Washington Irving's Satire In Rip Van Winkle

As exemplified through Catherine Pleyel in Wieland, women in 18th century literature are often defined through their roles in the house (e.g. mother, wife, sister) while being scarcely defined as characters with dimension and personalities, and when they are granted the apparent privilege to have a personality and voice, they are generally portrayed as overbearing and oppressive. Washington Irving tackles this observation through his satire concerning Dame Van Winkle in Rip Van Winkle. Dame Van Winkle embodies work and the oppressive authority even though her tyranny is contained to the home. She demotivates Rip Van Winkle in attending to his duties, even though he essentially has free reign over his town. Rip Van Winkle is seen wandering through the world around him, exploring nature and drinking in the hopes of forgetting his other obligations, those which are thrust upon him by his wife. While she never speaks throughout the story, her presence is domineering, especially with her description of being a virago and a termagant. This portrayal is reinforced with the assertion that she is constantly, “dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness”, and later, when she is dead, a celebratory tone is adopted, explaining that Rip has now, “…got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony”. She is the …show more content…
I was unsure of who to support-- Rip hates his wife and working, and celebrates her death in what is seemingly a happy version of Ethan Frome, while Dame is oppressive and comes across as an absolute nightmare, even though she is never awarded an opportunity to speak. Overall, though, drawing attention to clear biases in early American literature is necessary to promote women engagement in such a field-- especially because the number of women writers/ readers at the time was so few-- and to advocate for