Rip Van Winkle and American Mythology

 Washington Irving was credited with introducing the short story as a new genre in American literature, as William Hedges observes, yet I find it surprising that this story could have been taught as utterly original. As Emerson and the Transcendentalists were able to synthesize the mystical aspects of Puritan thought with the rational and secular facets of Enlightenment thinking, so Irving weaves a new tapestry out of many existing threads of American experience. “Rip Van Winkle” is a mature version of Franklin’s short fictional sketches, such as “The Speech of Polly Baker,” and if one were to read isolated passages from Irving and Franklin aloud, it could be difficult to identify the source, as both develop a muted sarcasm and rely heavily on irony to develop their narratives. Perhaps more surprising, however, is the fact that Irving is most indebted to the older tradition of Native American literature that he references in the postscript to “Rip Van Winkle.” It might be either ironic or entirely unsurprising (depending on one’s frame of reference) to learn that American literature comes of age (as Irving is poised at the beginning of the American Renaissance) by deliberately embracing the mythological tradition as its thematic base.

The obvious difference between “Rip Van Winkle” and an oral narrative like “Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe” is the gratuitous and satirical preface, which claims that the narrative is characterized by “scrupulous accuracy” and must be read as an historical account with “unquestionable authority” (2154). These are the first nuances of sarcasm, alerting the reader to differences between Irving’s text and the explicitly historical documents of the Puritan and Enlightenment tradition, such as Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation and Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Whereas earlier texts commingled myth and history without acknowledging the interface between the two genres, Irving deliberately toys with these ironies in order to prepare the reader for a symbolic, rather than literal, reading of his text. It might not be too radical a conclusion to suggest that reading “RVW” like literal history is like trying to stick to the literal six-day creation interpretation of Genesis: the narrative undermines the literalist view at every turn.

The mythical elements of the narrative are most obvious when Gothic elements begin to creep in. As Rip hears his name echoing in the woods, but can “see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain,” Irving tugs gently on the thread of the Salem trials, suggesting that the supernatural is afoot in the woods. The crow sighting is not incidental here, either, as Crow or Raven would signal the onset of a trickster narrative in oral literature. Irving nudges readers toward the mythical reading, in part, by endearing them to Rip, who could hardly be accused of witchcraft. The choice, in other words, that Irving forces readers to confront is whether to make fools of themselves by trying to explain the entire episode as factual history (thus perpetuating the Salem nonsense) or sink into the metaphorical complexities of the story. And, like a good myth, the story doesn’t really leave much choice in the end, but casts its own spell that carries the reader where it will.

From the postscript, readers know that the narrative is a synthesis of German folklore and Indian legends. Irving explicitly demonstrates knowledge of the Trickster figure by citing the “Manitou or Spirit…who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men.” Based on such a clear articulation of his debt to Native literature, it is difficult to see how Irving can be classified as the sole innovator of the short story anymore than Emerson can be credited with introducing the idea of non-conformity that Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Thomas Morton had championed much earlier, and with more at stake. What we find in “RVW” is typical of many other developments in colonial and post-colonial culture: as European ideas mature, they begin to take on characteristics of the indigenous culture that Europeans originally sought to replace. Linda Hogan explains this in “The Department of the Interior,” as she cites James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis (the notion that the Earth is unified as a large self-regulating organism named for the mythical goddess of the earth) as an example of Indian ideas touted as “genius” when they are reitereated in scientific terms.

Why was Irving touted as a “genius” in the literary tradition? His subtle humor, playful metaphors, and evocative descriptions surely play a role, but I would argue that the truly distinct elements of “RVW” come from Irving’s reappropriation of very old literary techniques. He borrows and steals from the tradition of myth, and this is what gives his writing authority. Such a fact does not diminish Irving’s stature as a writer; on the contrary, it elevates the oral literature significantly and suggests, as Craig Womack has argued, that there is no American canon without Native American literature.

Extending the mythical reading of “RVW” is not difficult for the reader well versed in the colonial and Enlightenment texts. There are subtle allegorical references to Salem in many places, most specifically in Rip’s reappearance in the town square, where people are “seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks” while listening to his tall tale. Had the average American not made the transition from literalism (or fundamentalism) to the metaphorical view of the world that Deism invited in the Enlightenment period, Rip would surely have been tried and hanged as a witch after returning from the “howling wilderness” with such a suspicious story.

Irving’s description of the players of nine-pins invoke Puritan characteristics, since “they maintained the gravest faces” while going about their sport. It is as if the countryside is haunted by these forbears, who remind Rip “of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of settlement.” The magic of the narrative here is that Irving doesn’t spell out the Puritan connection for readers, but invites thought experiments about the implications of this comparison. Why would Puritans be playing at ninepins in the wilderness? Could this be a dig at colonial America, a miniature history of those sober folk condensed into one satirical metaphor? What might the irony of his bewitchment suggest, if this is the case? Irving invites readers to ponder such questions, and as a good myth invites the hearer to make meaning of it actively by participating in the narrative, so Irving provides room for more than mere entertainment here, particularly for readers who know something about the historical allusions and can play with their implications.

The scene in the woods is also reminiscent of Thomas Morton’s famous maypole celebration, since Rip helps the stranger hoist a flagon of liquor up the mountain. The Kaatskill mountains here are larger than Merry Mount was, but the associations are possible. It is as if Rip meets the combined version of Morton and Bradford in this paradoxical party on the mountaintop.

Another irony to consider is the ways in which Irving anticipates many of Thoreau’s ideas. Long before the retreat to Walden Pond, Irving introduces Rip Van Winkle as “one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with the least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.” When Thoreau later urges readers to cultivate “[s]implicity, simplicity, simplicity” and to “keep [their] accounts on [their] thumb nail[s],” he is not suggesting anything that Rip does not represent. And Rip’s Transcendental hike to “one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains” anticipates Thoreau’s claim to be “the monarch of all [he] survey[s].” Rip is an unwitting Transcendentalist, yet Irving grants him the mountaintop view, the interaction with the sublime (via his transformation), and the characteristics of a thoroughgoing non-conformist all before Emerson popularized these ideas in “Self-Reliance.” Surely Rip is not the mythical ego-in-isolation (Emerson and Thoreau added much more arrogance to non-conformity than Irving did), and he does not represent the ambition of Fuller’s project for social reform. The world changes without Rip’s intervention. He is not a poet come down from the mountain to emancipate the masses with knowledge of the sublime, as per Emerson’s later call for just such a poet. His farm is in a pathetic state of disrepair. It would seem that Rip represents everything the American is not or should not be, and yet a close look sees that Rip’s character and the entire story develop a mosaic of themes that were already thriving when Columbus made contact. It just took four hundred years for European culture to realize that “archetypal” was more a more appropriate moniker than “savage” for these indigenous traditions, though even then it is debatable whether Irving is giving credit where it is due in his postscript or attempting to subordinate Native tradition to his own bid for literary greatness.