Comparing The Courtship Of Miles Standish And The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow
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Both The Legend of Sleep Hollow and The Courtship of Miles Standish were written during the Romantic era; a time when ideas and values were changing.
We can see from these pieces of literature that the main male characters don't have a firm grasp on the ways that courtship is changing in the romantic era. Both of these works of literature show how ideas about courtship were changing. In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane was initially attracted to Katrina Van Tassel because of her good looks, but later became more enticed with her inheritance, than for the person she was. In The Courtship of Miles Standish, Miles Standish is looking to replace his dead wife and had chosen Priscilla Mullen apparently for no other reason than she was pretty and available. In these stories, we can see how the authors used their characters' failure in their attempts at courtship to show that ideas about marriage were beginning to…show more content… Each story had its courtship fails and morals to be learned. In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Ichabod wanted Katrina, as did Brom, the traditional way of a gentleman presenting himself lost out to Broms rougher methods. And in The Courtship of Miles Standish, Miles didn't ask Priscilla himself and lost his chance to marry her. But that gave John the chance to ask Priscilla for her hand in marriage. In the end Katrina's flirty ways and Broms crowd-pleasing, rough manners combined and caused the downfall of the respectable, gentlemanly, Icabod. The characters who used tradition as their guide, failed in reaching their goal. It was becoming a time where getting married for an estate or for a better family was being left behind in history and marrying for love was becoming more common. The authors were trying to show what was changing and through these books of literature they showed the changing times