Psychoarchetypal Interpretation of Rip Van Winkle

The first reading of “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving¹ suggests that something bad and awkward will happen to individuals who let their feelings and curiosity control their lives. In a collective level, it symbolizes the transition of a young nation from a colonial status to a free and democratic country. It tells us that people who did not pay attention to the political and historical change—the independence from the British crown—were not able to recognize the new country, and they looked old and odd, just as Rip Van Winkle's clothes and beard. Old Europe—Rip—had to learn what democracy, vote, and new nation meant by looking at the United States of America—represented by the people from the Dutch community that did not sleep for twenty years. A reading from a psychoanalytic and archetypal points of view suggests us that Rip Van Winkle was actually happy to have slept for twenty years.

What would happen if a husband did not take care of his family and wife for two decades? “Rip Van Winkle” answers these questions from several perspectives. One of them is that a man who only takes care of himself loses his family and eventually his wife. A second one suggests that a man who sleeps or drinks for twenty years will not be a horrible person if the whole village is his friend. Rip's story is also the struggle of a soldier who returns from the war and has to relearn everything and adjust to society. The reader does not know Rip's intimate life and there is not that much information about his deep desires. Freud's concept of id as the container of the irrational, instinctual and the unknown can be helpful to interpret Rip Van Winkle's public life. What we know is that he kept everybody and himself happy, and the village inhabitants loved him. On the one hand, he was a model citizen and his civility made him popular, but his civility stayed outside of his family and house because he did not take care of them, “Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, it was impossible.” (paragraph 25) According to the Protestant faith, he should work and attend his family. Laziness is a sin, but Rip does not feel guilty of laziness or the abandonment of his family, and he seems to believe that his wife had made him the way he is. There is a saying in Spanish that applies to Rip's situation; it goes, “Candil de la calle, oscuridad de su casa,” which literally translates as “(He who is a) lamp of the street (is the) darkness of his house.” This contrast of public and private life seems to be the same contrast between Rip's impulses and his duty as a father/husband. It makes the reader think that either Rip does not love his wife or he is an immature man who does not know how to handle his marriage.

Rip's psyche is in charge of the logical and rational—his ego—is probably the reason why he does not divorces his wife, kills her, or kills himself. It is also the part that tells him that practicing the golden rule with his fellow citizens will save him later in life. Rip's public relations are enviable and they save him from anonymity, “an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, 'Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle—it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor.—Why, where have you been these twenty long years?'” (paragraph 56) This prodigal son of the Dutch community knows that he has to talk to Peter Vanderdonk in order to be completely accepted again. The reader never knows if Rip actually slept for twenty years, but according to Rip that is the only truth. The best way to redeem oneself from being lazy and irresponsible is by becoming a certified legend.

The superego, or internal censor, suggests that Rip's disappearance was immoral, but then he had a second chance when he came back from the Catskill Mountains. He became a respected man without working hard for it; his political ignorance was condonable due to his absence, and at the end he became a symbol of his village. Then, what happens if a man sleeps for two decades? He only loses his wife. Perhaps this is Rip's deepest desire: to live a hedonistic life without having to work, take care of children, or having sex with a person that he does not like—his own wife, but he does never reveal this desire and he follows the rules of his society. Divorce was not allowed at this time, which meant that Rip's disappearance was the best option. Another option would be to become antisocial and bitter in the way that Young Goodman Brown acted after coming back from the forrest, but Rip was too sociable to become Goodman.

Although there are not enough elements in the story to apply Freud's Oedipus complex, because Rip does not kill his father in order to marry Dame Van Winkle, there is the fact that he kills his life with his family, in other words, he kills his young self. Also, the way Dame Van Winkle is portrayed by Rip, she is more like his mother than his wife, “[w]henever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.” (paragraph 61). While Oedipus married his mother and loved her, Rip married his wife and probably hated her. After learning about the new government and the newfound freedom from the European rule, he reflects about his other type of freedom, the one from his wife, “he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle.” (paragraph 61)

In the same way that The Awakening's Edna Pontellier searches for individual freedom by leaving her husband and children, Rip leaves his family in search of what makes him happy—squirrel hunting. Edna enjoys the freedom of the ocean, while Rip falls asleep in the mountains, “[O]ne taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often, that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.” (paragraph 24) It seems that Rip looked for his independence first by distancing himself from his wife and children, and second by leaving for the mountains. At the end, his old self dies and he becomes a new, regular citizen of the new nation that has George Washington as his father instead of a European king.

How many times has one thought of the idea of sleeping and waking up to a new reality? Or how many times has one wished that a problem solves by itself from dusk to down? While in real life everybody has to solve his or her problems and the people of Dutch community had to fight a war, Rip went to sleep and woke up to a new life with almost a tabula rasa—a new type of government and without family duties, a wife, or a farm. He only had a grown up daughter, but she was already used to being orphan. In real life, anybody who sleeps or falls into a coma for so long has a tremendous amount of medical and psychological implications, but Rip does not seem to have that many discordances with his new reality, only his physical appearance that can be easily fixed and the new civic and civil duties that he has to embrace. As mentioned, before, disappearing was the best that could have happen to Rip.

A constant symbol in the story is the tree. At the beginning as well as the end of the story, Irving mentions that Rip visits often a group that sits under “the shade of a large tree.” ² Rip also tends to go to the forrest to scape from his wife, “[h]ere he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree,” (paragraph 16). He also falls asleep in the forrest. The tree, according to Guerin, symbolizes the life of the cosmos and it equals immortality and regeneration. (Guerin 153) This may be one of the reasons why Mother Nature and its elements did not kill Rip during the two decades of idleness in the mountains. The tree where he spends time with his friends is connected also to the tree of life, which keeps men alive even if they do not provide for their families and do not keep the sacred vows of matrimony.

Dame Van Winkle represents the bad mother in the eyes of her husband. If we consider this point of view, she means sex and death at the same time; she provokes fear in her husband and this fear is translated as emasculation and dismemberment. This may explain why Rip does not seem to care too much for his wife as a woman, because she is more like a witch or a monster for him. According to common sense, if he does not work and she gets mad at him because he is lazy, then she is a good mother and would represent the Earth and its fertility and abundance. She can also be similar to Juno, the good and the bad mother at the same time, because Rip has been terrified by her but she is doing her job by protecting her children. (Guerin 152)

Rip becomes a respectable old man at the end of the story, which makes him the symbol of knowledge and wisdom, and “he tests the moral qualities of others” according to the Jungian archetypes. However, Rip is not a model that anybody will follow, because not everybody saw his wisdom, “some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head—upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.” (paragraph 57) Therefore, Rip is closer to the hero pattern, since he is a kind of a sacrificial scapegoat, who does not end up stoned by his community, but everybody is suspicious of him right after his story is told.

A very important symbol in this story is the birth of a nation and how it was something completely new for Europeans or people of European descent. In this sense, Rip is also a scapegoat because he represents the European traditions that must die in order for the new nation to function. The old way of thinking and living is dead: everybody has to work to form a new government and keep the country independent from the British crown. Old Europe fell asleep and the colonies woke up. The Old World kept itself busy by pondering about nothing, like the group of pseudo-philosophers formed by Rip and his friends while the colonies formed their own way of thinking. Old Europe did not die in the American land, but it changed like Rip Van Winkle.

Northrop Frye talks about the four phases of the myth. Some of those phases are easier to identify than other in this story. The beginning is a romantic phase because the village simply loves Rip. Then comes the anti-romance or winter phase in which readers are informed that Rip is not the best husband and father and one of the reasons may be that he regrets being married. Rip's trip to the mountain and his falling asleep and waking up represent the spring phase, which is a comedic situation. The facts that the village may respect but not believe Rip's story, that Dame Van Winkle is dead, and that his own daughter does not recognized him form the fall phase of the story. It is not a complete disaster in Rip's mind, but for the common sense it is. In my opinion, if we follow Frye's scheme, “Rip Van Winkle” is more ironic, since even after he learns that the wife is dead he does not want to hear about her, and he has to certify the veracity of his story.

Some of the discoveries that this story allows us to make are: one, that the Dutch and not the British represent Europe; two, that cloths and hair hygiene were important in those days too; three, that an implausible story was considered old style or required references to historians in order to make it either credible or funnier; four, that people were as interested on politics then as we were on November 4^th of 2008; and finally that this old style of narration sometimes makes me think of the economy of the language in literature, since a reader has to ingest more than 700 words before the real story begins and it still requires to ingest about 500 more words after the actual end of the action. This last discovery makes me think that Irving's writing style is old, in the same way the village saw Rip Van Winkle.

2 This group of men who gossip and debate minutia about the village reminded me of the groups of old men very common in the plazas of small towns in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as the corners in Miami's Little Havana—in Miami they play dominoes and gossip at the same time. They remind me of the Greek tragedies choir that repeats, adds, and reflects about the story that is going on at the center of the stage.