Tag: books

The Ghost of Chauvinism Haunting “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

When you think of early Americana, what comes to mind? Apple pies, jazz, rock and roll, the Model T, Thanksgiving, 4th of July and the list goes on. How about ghost stories? Both iconic and popular, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is easily the most recognizable historical haunt of Americana. 

I’ve used the two-century old novella in gifted and language arts-enrichment lessons for years. I liked the frighteningly robust vocabulary, easily digestible plot, well-developed characters, and more than surface-deep psychology woven throughout. It paints an interesting picture of historical, colonial America. I especially like all of the inferencing necessary to interpret the text. It has proven to be a very valuable teaching tool. 

Over the years there has been something that has haunted me even more than Sleepy Hollow’s headless horseman, however. As much as I love the way the author brings the goofy, lovable protagonist Ichabod Crane to life, the way Washington Irving objectifies the leading lady leaves something to be desired to say the least.

I never explored the idea with my classes because they are young. It’s bad enough that the plot toes the line of romance! Normally, I just gloss over the gross inequality, both of character development and the overt chauvinism on display. This year, however, I presented the novel in a different way. Rather than hide its faults, I told my 5th graders that I would share with them a few reasons that I thought the book was dangerous. That got their attention! 

We had just read and discussed Alan Gratz’s Ban this Book. Should The Legend of Sleepy Hollow be banned? With this in mind, we began to dig into the original text to find support for both sides of the argument.

What I referred to as the “Leading Lady” of the story is Katrina Van Tassel. This is an eighteen year old girl who takes singing lessons from the protagonist, Ichabod Crane. As it turns out, the music teacher is keen on marrying Katrina. The crisis of the story is that another guy also has his aim on this same goal. 

So far, this might not sound too bad: Classic love triangle stuff. The problem is that Katrina is reduced to an object, quite literally. She is treated no more special than the key or combination that unlocks the treasure of the Van Tassel farm.

Katrina is initially introduced as “the only child of a substantial Dutch farmer,” hinting that her inheritance would be impressive. Then, Irving describes Katrina’s looks analogous to foods; “Plump as a partridge… ripe and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches…”. After this, the author devotes five whole pages to exploring the farm that Katrina lives on, without a mention of the eighteen-year-old who would inherit it upon her father’s death. 

There is no question that Ichabod is driven by greed more than love. It is his desire for Van Tassel’s wealth that spurs on his interest in the daughter. 

“As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burthened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might readily turned into cash …”

In addition to the unbridled objectification of Katrina, her actions are presented in a passive voice, suggesting that she is less important than the men of the tail. She doesn’t study music as much as she is a student of Ichabod’s. Instead of Irving suggesting that Katrina actually attracted the attention of Ichabod’s rival, the author pens, “The rantipole hero (Brom Bones) had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries…” not feigning a hint of action on the lass’s part. 

The extent to which Katrina does anything beyond simply being a female human comes from her status as “a little of a coquette.” There is no evidence to support this outside of the… 

“(perception) even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time; and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.”

The reader catches a hint of coquetry during the Van Tassel party, near the climax of the tale. “The lady of his heart…” (Notice the continued objectification of Katrina.) “…was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.” It is thought by some that Crane was used by Katrina to move Brom to jealousy, deepening her talons into his heart, and spurring him into action. He marries her the moment Ichabod is gone for good. After Ichabod receives his rejection at the tail end of the party, the narrator asks, “Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival?”

Lastly, Katrina is the target of Irving’s evident ire toward women in general. Before her introduction, the narrator of the story frames her entrance with ghosts, goblins, terrors, and frights as pithy ponderings compared to the greatest cause of male problems: Women. This is a two hundred year old story, so there is bound to be unpopularly dated stereotyping, but Irving introduces extra bias toward women by comparing them to guinea fowl “fretting about, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish discontented cry.” And, a couple of paragraphs later, we find Mr. Van Tassel’s “notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her house-keeping and manage the poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things…” This comes immediately after the father, characterized as “an easy indulgent soul” is said to “love(d) his daughter better even than his pipe.” Wow! What a dad! Finally, it is perfectly acceptable that this admirable dad sat around smoking, “Thus while the busy dame (his wife) bustled about the house, or plied her spinning wheel at one end of the piazza,” among other things. 

If all of that wasn’t enough, when our funny hero Ichabod Crane is rejected by Katrina, Washington Irving seems to blame the entire female gender. The narrator cries out to the reader,

“What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chopfallen –Oh these women! these women!”

In conclusion, while Washington Irving professes “not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won” through the words of the narrator of his tail, he treats those hearts like prizes that are obtained, rather than organs of living beings. His text, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has many wonderful qualities that have enriched its readers for centuries. I hope that it is read, treasured, and studied for many more. On the other hand, beware of the spectre of chauvinism haunting its pages, lest you be tempted to follow Irving’s ghost down the road of inequality and maltreatment.

A Bookworm’s Quizzical Poem

I wrote A Bookworm’s Quizzical Poem several years ago. I shared it with my second grade gifted students yesterday when we came across a poem in the book we were reading (365 Penguins).

When I asked them how they knew the poem in the book was poetry, they told me that the letters were fancy. This made me laugh. It reminded me of a blog that I wrote about poetry being intimidating (License to Poetry). While poetry can be beautiful and help you feel fancy, I want to encourage you to guard against reserving it only for ivory towers.

Teaching 3rd grade helped melt my fear of poetry. With an audience of 8 and 9 year-olds, I not only wrote it, but felt free to share and interpret it with my students. I even began to search the Internet for poems that had to do with topics I was teaching in order to deepen my students’ experience during lessons!

As readers of Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein can attest, poetry can be loads of fun to read. It can also be fun to write.

My second grade gifted students and I discussed and explored the rhyming words at the end of each line of the poem from our book. We counted the syllables from each line. The message of the poem was pretty obvious, but it lent to the idea that poetry can be about sharing emotions. Finally, my students and I used the last line to spark a lesson about apostrophes.

They knew that apostrophes show possession, like in the title of my poem, A Bookworm’s Quizzical Poem. And, they understood the concept of showing the missing letters in contractions, but I blew their minds when I told them about poetic license to slice off whole sections of words!

“Why would a poet need to shorten a word?” I prompted. They were quick to identify the trick of squeezing the correct number of syllables into lines. This is when I dug out my old poem.

Did you know that bookworms are real live insects. Back when the glues that bound books were more organic than chemically produced and the pages were pulpier than they are now, larvae would literally feast on the texts.

My poem plays on this idea of a worm eating books, both literally and figuratively. In line 15 the dad says that his son’s book “Was no more than food for my belly.” The next line compares reading a good book to eating something delicious, though.

These comments on the right of the poem are questions that I thought of for helping my students get more out of the text. I ended up typing them into a Google Form to use as a teaching tool. Feel free to use the poetry and form, if you wish.

I always enjoy pointing out the word “shooking” in line 36. It is so silly. It feels weird to say it out loud. After discussing its job of rhyming with “looking” from line 35, I explain to my students that this is a perfect example of me simply having fun with words.

As an author, you have the power and authority to write whatever you want. You can bend the rules. You could even break the rules… a little. If you break them too much, your text won’t make any sense. Just enough, and your writing is interesting, attention-getting, fun, and memorable.

The phoenix’s presence at the end of the poem symbolizes the healing of the relationship between the son and dad, as well as the renewal of ideas. The son will be the next dad. Generations continually move on. Phoenix tears, not that our poem’s bird cried, are supposed to have healing properties.

Also, according to “Ancient Origins” (2021), anyone standing near the pile of ash left when a phoenix burns up can’t help but tell the truth. Is this why the dad confessed to taking the young bookworm’s book? Perhaps it lent to the honesty by which the son told the dad all about his love of poetry and reading.

Whether you love my poem or not, I hope that you open your heart to poetry in general. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and writing it since I have let go of fears and insecurities.

Here is a video of me reading my poem for my class. I made this during the pandemic when we were all stuck at home, but it also served to differentiate the lesson for students who might have struggled reading. The video is embedded in the Google form so kids can re-experience the poem right before answering the questions.