy people about the once quiet town make a statement about the new democracy. Although they had gained a greater opportunity for self-advancement, they had, perhaps, lost a bit of the happiness that they enjoyed through idleness.
Rip’s confusion seems to say something about the American identity crisis at the time. He questioned if he was really himself because his son and namesake had grown to fill his lazy shoes. “Rip…Beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man,” (Irving 457). Fortunately, Rip reveled in boredom. He was too old to work, and so he sat around to talk politics. Although he was pleased with the lack of oppression, he had no one to relate to.
The Americans were similarly working to find their place in the world without Mother England watching over them. They had succeeded in accomplishing their goals, and had to ask themselves what they were supposed to do next. Several of the physical changes of the town hold political significance as well. “Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on top that looked like a red night cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognised on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George…was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was stuck in the hand instead of a sceptre, …and underneath was painted in large characters GENERAL WASHINGTON,” (Irving 456). Cutting down the old tree represents an “out with the old in with the new” attitude, that the Americans must have felt after claiming their liberty. The tree was replaced with a symbol of the new way of life—the flag with a liberty cap. The sign makes a powerful statement all its own. Government is government no matter how you paint it. They had traded one George for another, even if they did not want to admit it.
Although Irving’s descriptions of the physical realm have political undertones, they also achieve his previously stated purpose of giving attention to the national scenery. His vivid descriptions of the Catskills give the reader a dreaminess that could be accomplished by no other means besides actually going there. He painted the landscape in such a way that it would stick in the readers’ minds and help them to realize the magnificent opportunities presented daily in a land of seemingly endless natural resources. Although he dismissed the myth of the headless horseman as a hoax put forth by Brom Bones, he created a legend that lived far into the future. The story of the little men at ninepins also presents a legend of the thunderous mountains. “Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene, but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder,” (Irving 454).
These myths gave the youthful America a sense of belonging in a world of well-established nations. These two stories took the American literary tradition from its infancy into adolescence. They served as a foundation for later writers, and put the American landscape into words. The basic theme of the two stories is as follows: anyone can make it in America. The dreamers may barely scrape by, but brute force takes the cake.
In addition to their mythic qualities which can be seen as the foundation for American Romanticism, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” also illustrate a fundamental early American regional conflict between New York and New England, i.e., the “Knickerbockers” (a term Irving coined) versus the “Yankees”. According to Donald A. Ringe, the conflict “is a significant element in any interpretation of Irving's major writings.” (Ringe 467). To arrive at the social themes associated with each region, one should compare and contrast the character of Rip's town and neighbors before and after his sleep (the point is that life has been overrun by New England Yankee values). At the heart of regional animosity in Irving's writings is the fundamental impact of large-scale change on American rural identity, change initiated by the Revolution and perpetuated by nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization.
In his book Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway wrote “All American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” (Hemingway 22). Although Huckleberry Finn is undoubtedly a great work of American literature, and Mr. Hemingway is certainly entitled to his opinion, it can also be argued that with his skillful synthesis of New and Old World folklores and legends, as well as the marraige European traditions and American vigor and optimism, Washington Irving and his two most famous stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” can rightly lay claim to being the progenitors of American literature.
Works Cited
Bowden, Mary W., Washington Irving. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Hedges, William L., Washington Irving: An American Study. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965. Hoffman, Daniel.
Hemingway, Ernest. Green Hills of Africa. Scribner’s: New York, 1961.
Hoffman, Daniel G., Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 83.
“Prefigurations: ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’” PMLA, Vol. LXVII (1953): 425-435. Rpt. in A Century of Commentary on the works on Washington Irving. Ed.
Andrew B. Myers. Tarrytown: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1976. 343-355
Irving, Washington, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” 1820. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1, 4th. ed. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., 2002. 2093-2112.
Irving, Washington,“Rip Van Winkle.” 1819. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, The Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. 448-460.
Martin, Terence. “Rip, Ichabod, and the American Imagination.” American Literature, vol. XXX (1959): 137-149. Rpt. in A Century of Commentary on the works on Washington Irving. Ed. Andrew B. Myers. Tarrytown: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1976. 330-342.
Ringe, Donald A., "New York and New England: Irving's Criticism of American Society," American Literature (January 1967), 455-67.
Roth, Martin, Comedy and America. Port Washington: Kennidat, 1976.
Snell, George, “Washington Irving: A Revelation.” The Shapers of American Fiction: 1798-1947, (1947). 105-16. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Dennis Poupard. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1982. 382-383.
Springer, Haskell. “Introduction to Rip Van Winkle & The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” (1974). Rpt. in A Century of Commentary on the works on Washington
Irving. Ed. Andrew B. Myers. Tarrytown: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1976. 480-486.
Wagenknecht, Edward, Washington Irving: Moderation Displayed. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. Young, Philip, Fallen From Time: Rip Van Winkle. Kenyon Review, Vol. XXII (1960): 547-73. 457-479.
Young, Philip, Three Bags Full: Essays in American Fiction (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1967), 204-31.