The Short Story Initiative - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving

I hope I don’t sound so tiring because I keep thanking everyone who linked up their stories for joining The Short Story Initiative, the improved version of Short Stories on Wednesdays. Well, I’m going to commit the crime of redundancy and say it again, thank you!

After the get-to-know post, you can share about any short story you want to read for the rest of the days of the month. Our monthly themes are just suggestions to help you put focus on your reading. Just don’t forget to put the links with Mr. Linky for September (found on the sidebar below the event’s badge) so that the others, including me, can go and hop over to your post. So far, I’m thrilled to discover a lot of new-t0-me authors and amazing short stories. What is your experience so far with The Short Story Initiative?

The Short Story Initiative is open to everybody. Anyone can join at any time. The details can be found here. 

For my part, I have been reading some short stories by Washington Irving, the American writer who wrote the popular short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and with a respected reputation in America AND Europe. I found an old copy from La Belle Aurore Bookshop, a favorite bookstore near my place, for a little over a dollar. Books with old covers are really a pleasing sight. There were three of us who reserved this particular old book, and I felt like winning the lottery when I got it for myself.

The first story I read is The Specter Bridegroom. It tells about the adventure and misadventure of a groom, a soldier, traveling to a kingdom to marry his bride he never met but he hears to be very beautiful. Along the way, he meets a friend, also a soldier, who soon becomes a travel companion. Along the way, though, they are attacked by “hordes of disbanded soldiers”. The groom, severely wounded and dying, asks his friend to explain to his bride the turn of events. A promise is a promise and so the friend sets out to the deceased soldier’s bride home to explain. The kingdom mistook him for the groom. What follows is an amusing series of events that Irving handled so well.

The second story is The Broken Heart. It is, to me, more like an essay than a short story on the author’s thoughts of how a broken heart can easily send a woman to the grave. Well, it is more like a short story within an essay. That short story is about the gradual physical and emotional decline of a woman who loves dearly an Irish patriot accused of treason. He was her first love, and for many women, that explains a lot.

She loved him with the disinterested fervor of a woman’s first and early lvoe. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him, when blasted in fortune and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her whose whole soul was occupied by his image! -page 113

Of course, I saved the best for last--The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Just as a special note, it was my first time to read these stories. And I was half expecting The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to be more or less have the same elements as those of the movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci. Boy was I wrong! The story is way better and less scary.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster assigned to teach in Sleepy Hollow. He is determined in his own laidback way to court Katrina Van Tassel not because he was instantly lovestruck but because of her father’s riches and the promise of good food, comfortable house, and easy days. His rival is Brom Van Brunt who kind of reminds me of Gaston in Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Was Crane successful in his plan? For those of you who have not yet read the story, let’s just say, the legend of the place (referring to the headless horseman) played a factor in Crane’s success or failure. And the legend, by the way, is open to a lot of interpretations.

Rip Van Winkle, on the other hand, is as bright and laidback as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is as dark and gothic. Rip likes doing business for others but remains unsuccessful in his own, which is the regular thing that sends his wife to endless nagging. Rather than talk back, Rip always shrug and walk out. One day, after “walking out”, he goes to the forest to shoot squirrels. He is about to go home when he meets a man going up the mountains and asking for assistance to carry a keg of liquor. He ends up in a strange place with “folks (who) were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed”. The folks drinks the liquor, and Rip--good, old, curious Rip--goes and gives himself a taste. The next thing he knows is he wakes up on the spot where he had met the strange man. And guess what, he thought he had slept for only a night but he had actually slept in 20 years! 

Statue of Rip Van Winkle in Irvington, New York

In both stories, Irving’s writing talent shows word for word. I noticed a certain characteristic in short stories--he started with long descriptive sentences and paragraphs as if his life depended on it. He describes a place or a scene  before the events roll so well, so clearly that it was easy to follow him through. His words are bursting with life no matter how dark a place like Sleepy Hollow is or how strange the Kaatskill Mountains where Rip woke up are. And Irving is amazingly present in the story as a clever and fine storyteller, like a grandfather to a granddaughter, injecting humor and life lessons without being preachy.

“I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddles and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access, while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for the man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.” (found in the middle--page 31--of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

Crane and Rip are now icons of popular American culture. 

Washington Irving

As a trivia, Irving died on 28 November 1859 and now rests in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery overlooking the Old Dutch Church in Tarrytown, New York.

I look forward to more of his short stories in the collection I have. Are “The Wife”, “The Voyage”, “Traits of Indian Character”, “The Pride of the Village”, “The Angler”, “The Adventure of the German Student”, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” familiar titles to you? What do you think of Irving as an author?


- Nancy -