[In the following essay, Bone considers the theme of materialism in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”]

While the body of this essay is concerned with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” I have tried to touch upon a central theme in our national letters: the relentless pressure of commodities on the American imagination. Walden is the classic statement of this theme. Thoreau went to the woods to escape the pressure of house and barn and mortgage; to free his soul from the tyranny of commodities. Since his aim was to confront essentials, his first requirement was to reduce the clutter of worldly goods which threatened to forestall the act of contemplation.

Nothing would seem more remote from contemporary sensibility than this ascetic strain. Yet consider the voluntary poverty of the Beat poet. Where Madison Avenue enjoins us to consume! consume!, the Beatnik demurs with a modern version of Thoreau's simplify! simplify! Deep in the American psyche, it would seem, lies a curious ambivalence toward the things of this world; a suspicion that material prosperity may be an impediment to the inner life.

It is not difficult, I think, to trace this conflict to its source in New England Puritanism. Seventeenth-century Americans were in many respects the heirs of the middle ages. Like their medieval ancestors, they regarded temporal affairs as a distraction from the serious business of salvation. Still in the grip of an otherworldly vision, the Puritan imagination experienced commodities as temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Superimposed on this medieval base was the acquisitive drive of New England Puritanism. Maule's curse, after all, was not called forth by a morality of abstention. The main thrust of the Protestant Reformation was in a worldly direction, and in America the Protestant ethic was reinforced by the compelling needs of a frontier society. Faced with these cross-currents, the Puritan patriarchs devised a compromise formula which Perry Miller has described as “loving the world with weaned affections.” In the spirit of the new age, one could love the world, if the primary commitment of the soul remained elsewhere.

Inevitably, as Puritan values were subverted by the growing prosperity of the colonies, this precarious equilibrium was upset. In the eighteenth century, the contemplative and acquisitive aspects of the Puritan temperament precipitated out. Autobiography, if not yet fiction, gave us two figures symbolic of the new division.

Here is a passage from the Personal Narrative of Jonathan Edwards:

The whole book of Canticles used to be pleasant to me, and I used to be much in reading it, about that time; and found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that would carry me away, in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world; and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God.

The key word in this passage is vision. In Edwards, the imagination is an active faculty serving the soul in its communion with God.

Consider now a passage from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, in which the author attempts to dissuade a young man from writing poems:

He continued to write frequently, sending me large specimens of an epic poem, which he was then composing, and desiring my remarks and corrections. These I gave him from time to time, but endeavor'd rather to discourage his proceedings. One of Young's satires was then just publish'd. I copy'd and sent him a great part of it, which set in a strong light the folly of pursuing the muses with any hope of advancement by them.

Here the key word is advancement. In Franklin, the imagination is firmly subordinated to the acquisition of commodities.

By the early nineteenth century, the utilitarian ethic of Benjamin Franklin had emerged as the cultural norm. All value came to be defined in terms of use. By this measure, contemplation could scarcely be considered valuable, nor meditation, nor poetry, nor fiction. Increasingly the American writer found himself in an atmosphere of trade and commerce profoundly hostile to his art. In self-defense he turned to the Romantic movement, at the heart of which lay a spirited defense of the imagination.

During the Romantic period, the concept of imagination was itself transformed. Closely associated with devotional practices in the past, it now became more or less secularized. The contemplative principle was revived, as we have seen, in Thoreau, but devoid of specific theological content. Transcendentalism was perhaps the closest approximation to the spirit of Jonathan Edwards which a secular society would allow. As the role of the artist became increasingly differentiated from that of the clergyman or philosopher, the stage was set for a new phase in the history of the American imagination. Henceforth the pressure of commodities would be experienced as a threat to the artistic process as such.

It is Washington Irving's distinction first to have explored this theme. His interest in folklore, myth and legend provides him, in his best work, with a means of confronting the prosaic temper of his time. The folk tale, with its elements of fable and of fantasy, is an ideal medium, and it is here that Irving's creative powers reach fulfillment. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is at once his finest achievement and his most enduring contribution to our literary history. For in the mythic encounter of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, the crisis of the modern imagination is first revealed.

The story begins with an epigraph from “The Castle of Indolence,” by the Scottish poet James Thomson:

A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky.

These lines serve primarily to establish the drowsy atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow, but are not without thematic relevance. “Dreams,” “castles in the clouds,” are suggestive of the imaginative faculty which is Irving's real concern. Moreover, the poem deals at length with the economic foundations of the arts; that is, with the question of patronage. This is one of the central issues which Irving means to raise.

Thomson is a spiritual cousin of Ben Franklin, and the poem amounts to a Calvinist homily on work. It is an allegorical attack on the slothful propensities of the leisure classes, and a sturdy defense of the Protestant ethic. Thomson is a poet, however, and he cannot suppress certain misgivings about the benefits of industry and progress. In particular, he deplores the loss of patronage which attends the passing of a cultured aristocracy. A jarring note thus intrudes upon his celebration of the Protestant virtues. In the old order, indolence brought social stagnation, but afforded a leisurely pursuit of art. The rise of the middle class portends great material prosperity, but leaves the fate of the poetic imagination in doubt.

This is precisely the mood of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Dimly, uneasily, Irving sees the precarious position of the artist in bourgeois society. He is therefore of two minds as he contemplates the demise of Dutch colonial America. Fundamentally he approves of movement, activity and progress. Yet the story is saturated with nostalgia for the sheltered, protected, embosomed world of Sleepy Hollow, where dreams and reveries, ghosts and apparitions, still nourish the “visionary propensity.”

Tarry Town emerges as a symbol of the colonial past, in which we tarry for a moment before moving on. The atmosphere is simple, uncomplicated, pastoral. It is established by such adjectives as quiet, listless, drowsy, dreamy, and such nouns as murmur, lull, repose, tranquillity. Captivated by the mood he has created, the narrator recalls his first exploit in squirrel hunting:

I had wandered into [a walnut grove] at noon time, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. [“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” p. 475. All quotations are from The Works of Washington Irving, Author's Revised Edition, Vol. II, The Sketch Book (New York, 1880).]

It was a shot heard round the world. The disruptive roar of the gun heralds the introduction of the Hessian trooper, “whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War.” To the quiet repose of the opening pages, Irving counterposes the furious speed of the galloping Hessian. He is seen “hurrying along in the gloom of the night, as if on the wings of the wind.” He embodies the sudden violence of the Revolution, which brought the pastoral phase of the national life to an end. A new spirit is abroad in the land, the mercenary spirit of a Hessian soldier.

At this point it may be well to review the basic features of the plot, so as to establish a solid foundation for a symbolic interpretation. In essence, we have a romantic triangle. Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones are rivals for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a prosperous Dutch farmer. Ichabod is defeated under comic circumstances, and as a result, his values are profoundly altered. Humiliation and defeat transform his life, but what is the inner meaning of these events?

As the three principals are introduced, certain details of characterization point to Irving's theme. To begin with, Ichabod's New England origins are heavily underscored:

He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. (p. 478)

His favorite book is Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft. Great stress is laid upon his appetite, which is at once natural and supernatural, encompassing both the gustatory and the marvellous. In this he reflects the dilemma of his Puritan ancestors: the contest in his soul might be said to turn upon the question of which appetite will come uppermost.

The ascetic circumstances of his existence are suggested by the shabbiness of his schoolhouse and the itinerant character of his life. As he moves from home to home among his pupils' families, he carries “all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.” His poverty, however, is not without its compensations. Because of his itinerant habits, he is welcomed as a bearer of news and gossip. He is esteemed by his neighbors as a man of letters, “for he had read several books quite through.” He instructs the young people in psalmody, and his tales of the supernatural are a popular feature of village entertainment. Ichabod embodies, in short, the primitive impulse of a frontier society toward culture.

Since culture is viewed with suspicion in frontier communities, Ichabod is thought, “by all who understand nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy time of it.” Highly vulnerable to criticism, he is forced to justify his existence on utilitarian grounds:

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. (p. 481)

There is something in the comic absurdity of Ichabod's situation which raises echoes of Cervantes. At one point, in fact, Ichabod rides forth “like a knight-errant in quest of adventures,” astride a broken-down plough horse. In the light of these allusions, the character of Ichabod acquires a new dimension. Like Don Quixote, he is comic in appearance and behavior, but he must be taken seriously as a symbol of man's higher aspirations. Such a portrait requires a certain complexity of tone. For Ichabod is at once a comic and a tragic figure; he is, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, “A clown, perhaps, but an aspiring clown.” In a portrait which is permeated with self-irony, Irving caricatures the position of the artist-intellectual in American life. Ichabod Crane is the first example in our literature of the comedian as the letter C.

Ichabod's antagonist is Brom Bones, “the hero of the country round.” Brom's symbolic role is defined by a series of associations with the Headless Horseman. He is linked to the goblin rider by his skill in horsemanship and by the hurry-scurry of his midnight escapades. Like the Hessian, he scours the countryside with a squad of hard riders who dash about “like a troop of Don Cossacks.” As the story reaches a climax, Brom becomes the literal incarnation of the Hessian trooper, for it is he, disguised as the Headless Horseman, who pursues Ichabod to his doom. Symbolically, Brom is the embodiment of the Hessian spirit, of mercenary values which threaten to engulf the imagination.

While Ichabod exists on the periphery of his culture, Brom occupies the very hub. Invisible spokes radiate from him to the entire male population of Sleepy Hollow. What is the “tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch” but a schoolboy version of Brom Bones? Brom's gang, whose behavior suggests the juvenile-delinquent phase of male development, harries the schoolmaster by smoking out his singing school and breaking into his schoolhouse after dark.

In Sleepy Hollow, hostility to learning is by no means confined to the young:

Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm. … (p. 486)

Toward the end of the story, Hans Van Ripper disposes of Ichabod's literary effects by a time-honored method. In his treatment of the scene, Irving betrays an animus ordinarily concealed beneath a gloss of genial humor:

These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who from that time forward determined to send his children no more to school; observing, that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. (p. 517)

Katrina is a pivotal figure; she provides the measure of Ichabod's social worth. The bestowal of her favors amounts to a kind of community sanction, for if Ichabod's society takes him seriously it must supply him with a wife. It is of course Brom Bones that she chooses; she has been flirting with the schoolmaster only to arouse the jealousy and ardor of his rival.

Irving's sketch of Katrina blends humorously with his description of her father's farm. She is “plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy cheeked as one of her father's peaches.” She wears “ornaments of pure yellow gold” whose colors call to mind the golden ears of Van Tassel corn, and “the yellow pumpkins … turning up their fair round bellies to the sun.” As Ichabod surveys his future prospects, the metaphors proclaim his gustatory love:

In his devouring mind's eye … the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. (p. 488)

Faced with such temptations, Ichabod is defeated from within. Consider the implications of his name. “Ichabod” is from the Hebrew; it means “inglorious,” or literally, “without honor.” Ichabod is a turncoat; in pursuit of material comfort, he betrays a spiritual tradition. Confronted with the opulence of the Van Tassels, he succumbs to the sins of covetousness and idolatry. His imaginative faculty is perverted, deflected from its proper object:

… his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where. (p. 489)

Here is the New England imagination turned mercenary, placed in the service of the westering impulse. Brom Bones has only to bury the body.

Ichabod's encounter with the Headless Horseman is the dramatic climax of the story. The stage is set so carefully, however, that a closer look at the backdrop is in order. Dominating the landscape is an enormous tulip tree known in the neighborhood as Major André's tree. André was a young British officer, appointed by his superiors to consummate with Benedict Arnold negotiations for the betrayal of West Point. Captured by American militiamen after a midnight interview with Arnold, he was executed as a spy. In effect, he was a scapegoat, hanged for Arnold's crime. As a result, he occupies an ambiguous position in American history. This ambiguity seems to be the point so far as Irving is concerned:

The common people regarded [Major André's tree] with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake. … (pp. 510-11)

It is just this note of sympathy which Irving means to strike. Systematically he links “the unfortunate André” with “the unfortunate Ichabod,” using the historical figure to control his tone. Let there be no mistake: Ichabod betrays the race of Cranes. The betrayal occurs at the quilting party, as he contemplates the possibility of becoming lord of the Van Tassel manor:

Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old schoolhouse; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade! (p. 503)

But Irving wishes to soften the effect of this betrayal by shifting the burden in large part from Ichabod to his society. The reader is to respond to Ichabod rather as an André than an Arnold: not entirely guiltless, but largely the victim of circumstance. Yet the veiled threat remains. Irving recalls, by his allusion to Arnold, a famous episode in which the nation's neglect and ingratitude was repaid by treason. Be niggardly with your patronage, he warns the Hans Van Rippers, and your artists will desert to the enemy camp.

At the very spot where Major André was captured, Ichabod is accosted by the Headless Horseman. The schoolmaster is an unskillful rider; he attempts an evasive maneuver, but to no avail. With a fizzle and a sputter, Gunpowder ignites from the spark of his rider's fear, and off they fly, with the apparition in hot pursuit. As they near the safety of the bridge, the goblin rider rises in his stirrups and hurls his head at Ichabod, tumbling him into the dust.

What is the meaning of this parable? Ichabod is overwhelmed by the new materialism, but at an awesome price to society. For in order to conquer, the Hessian must throw away his head. The next morning a shattered pumpkin is found in the vicinity of the bridge. The organ of intellect and imagination has become an edible. The forces of thought have yielded to the forces of digestion.

Defeated by the spirit of the age, Ichabod reconstructs his life along more worldly lines. As rumor has it,

… he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time, had been admitted to the bar, turned politician, electioneered, written for the newspapers, and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. (p. 518)

It is hardly necessary to recall the unfortunate Irving's legal career to sense the diminution of spirit which the author intends. “The Ten Pound Court” unmistakably conveys the pettiness and triviality of Ichabod's new occupation. The community suffers a loss, the nature of which is defined by Ichabod's curious estate. A book of psalm tunes, a broken pitch pipe, Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a book of dreams and fortune-telling, and an abortive attempt at verse in honor of Katrina: these crude tokens of the imaginative life are left behind as the schoolmaster vanishes from Sleepy Hollow.

The postscript is an ironic defense of the literary imagination. The time is “the present,” and it is clear that the descendants of Brom Bones are in the saddle. Folklore and legend, ghost stories and old wives' tales, have been superseded by an age of reason and common sense. Fiction itself has become suspect. Writing in a hostile climate, Irving supplies his fictional world with the trappings of historical research and objectivity. Hence the “Postscript, Found in the Handwriting of Mr. Knickerbocker.”

This postscript recapitulates the theme; the dramatic situation alone has changed. The scene is “a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of Manhattoes, at which were present many of its sagest and most illustrious burghers.” The role of Ichabod-Irving is played by a shabby narrator with a sadly humorous face, who is an entertaining storyteller, but is “strongly suspected of being poor.” He has just told a tale called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The role of Brom-Hessian is assumed by the sleepy aldermen who comprise his audience, and in particular by a literal-minded burgher who inquires as to the moral of the story, and what it goes to prove?

The narrator avoids a direct reply. The meaning of the story, Irving intimates, will not yield to purely logical methods. The art of fiction has nothing to do with “the ratiocination of the syllogism.” The reader's imagination must supply the moral:

The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with an air of infinite deference, and, lowering the glass slowly to the table, observed, that the story was intended most logically to prove:—

That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleasures—provided we will but take a joke as we find it:

That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers is likely to have rough riding of it.

Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in the state. (pp. 520-21)