Kaethe

Last night at supper we were talking about the various kinds of fey characters of human folklore, and the Spouse said Rip had spent his twenty years (relative) among hairy gnomes. I didn't remember that at all, so it seemed I'd have to read the story again. At thirty years remove from the original reading, all I could recall was the simplest plot: that Rip drinks among the fey, comes back to town 20 years later.

I'm glad I re-read it, because there's much more to the Irving telling. Kind of horrifically so, because the whole point of the story is that Van Winkle's wife is horrible. Really horrible. Such a shrew. I had no recollection of the fact that Rip was running away from her. Nor did I recall that the men he went among were so very hairy, nor that they were supposed to be Hendrick Hudson and crew. Nor did I notice the time the story was set: before and after the Revolutionary War, with the heroism of his former friends recounted.

The Spouse complained that Irving took a traditional story and nailed it to a specific time and place and made it such a very Catskill story. That didn't bother me, but oh, that wife! I feel suitably chastened on behalf of all my gender. The nerve of that woman, trying to make her husband provide for the family. She deserves the harshest punishment imaginable and stroking out while yelling at a peddler is pretty harsh.