Washington Irving wrote short stories in the early 1800s and is considered to be one of America’s first writers to earn money for their work. He has been known for being so good at creating fiction novels that some of his lies are still being questioned as true facts. Most of Irving’s stories could be seen as anti-feminist for the way he portrays women in his early American societies. Feminists would criticize Irving’s work due to his portrayal of women in an infamous way due to how society was in the 1800s and how Irving himself viewed women.
Irving has women be powerful but in an infamous way. Women who do have power tend to be detrimental to the men and society as a whole. Examples of this in the short stories are the wives. Both Tom and Rip’s wives are seen as the villains in the stories by trying to tell their husbands what to do and make the lives of their…show more content… In The Devil and Tom Walker and Rip Van Winkle, Rip and Tom’s wives make their lives miserable. Tom wants to get rid of his wife throughout the short story because she is so brutal and they are constantly fighting. It is also said that Tom’s wife also conducts physical abuse on Tom. “Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words (2)”. The Dame Van Winkle has similar characteristic to Tom’s wife in the sense that she too is mean to her husband. She bosses him around and is quick to temper. This suggests that either Irving’s wife or his mother were always bickering with him. He never saw women as being a good thing and having a wife seems like it was a bit of a nuisance to him. I assume that in his life, Irving never relied on a woman because they either hurt him or didn’t help him in any way. Maybe he also had troubles connecting to women and thus creating bad relationships with