Irving's depiction of Dame van Winkle serves to make Rip a more sympathetic character.
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
This is how Dame van Winkle is described. She is a "termagant wife" who turns her husband out of the house with her scolding. But, when Rip sits idly at the inn, exchanging gossip and discussing the news of...
Irving's depiction of Dame van Winkle serves to make Rip a more sympathetic character.
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
This is how Dame van Winkle is described. She is a "termagant wife" who turns her husband out of the house with her scolding. But, when Rip sits idly at the inn, exchanging gossip and discussing the news of the prior month after an old newspaper has come into the hands of one of the idlers, this virago comes to rout him from his seat. Angrily, she accuses the patriarch of the village, Nicholas Vedder himself, with encouraging Rip in his habit of idleness.
It is then that some feel that it is his scold of a wife who motivates Rip to take to the woods. There he often stops for a lunch and shares part of it with his dog named "Wolf."
It is Dame van Winkle, too, who also prefigures the bustling and loudness of the new world to which Rip will awaken. For, when he returns to the inn after sleeping for twenty years, Rip finds the portrait of someone else is painted where the king's portrait has been. He wonders about the new portrait and all the strange faces of such disputatious people. But, it is with relief that he learns that Dame van Winkle will no longer interfere with his resuming of his place on the bench of the inn, even if it is noisy with arguments.
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