The Devil And Tom Walker And Rip Van Winkle Essay

“Rip Van Winkle” and “The Devil and Tom Walker” are both written by Washington Irving and feature a man living with his wife. Each story depicts their wives in a similar fashion; vicious, pestering annoyances that contribute little to nothing towards the well-being of the protagonist. Irving’s general scorn towards women is manifested in a few different ways, even looking beyond their blatantly negative descriptions. The first subtle way Irving shows his bias, intentional or not, is in the way that neither wife’s personality really affects the outcomes of their stories. Dame Van Winkle henpecks Rip because of his idleness, a trait which wouldn’t change even if she weren’t mentioned at all. Rip’s long sleep happened as a result of entering the woods to avoid her for a
day. If the intended message of the story is to avoid substance abuse or apathy, Dame Van Winkle could have been replaced by countless other events occurring on that day, or even removed from the story entirely, and it would basically remain the same. Her negative nature is hardly necessary. Tom’s wife has even littler impact on his tale. Tom briefly reconsiders his deal with the Devil merely out of spite for her, but then proceeds to go along with it anyways. In every paragraph she appears, Tom’s wife serves only as a device to establish or emphasize his miserliness. After she has been missing for a few days, the narrator states “Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value.” Another way in which Irving shows his contempt for women is his one-sidedness in their description.
In “Rip Van Winkle” the narrator gives very little opportunity to sympathize with Dame Van Winkle. A few sentences in the description of Rip’s farm and family partially convey how unfair Rip’s behaviour is to his wife and children, but seems to be out of pure obligation rather than honesty, as the story then continues on to show her merely as an obstacle rather than an actual character. One of many sentences containing this example takes place in the thirteenth paragraph, reading “His only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods.” The story even treats her death as a negligible occurrence, and, of course, includes that she died by popping a blood vessel out of anger in the single sentence devoted to retelling her passing. Irving distances himself from this bias by including a narrator in the story, rather than telling it from an omniscient point of view. This makes her depiction a bit more understandable, but could easily been a result of Irving noticing his own unfair writing, rather than being the cause of
it.
In Tom Walker’s story, things are marginally better, but not for any comforting reason. Tom’s wife is accurately described to be as scandalous as they come, but this time the husband is horrible enough to match her, evening out the playing field. If we look at the over-arching message of the story, however, Irving’s reason for this is obviously not one of fairness. How can someone possibly write a story about the consequences of greed without creating a selfish, greedy protagonist? Whether it was poorly executed satire, or simply a prejudice, Washington Irving’s storytelling is hardly fair to women. He stereotypes women as difficulties and not people, and fails to give the reader a chance to see their side of the story, or even give them a basis to imagine it. From a modern perspective, Irving seems to be against the idea of seeing women as equals to men.