“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
THE LITERARY WORK
A short story set in a New York Dutch community after the Revolutionary War, published in 1819-20.
SYNOPSIS
Icahbod Crane, a greedy Yankee schoolteacher, vies with a local youth for the affections of a rich farmer’s daughter. On his way home one day, the schoolteacher is accosted by a figure who appears to be the legendary headless horseman of Sleeby Hollow. Crane is never seen again.
Events in History at the Time the Short Story Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Short Story Was Written
Washington Irving was born in New York in 1783. He was strongly influenced by the Dutch culture of that area, which maintained a distinctive identity into the early 1800s. Successfully integrating both European and American elements into his stories, he gained an international reputation as the first distinctively American writer. Irving lived abroad from 1815 to 1832; “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was first published while the author lived in England. Although the story is set shortly after the Revolutionary War, living’s characters draw on traditions of the pre-Revolutionary days of the colonial English and Dutch in his home state of New York.
Events in History at the Time the Short Story Takes Place
Regional conflict
In colonial America, the region that is now the state of New York was first settled by the Dutch and called New Netherland. In 1664 the British conquered New Netherland and changed the name to New York, yet the influence of the Dutch immigrants continued to be felt long after this conquest. Tensions had existed between the Dutch in New Netherland and the English immigrants in New England from the early days of colonization. They quarreled over the fur trade, property issues, and relations with American Indian tribes. As early as 1640, the Dutch complained of being mistreated by the English and charged that the English accused them of crimes that they had not committed. In 1661 Governor Winthrop of Connecticut wrote a memo referring to the Dutch as “noxious neighbours,” and after their colony was conquered by the English in 1664, the Dutch were considered an alien culture by the English colonists. This view of them persisted until approximately 1800.
A series of border wars between New England and New York and continuing economic competition fueled tensions over the years. But the most important source of early conflict appeared just after the Revolutionary War. At this time, immigration from New England into New York increased rapidly. The tide from New England grew even greater after 1783, when New Englanders swept “up the Mohawk gateway, and ... out across the fertile lands of central and western New York” (Ellis et al., p. 189). These settiers, who sought to secure rich farmland and escape the high taxes in place in Massachusetts, immigrated in such great numbers into the Hudson-Mohawk valleys that they overwhelmed most Dutch and German communities. By 1820 a clear majority of New Yorkers were of New England origin. The consequence was ill feeling among the Dutch and Germans toward the New Englanders. This tension is reflected in Irving’s tale, which pits the Dutchman Brom Bones against the New England schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, who has recently come to New York.
The Dutch character
Bones is a rough and tumble character who exhibits many qualities shown by rural Dutch settlers before the American Revolution. A simple country fellow, he is quick to show both his anger and his sense of humor, and he is prone to story telling, exaggerating, joking, and fighting.
FUN AND GAMES
The raucous personality of Brom Bones draws on the boisterous nature attributed to early Dutch colonial youths, some of whose games would be considered cruel by today’s standards. “Clubbing the Cat,” for example, consisted of placing a cat inside a barrel and suspending the barrel in midair. The participants competed to see who could set the cat free by hurling clubs at the cask. Another favorite was “Pulling the Goose.” In this game, a goose with a greased head was hung upside down from a rope strung across the road. The object was to see which horseback rider could pull the goose free as he rode under the rope.
Both practical jokes and fighting were common elements of colonial Dutch society. In the story, Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane compete for the affections of Katrina Van Tassel. According to the tale, Bones “had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, (and) would fain have carried matters to open warfare, and have settled their pretensions to the lady according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore—by single combat” (Irving, “Legend of Sleepy Hollow, p. 343). Ichabod, who is much smaller than Brom Bones, refuses to fight, much to Bones’s frustration. “There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival” (“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 37). To get even with Ichabod, Bones and his friends smoke out the schoolhouse, turn the furniture upside down, and teach Bones’s dog to mimic Ichabod’s singing. Brom’s tricks demonstrate his frustration, and indeed his final jest becomes the climax of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Although Irving lets his readers draw their own conclusions about Ichabod’s fate, the story suggests that Ichabod was the brunt of an elaborately orchestrated prank designed to run him out of town. While this trick may have been rather elaborate, it was not unusual for jests of the time to go to great lengths. A common prank, for example, involved surprising a newlywed couple at their home on their wedding night and placing large, decorated poles by the door. It was also common for Dutch youths to disturb the nighttime peace by firing their guns and shouting loudly; some would run their horses through the town at high speeds.
Often such pranks led to trouble of a more serious nature, resulting in fights or other types of punishment. One story tells of two Dutch youths who brought a soldier-friend into a tavern and introduced him to the owner as a hero of the Revolutionary War. The owner bought them drinks for the rest of the night. When it became known that the friend was no such hero, the youths were forced to pay the large bar bill and placed in stocks. (An instrument of punishment, stocks were a wood frame with slots for locking in a prisoner’s ankles and wrists.) In another alleged incident, a trumpeter blew his instrument directly into the ears of his comrades as a joke. Startled and angry, they pounded the trumpeter fiercely. Such anecdotes indicate that Brom Bones’s desire to fight Ichabod Crane reflected the habits of pre-Revolutionary Dutch youth.
Education
Though “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” takes place after New York became part of the United States, some critics believe that Irving included some of the attributes of the colonial Dutch education system that date back to the existence of New Netherland. New Nether-land was the only colonial province that used public monies to pay for elementary instruction for both boys and girls. Elementary education in New Netherland included all children without regard to sex, class, or social condition, a remarkable state of affairs for that historical era.
Despite these good intentions, however, the early Dutch had problems with some of the schoolmasters, and living’s characterization of Ichabod Crane as a somewhat shady person may reflect a vestige of this aspect of the Dutch colonial experience. One of the earliest teachers, Adam Roelantsen, was quarrelsome; he found himself in court several times for slander and drunkenness. He sued his neighbors often, married a widow in order to possess her property, and once landed in court for refusing to pay for his passage on a boat. Later teachers proved unsavory in similar ways.
In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Ichabod is depicted as a rather dubious scholar. The narrator mentions that he had read only a couple of books completely. His favorite is a book not on history or science or literature, but on witchcraft. Furthermore, Ichabod exploits his position as a schoolteacher in the community. He freeloads off the hospitality of others, yet maintains the respect of the community because of his education.
Ichabod often beats his students, which was a common practice in both Dutch and New England schools. In Ichabod’s case, he beats the larger boys but not the smaller ones. In many Dutch schools, corporal punishment was normal, and such items as a willow rod or a plank were used for beating children. The plank, which could be either rough or smooth, consisted of a piece of wood on a stick. Rough planks could draw blood. Irving himself was a rather lazy student who was uninterested in school as a youth; perhaps his own disdain for academics is embodied in the story.
Witches, ghosts and goblins
Tales of the supernatural provided source material upon which Washington Irving continually drew. Ghost stories and tall tales permeated the Dutch community, and the Dutch were reputed to be fairly superstitious. In fact, the Dutch settlers contributed a great deal of folklore to the Hudson River Valley area. This influence can be felt in such enduring place names as Hell-gate, Storm King, Pirate’s Spook, and Spuyten Duyvil (which means “in spite of the Devil”). Legends of ghosts and headless horsemen were common in Dutch society, and their folk tales also made use of the devil, curious phantoms, and other horrid creatures of the night. Rumors of haunted ships and pirate treasure also abounded. living’s story of the headless horseman thus fit neatly into the Dutch community’s stream of supernatural tales.
New Englanders were also superstitious, as demonstrated by the character of Ichabod Crane. Furthermore, Ichabod hails from an area noted for its heritage of religious intolerance. This heritage is recalled by the story’s mention of Ichabod’s favorite book, A History of New England Witchcraft by Cotton Mather. Cotton Mather was an influential Congregationalist minister in Massachusetts during the late 1600s. He believed that God’s will entailed ridding the community of witches, and his views became closely associated with the Salem witch trials of the early 1690s. While he helped his community in a number of ways, his name is often connected with Puritan excesses.
THE HAUNTED TREE
Throughout “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” recurring references are made to a haunted tret: near Sleeby Hollow. A popular soldier on the British side, Major John André, was captured by American soldiers near this tree during the Revolutionary War. Major Andre had met with the traitor Benedict Arnold, who smuggled American army plans to the British. Andre snuck off a British warship and across enemy lines to meet with Arnold. Afterward, Major André put on a disguise for protection and started to cross back over American lines on land, but he was captured near the haunted tree in September 1780. Sentenced to hang, Andre was executed in October of that year. His fate moved even some of the Americans, who considered Benedict Arnold the true villain of the whole affair. While Andre suffered the consequences, Arnold escaped. In Tarrytown, says Irving, the common people regarded the tree “with a mixture of respect and superstition.” partly in sympathy for Major Andre “and partly from the tales, strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told concerning it” (“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 47). Near the end of Irving’s short story, Ichabod Crane grows frightened when he reaches this tree, and soon after the headless horseman appears.
Despite the superstitious nature of the Dutch communities, they never convicted anybody of witchcraft. The Dutch proved fairly tolerant of religious differences in their own communities. By contrasting Ichabod’s intolerance with Dutch folk beliefs, the story emphasizes differences that its author perceived in regional character.
Tarrytown and the Revolutionary War
About two miles from Sleepy Hollow is the larger village of Tarrytown. References to Tarrytown’s participation
in the Revolutionary War permeate “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The exploits of soldiers engaged in battles there provided much fodder for the Dutch story tellers. As Irving himself observed, by his era just enough time had passed since the Revolution for story tellers to dress up facts with fiction and make themselves heroes. The passage of time also served to fuel Dutch superstition in regard to the war. Supernatural attributes came to be associated with a number of soldiers who died in the conflict. Indeed, the headless horseman of Irving’s tale was alleged to be a trooper for the British who was decapitated by a cannonball during the war.
The Short Story in Focus
The plot
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” details the mysterious fate of Ichabod Crane, a Connecticut schoolteacher in the Dutch community of Sleepy Hollow, a few miles from Tarrytown, New York, sometime after the Revolutionary War. A thin, spindly man, Ichabod is also a glutton and a freeloader. The village people accept him as a gossip; he often stops to visit women in order to be fed and to talk.
Because of his status as the schoolteacher, Ichabod is respected in the community as a man of learning. In reality, however, he is not well-read, and his extremely superstitious nature includes a belief in witches and demons. Despite the fact that he lives at his pupils’ houses, Ichabod often beats his bigger students, supposedly to help them learn better. He meanwhile tells them they will thank him for the beatings later and otherwise attempts to stay on good terms with his students so that they will invite him over for dinner.
Ichabod falls in love with a well-to-do farmer’s daughter named Katrina Van Tassel. He also admires her wealth and wants to marry her so that he can possess her family’s productive farm. Every time he sees her, he imagines himself feasting on all the potentially good things to eat:
The pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye, he pictured to himself every roasting pig running about with a pudding in its belly, and an apple in his mouth.
(“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 32)
Ichabod seeks to win Katrina’s heart. Katrina, however, has many suitors, including Brom Bones. In contrast to Ichabod, Brom is a man who likes to jest. An athletic, rough, good-hu-mored and somewhat overbearing man, Bromresents Ichabod’s advances to Katrina. The flirtatious Katrina, though, basks in the attentions of each man.
One night the Van Tassels have a quilting party. After spending a great deal of time primping, Ichabod rides to the party on a broken-down horse that he borrowed from a farmer. Attending the party are guests from all over the county, including many beautiful women. Ichabod, however, is enchanted not with the women but with the sumptuous food that fills the house. He eats heartily and dances with Katrina, “while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner” (“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 43).
After the dancing and feasting, the guests begin to tell ghost stories. Sleepy Hollow is especially known for its tales of ghosts, and the most famous story of the region concerns the legend of the headless horseman. A Hessian soldier (a German mercenary in the British army), the headless horseman had been decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. He was rumored to sometimes haunt a particular covered bridge near a church in Sleepy Hollow. The legends told that the ghostly horseman would pursue any traveler that passed while he was around. The party-goers tell tales of the horseman and how he vanishes as suddenly as he appears.
The party breaks up. Ichabod, who has convinced himself that Katrina is in love with him, asks for her hand in marriage, but she refuses. Heavy-hearted, he starts on his way back home long after the other guests have left. During his ride home, he recalls the supernatural tales he had heard earlier in the evening, and a feeling of fear begins to settle over him. When he approaches the covered bridge, another rider suddenly appears nearby. The horseman, a huge and silent figure, does not answer Ichabod’s greeting. Ichabod and the apparition each ride forward slowly. Ichabod then rides quickly, but the other rider keeps pace. As Ichabod mounts a hill in the road he sees his mysterious companion silhouetted against the darkness: the man has no head atop his shoulders, but he seems to be carrying one on the front of his saddle. Terrified, Ichabod spurs his horse through the bushes. He loses his saddle but clings to his horse, thinking that he will be safe if he can only make it across the bridge. He risks one final glance backward to see if his pursuer has vanished at the bridge as the legends described. The goblin hurls his decapitated head after Ichabod, hitting him squarely on the skull.
Ichabod is never heard from again. The farmers find his horse and the lost saddle, as well as some pieces of smashed pumpkin along the bridge near the church. Some people guess that he left town after Katrina’s rejection, while others conclude that the headless horseman carried him off. Whenever they speak of him, though, Brom Bones “burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell” (“Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 52).
Sources
Since the publication of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” scholars have argued about the origin of Irving’s ideas. Some people believe that he derived his material from the German folklore in which he immersed himself, while others believe that his creations stem from his native New York. What is most likely, however, is that Irving derived his ideas from both of these sources.
While Irving’s main themes may have German origins, he introduces elements—such as the quilting party and the Van Tassels’ black servant—that are native to the United States. Local detail is also incorporated into the story; the graveyard of the real Sleepy Hollow holds a soldier whose head was knocked off by a cannon-ball. Finally, a biographer of Irving argues that the setting for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the character of Brom Bones stemmed from the narratives of Washington Irving’s brother-in-law, who had spent time in Tarrytown and was familiar with a person similar to Brom Bones.
Events in History at the Time the Short Story Was Written
The Yankee stereotype
Washington Irving viewed the New Englanders with mistrust, a fact which manifested itself in his writing. Many New Yorkers believed that the New Englanders, also called Yankees, were only interested in money. They also believed that the Yankees were cold and calculating, interested only in progress, change, and movement. Irving distrusted Yankees and felt that their dominant traits included restlessness and continual pursuit of development. He once complained that the Yankees were always on the move. New York society, on the other hand, was more rooted and conservative. Those who viewed Yankee society as a threat to their own solid existence were convinced that their own standards of order, tradition, and family values were at risk.
The theme of the poor native against the rich invader became common in American literature. By Irving’s time, New Englanders were often depicted in stereotypical fashion by New Yorkers. New York writers commonly satirized the Yankees, portraying them as lean, mean gossips who questioned everybody about his or her business. The portrayal of Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was thus fairly representative of New York views. Ichabod’s enormousgappetite might even be viewed as a metaphor; he means to devour the best of Tarrytown’s innocence by marrying Katrina Van Tassel. Even the manner in which Ichabod courts Katrina is self-serving. He loves her inheritance as much as he does the girl. He hopes to turn the prosperous, bountiful, and stable farm into cold hard cash and move away after securing Katrina’s hand in marriage.
Art and progress in the early 1800s
During the beginning of the nineteenth century, Americans struggled to break free from European influences. Society emphasized practical goals to achieve national growth. With this in mind, the government initiated a systematic program of development and doubled the size of the nation’s territory. Society took a conservative turn, valuing usefulness.
Industry took precedence over the arts, and many Americans rejected artistic endeavors as unpatriotic. They argued over whose standards should determine national culture. Many were afraid that English taste would become the norm, and because the United States had just attained independence, they did not wish the English to dominate in any manner. Americans spurned the arts as the products of old wealth, social privilege, and moral decay—an attitude that resulted from the tendency of monarchs and aristocrats in Europe to sponsor the arts. From the viewpoint of some Americans, painting, sculpture, and fiction seemed out of keeping with the nation’s republican values of simplicity, social equality, and moral behavior. Most Americans considered poetry and fiction useless endeavors and regarded creative writing with disdain. Irving’s writings, which drew on the American heritage and so helped establish a patriotic element to the nation’s literature, were largely responsible for changing these attitudes.
Romanticism
Science and reason had been held in high regard in both the United States and Europe for much of the 1700s. This continued in the early 1800s as the growth of industry began to bring about great changes in society. Moving out of their quiet villages, people began crowding into cities. The Romantic movement developed in response to these trends. Romanticism placed high regard on the emotional, the mysterious, and the imaginative as well as on the uniqueness of personal or national experience. Romantic artists turned to the past for comfort against feelings of isolation and despair that they felt had been caused by society’s emphasis on rational thought and progress. As artists in Europe and the United States looked to the past, they paid increasing attention to national customs and origins. This reexamination was especially strong from about 1805 to 1830.
The tensions Irving felt between progress and an idealized past can be found in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Irving portrays the Dutch community as a magical, dreamy, and idyllic place. As one scholar notes, “Tarry Town emerges as a symbol of the colonial past, in which we tarry for a moment before moving on. The atmosphere is simple, uncomplicated, pastoral. It is established by such adjectives as quiet, listless, drowsy, dreamy and such nouns as murmur, lull, repose, tranquillity” (Bone, p. 170).
Reviews
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was included in a book called The Sketch Book, which Washington Irving published in 1819 and 1820. He had been working with his brother in the family’s business, but when the business suddenly went bankrupt, living’s family was in danger of impoverishment. Irving, who never had great aspirations as a businessman, had already made something of a name for himself as a writer, so he quickly wrote The Sketch Book, which was published simultaneously in England and the United States.
The Sketch Book, which was on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Irving was able to support his family because of its success, and The Sketch Book cemented his reputation as a writer. The book was an important publication because America had not yet produced literature that Europeans considered quality work. As one reviewer noted in Black-wood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1820, “Mr. Washington is one of our first favourites among the English writers of this age—and he is not a bit the less for having been born in America ...” (Mullane and Wilson, p. 367). In addition, Irving’s book was considered one of the first distinctly American works of fiction, notable for its use of local humor and folklore. Another reviewer raved:
[W]e are now tempted to notice it as a very remarkable publication,—and to predict that it will form an era in the literature of the nation to which it belongs. It is the work of an American, entirely bred and trained in that country.
(Mullane and Wilson, p. 367)
For More Information
Bone, Robert A. “lrving’s Headless Hessian: Prosperity and the Inner Life.” In American Quarterly 15, no. 2, part 1 (summer 1963): 167-75.
Ellis, David M., James A. Frost, Harold C. Syrett, and Harry J. Carman. A History of New York State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.
Hults, Dorothy. New Amsterdam Days and Ways. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963.
Irving, Pierre. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. New York: Putnam’s, 1862-1864.
Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” In Two Tales. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Mullane, Janet, and Robert Wilson. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol 19. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988.