Sleepy hollow analysis

In “The legend of Sleepy Hollow” Irving relates the story of Ichabod Crane, an arrogant and gluttonous teacher that lives in a Dutch settlement in the early America, where numerous legends andstories of ghosts circulate. The teacher wants to convince himself he’s fallen in love with a young woman called Katrina. However, the reader knows best, he’s mostly enamored of her father’s immensefortune. He has to fight for her love against a stronger rival, the young Brom Bones, who has a great advantage; he actually has something to offer. One night, upon returning to his place of residence aftera party, where he was probably rejected by Katrina, Ichabod Crane is pursued by a headless rider. The most famous of the ghost stories told in the settlement, the ghost of a German soldier thatprobably lost his head from a cannon shot during the American war of independence. This encounter ultimately drives Ichabod out of town for good.
The story, however, raises questions about the viewsportrayed by the author as far as gender goes. In the story women are portrayed through an anti-feminist veil. “The legend of Sleepy Hollow” exhibits Washington Irving’s anti-feminists sentiments throughnot only the way that women are portrayed, but also through comments and assumptions.
The women in general in the story of ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ are portrayed as being only interested in the localgossip. They are portrayed as irreversibly obtuse. And although some of the men in the story are also portrayed as obtuse, like the case of Hans Van Ripper who decides “to send his children no more toschool” (p.750), many of them really are not; or have at least the opportunity to stop being so. Unlike the women, the men in the story endeavor to articulate their own identities and roles in theirspecific society. Case in point, the very narrator tells us a story of which he doesn’t “believe one half of it.” (p751) In any case, he gets the opportunity to hear a story and face it against his common...