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| The Forest of Sleepy Hollow |
Written almost two decades after Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative, the stories of Washington Irving reflect the shift of beliefs of the early American Settlers to the values of Irving's American-born, American made society. While the Puritans came to America believing that all things on this earth should be done in honor of God, 19th century Americans were so devout or steadfast in their beliefs. What the Puritans conceived as dangerous or evil, Irving and his contemporaries saw as ethereal and full of potential. Such is the case with nature and all that it encompasses. The puritans associated nature with the Amerindians, who were evil heathen devils, and believed any thing related to them in anyway should be destroyed. Irving, though, saw nature as a gateway to so much more, something to be admired and respected. This is evident in two of his stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. In both stories, the natural world has produced fantastical, otherworldly beings that may cause fear and trepidation, but are nonetheless awe inspiring. Furthermore, the communities in these stories seem to fully embrace the mythical parts of nature, and integrate their legend into their culture.
In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane is a man who does not shy away from the beauty of the nature surrounding him; in fact, he seems to find comfort in it, "...as he wended his way to the farmhouse...every sound of nature, the bonding cry of the tree toad, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, fluttered his excited imagination. His only resource on such occasions was to sing psalm tunes..." Unlike Mary Rowlandson, who was imprisoned by the nature surrounding her, Ichabod Crane is freed by it. It causes him to sing psalms - a very religious practice, one which is reminiscent of Mary's narrative. However, Mary used to read Psalms from her bible as a saving grace during her lowest points. She was driven to them by the cruel conditions and harsh experiences she endured. Ichabod, though, has no choice but to sing his psalm tunes, because he cannot express his joy at the world surrounding him in any other way. The outcome for the two is the same, but the motivation is vastly different: Mary was driven by anguish, Ichabod is driven by exhilaration. Ichabod's enthusiasm is a reflection of Irving's on views on nature, that it is something to be cherished. Even though this story is centered around a ghost legend, the natural world only ever appears as admirable. Even when Ichabod is scared at night, Irving makes sure to inform the reader that anything scary was just a "phantom of the dark," and that "daylight put mend to all these evils." It is not nature itself that is evil, but the person's perception to it after being exposed to a terrifying tale.
The story of Rip Van Winkle places nature in a much more amiable, if not equally as mysterious, light. Rip's only place of solace is the Catskill Mountains. It is there, deep in the trees and high in the mountains that he can escape his nagging wife and exist in peace. The woods offer him comfort, much like they did for Ichabod: "...to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, [Rip] was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods." Rip's could only find comfort and went willingly into the place so loathed by Mary Rowlandson, a place to which she was forcibly put. Much like the forests of Sleepy Hollow producing the Headless Horseman, so did the woods of the Catskill mountains produce fantastic, mythical figures who were bowling in the middle of the forest, one of whom seemed to know Rip. "On entering the amphitheater...on a level spot in the center was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins." These odd looking people had a keg from which Rip kept stealing drink, and these mythical little men who sprang from the woods inadvertently caused Rip to be in an extraordinary circumstance. By falling asleep for twenty years, he was relieved of his life of misery and beloved by all the townspeople. It is clear from both of these stories that Irving believes that the natural world is capable of things beyond anyone's imagination, and that the Puritans were misguided in their drive to destroy it.
Good blog, love the picture.
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ReplyDeleteHi Rebecca, My name is Denise and I chose your blog to comment on. Reading it, I find it centers on Irving and Rowlandson. It is well written and has excellent content. You covered them well. For my comment, I’ll add a little something involving James Fenimore Cooper. I see Cooper as a visionary. At a time when most settlers were clearing our beautiful wilderness with no regard to environmental damage, writers like Cooper were sounding the alarm, were calling for caution and restraint. He used the protagonist of his novel, The Pioneers, to carry his gauntlet, to champion his cause. In this case his weapon of choice was not the lance, but something much more powerful, words. No old man cloaked in rusty amour, just some ink and an old quill pen.
I quote from Chapter 1 of the Pioneers written by Cooper. The passage occurs before a debate over who killed a deer; Natty Bumppo mouths the following, “Ah! The game is becoming hard to find, indeed, Judge, with your clearings and betterments," said the old hunter, with a kind of compelled resignation. ‘The time has been when I have shot thirteen deer without counting the fa’ns standing in the door of my own hut; and for bear’s meat, if one wanted a ham or so, he had only to watch a-nights…”’ In this and other early passages, Cooper is acknowledging that man’s incursions into the wilderness are having a negative effect on them and their inhabitants.
In Chapter 22 Cooper removes the veil from his concerns and becomes even more overt. Again, using his protagonist, Natty Bumppo, to voice his displeasure with the senseless destruction of a huge flock of pigeons. Cooper writes, “None pretended to collect the game, which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims. Leather-Stocking was a silent but uneasy spectator of all these proceedings…‘This comes of settling a country!’ he [Bumppo] said. ‘Here have I known the pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing --being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake…Well, the Lord won’t see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by.”’ In addition to the senseless destruction of the pigeons, Cooper is also acknowledging other environmental atrocities when he ends that passage with, “as well as others.” I feel Cooper’s respect and appreciation for America’s wilderness and his outrage at the wanton destruction of that wilderness is equally as important as his aggrandizement of America’s beauty to the rest of the world.
Rebecca, as I said in the beginning of this comment, I enjoyed your blog and look forward to reading your future submissions, Denise.