Misogyny In Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

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In the three stories, by Washington Irving, he shows acts of misogyny. Within the story, the character of Rip Van Winkle, a man sick of his wife wanders off into the wood, to disappear for 20 years. Throughout the story of The Devil and Tom Walker, the devil asks the man to sell his soul to him for money. Which the man was going to do until his wife convinced him not to. Also in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the man in the story likes a woman, but unfortunately the woman picks another man over him. All of these stories each of the male characters have to face a certain challenge whether it be internal or external. First off in the story of Rip Van Winkle, a man sick of his wife wanders off into the woods only to disappear for twenty years. …show more content…

Within this story, the man fell in love with a woman who unfortunately did not obtain the same feelings for him. This shows a bad side of women by basically stating that they will ruin a man’s life without feeling bad for him nor having sympathy for hurting him. Consistently, in his stories he shows that women are a burden in the men’s lives. On the other hand, all women do not act in such a manner. Without a doubt, these women in the story are the one percent. Irving strong passion of hate toward women is a reason unknown. Irving lose his wife at a young age, his wife died at the young age of seventeen. They were soon to be married and Irving loved her dearly, but after she died, he never engaged, married, or dated a woman. It is a possibility that he resented his wife for dying. That he took all the bad actions she did and buried them inside, hating women for life. I each of his stories he has the woman doing something the husband to not like. So, maybe each thing the women did in the stories was from what his wife use to do. If he would have took all the good she did out of their relationship when his soon to be wife died, Irving would be a whole different person. It is strange how people interpret certain thing can change the perspective of how they see things for the rest of their

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