Washington Irving: "Rip Van Winkle"....What was the story really saying?

Washington Irving was an American author of the early nineteenth century.  Irving was best known for his short stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."  Both of these short stories appear in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon.  Irving was also a prolific writer of essays, biographies, and other literary forms.  He was one of the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe.  Irving is said to have mentored authors such as Nathanial Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe [classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wirving/bl-wirving-rip.htm].

"Rip Van Winkle" was written overnight while Irving was staying with his sister and her husband in Birmingham, England.  This story was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Pre-Revolutionary War in New York State.  Rip Van Winkle is a farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains.  Rip helps a dwarf carry a keg into the mountains and is rewarded with its contents.  He falls into a deep, enchanted sleep.  When Rip awakens 20 years later, the world has changed significantly.  He is an old man with a long, white beard.  He goes into town and finds everything has changed.  His nagging wife is dead and his children are grown [http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Washington_Irving] [http://kirjasto.sci.fi/wirving.htm] [http://www.bartleby.com/195/4.html].

Washington Irving wrote this story from facts taken from history and from occurrences within the range of his own experience and observation.  Irving's writings appear to be written merely for amusement but his most comical pieces have a serious end in view.  "Rip Van Winkle" was popular and the most reprinted piece of the nineteenth century because it directly or indirectly chronicled his reaction to the failure of America to live up to the expectations of the Founding Fathers.  Irving's most compelling subject as a writer was the uneasiness and uncertainty of the American people as they awaited the fate of the nation in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  His vision of a time of simple harmony was an exaggerated sense of the disinterested benevolence of those who fought the struggle for America's independence (Rubin-Dorsky).

In "Rip Van Winkle," the image of the "house divided" was terrifying and signified the dissolution of the Union.  Rip's wife could be viewed as representing the North and Rip representing the South.  His wife was not pleased with Rip's disregard for their home.  She continually reprimanded and "nagged" him.  Rip looked on her with disregard and continued his life as he saw fit.  Rip Van Winkle is an overgrown version of a child seeking to gratify boyish impulses for a carefree life without the adult male responsibilities.  Dame Van Winkle also represents the shrill and incessant demands of the present.  Upon awakening from his 20 year sleep, Rip awakens with a great deal of trouble and anxiety.  Rip returns to his home, only to find that both the village and its inhabitants had undergone a metamorphosis.  Political events had transformed the world of "drowsy tranquility" into a growing commercialism that displaced what he had known.  The expanding village is a reflection of a growing America.  The "lost" generation of Americans symbolically could trace the source of this anxiety to the birth of the nation.  Two significant events were the ratification of the Constitution and the election of the president.  Rip reflects the nation's anxiety in Irving's text when he states that everything had changed and he couldn't tell his own name or who he was.  On one side of his 20 year sleep, lies the past, plotted, cultivated and safe; on the other awaits the future, uncharted, coarse, and terrifying.  In the time of the story, the colonies are on the verge of nationhood.  For Rip, the country had shifted overnight from a communal organization based on mutual dependence to a fragmented body of opposing self-interests.  The stranger's voice that called out Rip Van Winkle's name comes from the threatening glen to the west and not from the lush, woodland to the east (Rubin-Dorsky).

Like Rip, Irving may be an amusing, friendly person, but up until the time of his departure for England he performed no necessary function and had not secured a permanent place in his native community of New York.  In Irving's fantasy, Rip makes a success out of his own inadequacy.  He is ultimately recognized, welcomed and accepted by the town once it is understood that he wants nothing more than to be allowed to relate his adventure to all who will listen.  Rip is unaggressive and poses no threat to the business of post-Revolutionary America.  He becomes a favorite with "the rising generation" since he has a story to tell of the past.  Irving's desire for a setttled life is depicted into the fabric of the story.  The anxiety of estrangement is transformed into the ease of acceptance (Rubin-Dorsky).

Pre-revolutionary politics were confined to the reading of an antiquated newspaper and the leisurely discussion this activity engendered, while post-revolutionary politics involved the thunder of an election-day debate.  Contented farmers were giving way to aggressive businessmen (Rubin-Dorsky).  Irving was a politically influenced writer who consistently sought to be free from contention.  The nagging wife in some sense symbolizes the political world that was always prodding him to declare himself.  Additional political meaning that may be intended, was that the shrewish wife is the tyrant Britannia of the late colonial era.  Rip's daughter, Judith, who welcomes him back and takes him in, is the loving symbol of republican America, now at peace (Burstein).

Modern Americans know very little about the year 1819.  It was an especially turbulent year, and this must have conditioned reader's reactions to the first Sketch Book offering.  A nationwide financial panic occurred, though Irving could not have anticipated this when he wrote "Rip Van Winkle."  As a symbol of that historical moment, the story is a fair portrait of the country's adolescent charm, something that was being contested as banks across the country called in loans and caused ruin for many (Burstein).

Rip Van Winkle is a vulnerable, malleable, human.  He is the perfect protagonist in a fable designed to remind us that memory, both fragile and powerful, preserves what is good in the world.  This story has a timeless, imaginative existence of its own.  Storytelling itself is a timeless and eternal activity.  Irving hoped that the nation would expand its idea of "usefulness" and accept him, just as the village finally welcomed Rip as chronicler (Dorsky).

Burstein, A.  The Original Knickerbocker.  Basic Books, New York, 2007.

Rubin-Dorskey, J.  Adrift in the Old World.  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL,  1988.