Comparing Rip Van Winkle And The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving has written some of the most controversial and well talked about

pieces and stories that have been kept and continued to be shared. They are still used today in

many different forms to show how sophisticated and overall just great stories that he has

written through his time. He had achieved a level of what could be considered international

fame for his work on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”. He even became the

U.S. Ambassador for Spain. Irving was born on April 3rd in New York, NY in 1783. He was the

youngest of eleven children with his parents being Scottish-English that immigrated here to the

Through his childhood, Irving was educated privately and landed a few jobs at local

magazines and had

This had made him a “literary star” and made

him very popular in the US and England. Upon returning to the US, he had a few more stints at

home which contained the rest of his life until November 28th, 1859 when Mr. Irving passed

There were where two main questions that were asked while reading these short

stories, where Irving had a feminist or anti-feminist view and portrayal on the wives in these

two stories. In both of these stories, “The Devil And Tom Walker” and “Rip Van Winkle”, there

are many points where Irving portrays the main character having very strong negative and

almost hateful feelings toward women. Just off the top of my head, I can recall Rip Van Winkle

going out into the woods just to get away from his wife because they were always arguing and

he just didn’t seem to care.

Along with this, the same can also be said for “The Devil and Tom Walker”. An example

off the top of my head would be that he was portraying through the main character the he

couldn’t trust women, like when he met the man in the forest and was afraid to tell his wife as

he thought she would use this to her advantage, and another example would be at the end