Consider the relationship between the real and

the imagined in American literature.

It is the contention of this essay that the relationship between the real and the

imagined is an ever-present feature across a wide range of American literature.

Moreover, as it will be argued throughout, this relationship is often a vehicle used

to critique the myths which underlie the American state and, ultimately, the

deconstruction of the myths at the very heart of American identity. Through the

analysis of selected works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman

Melville one can see how it is American writers tackled the myths at the core of

their country by playing with notions of the real and imagined in the narratives of

their stories.

To begin with Irving who, in “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”,

wrote two short stories bound up with the foundation of the American Republic.

Traditional interpretations of these tales tend to see them as creating myth.

However, on closer inspection, it is clear that they instead deconstruct myth, more

specifically: the myth of the foundation of America. In the act of privileging the

world of the imagined over the real – the former being associated with Europe, the

latter America – he “questions the value of the American revolution”. 1

In “Rip Van Winkle” the tranquillity of colonial America is emphasized in contrast

to its post-revolutionary counterpart, where an atmosphere of queroulousness

prevails. The two realities, pre- and post-revolutionary America, are separated by

1
Sarah Wyman, “Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle: A Dangerous Critique of a New Nation”, ANQ:
A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, vol. 23 (2010), pp. 216-22, here: p. 216.
Rip’s encounter with the characters resembling figures from “an old Flemish

painting” and his subsequent slumber2. This sequence of the story belongs to the

world of the imagined as it contains impossible occurrences.

Rip Van Winkle’s home, “a little village of great antiquity” was one founded by

“some Dutch colonists” in a time when “the country was yet a province of Great

Britain.”3 Rip leads a life that satisfies him, apart from the scourge that is his wife –

she is perhaps a precursor to the coming age of the ‘Yankee’. Though he “would

rather starve on a penny than work for a pound” Rip enjoys this relaxed world

where he can converse with others of the town, like Nicholas Vedder, and tell

“endless sleepy stories about nothing”.4 He is a much-beloved figure who caused

the “children to shout with joy whenever he approached”. 5

In praising this pre-revolutionary time Irving is in keeping with some of the early

myths about the New World as place for the “recovery of paradise”. 6 The friendly

community and jovial atmosphere of Rip’s village pre-revolution make it attractive.

It is a place “exempt from time and politics”.7 This is in contrast with the village as it

is following Rip’s sleep, an event which occurs on the border between real and

imagined worlds.

On re-entering his village Rip Van Winkle encounters “a troop of strange children”

who run “at his heels, hooting after him”.8 The sleepy atmosphere is gone and a

2
Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle”, The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Fifth Edition,
Volume 1, ed. Nina Baym, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998), pp. 936-48, here: p. 942.
3
Ibid, pp. 937-8.
4
Ibid, pp. 939-40.
5
Ibid, p. 938.
6
Martin Roth, Comedy and America: The Lost World of Washington Irving, (London: Kennikat, 1976),
p. 123.
7
Ibid, p. 156.
8
Irving, “Rip Van Winkle”, p. 943.
“busy, bustling, disputatious tone” is predominant. 9 Rip is confronted by a man

who is “haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens”, elections etc. 10 In such

satire Irving’s negative view of American democratic politics can be seen. 11

When Rip tells the people of the village about what happened to him they are,

naturally, sceptical. A village elder verifies his story. Though Rip becomes a paragon

of the community the new inhabitants tend “to doubt the reality” of the story. 12

The “old Dutch inhabitants”, however, “almost universally gave it full credit”. 13 In

this way pre-revolutionary America, a more European-style America, is associated

with the imagined while America post-revolution is grounded in ideas of the real.

In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” the residents of the eponymous town use the

power of the imagined to drive out the Yankee, Ichabod Crane. Although it is set

after 1776 Sleepy Hollow renews the conflict between the forces of the Old and

New worlds. Crane is representative of the Yankee world of the new American

Republic. He is a “native of Connecticut” with his intellectual basis in a single book;

the puritan “Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft”. 14 The

characteristic of ‘industriousness’, usually attributed to the Yankee, is here

replaced by inimitable greed. Once he has seen the display of opulence at Van

Tassel’s farm “his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless

9
Ibid, p. 944.
10
Ibid, p. 944.
11
Finn Pollard, “From Beyond the grave and across the ocean: Washington Irving and the problem of
being a questioning American, 1809-20”, American Nineteenth Century History, 8 (2007), pp. 81-101,
here: p. 91.
12
Irving, “Rip Van Winkle”, p. 947.
13
Ibid, p. 947.
14
Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, The Norton Anthology of American Literature:
Fifth Edition, Volume 1, ed. Nina Baym, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998), pp. 948-69,
here: p. 950 & p. 952.
daughter of Van Tassel.”15 He dreams of becoming “lord of all this scene of almost

unimaginable luxury and splendour”.16

Crane is eventually thwarted due to Brom Bones’ manipulation of the imagined.

Bones, the man most associated with the imagined, is “the hero of the country

round”.17 He is a far more sympathetic and attractive figure than Crane. Bones,

acting as the headless horseman, drives Crane out of Sleepy Hollow. In gearing up

for the battle between Crane and the horseman the former’s steed is described in a

way which alludes to Don Quixote, a man who battled foes he was but imagining. 18

The head which is flung at Crane during the height of his encounter with the

imagined Hessian is no more than “a shattered pumpkin”. When the stories of

Crane’s being supposedly “carried off by the galloping hessian” are told Bones was

said to look “exceedingly knowing” and would “burst into a hearty laugh at the

mention of the pumpkin”.19

The story is a victory for the Old World; the Dutch, Hessians and British, in the

form of the legend of Major Andre, who the villagers have “sympathy for the

memory of” and whose tree adds to Crane’s fright on the night of his meeting with

the horseman. The Yankee is driven out by “his fears of the power of the

imagination”.20 The battle between Old and New Worlds continues in the post-

script when another Yankee-like figure with “beetling eyebrows” questions the

story-teller, in a Gradgrindian fashion, about “the moral of the story” and says he is

not satisfied on “one or two points” of it.21 The story-teller memorably replies that
15
Ibid, p. 955.
16
Ibid, p. 961.
17
Ibid, p. 956.
18
Ibid, p. 959.
19
Ibid, p. 967-8.
20
Roth, Comedy and America, p. 166.
21
Irving, “Sleepy Hollow, p. 968.
does not “believe half of it himself”, thereby questioning the authenticity of the

entire tale which is, also, three degrees of separation from the reader - Crayon,

Knickerbocker, and the man who tells it at a corporation meeting in New York. 22

Whether any of the story is ‘real’ is a perhaps a pertinent question.

In siding with the Old World against the New Irving is critiquing the nascent polity

of the U.S.23 He is attacking the myth of its perfection by painting an unflattering

picture of its representative, Crane. The imagined, sustained by the older,

European civilisation, which Irving admired more than his own, is the vehicle of

Crane’s destruction. Thus the real/imagined relationship is used to deconstruct

myths about the American founding, of its being good and desirable.

In the case of Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Young Goodman Brown” (“YGB”

hereafter) it is the myths relating to the puritan origins of America that are being

critiqued and deconstructed. This is done through the dual method of, firstly,

planting a seed of doubt about puritan virtuousness; through the depiction of the

entire late puritan community as hypocritically involved in witchcraft. And,

secondly, in an alternative reading of “YGB”, by asserting that Brown himself is

actually imagining what he is seeing on his journey through the forest. In this kind

of reading the myth of puritan paradise is dispelled by showing the reader how the

ideology and social pressures of puritanism can cause Brown to imagine a scenario

whereby he is conversing with Satan and where the entire community is in thrall to

evil. In using both of these techniques Hawthorne was making use of the

22
Ibid, p. 968-9.
23
Finn Pollard, “From Beyond the grave and across the ocean: Washington Irving and the problem of
being a questioning American, 1809-20”, American Nineteenth Century History, 8 (2007), pp. 81-101,
here: pp. 94-5.
real/imagined relationship to criticise Puritanism and, by consequence, something

within American identity.

Beginning with the first idea; that Hawthorne was sowing seeds of doubt about

puritan paradise in “YGB”. Throughout the narrative various members of the

puritan community are shown to be creatures of Satan. This begins with the Devil’s

assertion that not only was he of service to Brown’s father but also he “helped” his

grandfather in relation to an incident with a “Quaker woman”. Brown’s protest that

his family have always been “a race of honest men and good Christians” is

dismissed by the Devil.24 The atavism in the latter years of puritanism meant that

this initial dismissal of his forefathers is highly significant in the dismantling of his

faith.25 Also implicated is Goody Cloyse, the woman who “taught” Brown his

“catechism”.26 The very foundations of his faith, then, are tarnished.

Later, Deacon Gookin and the minister are shown to be in on the deviltry. In their

conversation they speak about other members of their hellish community which

include people “from Falmouth”, “from Connecticut and Rhode Island”, (as

mentioned at the Satanic ceremony) members of “the council board of the

province”, and even “Indian powows”.27 The whole of New England puritans are in

league with Satan. This is undoubtedly a jab at puritan hypocrisy.

However, Hawthorne does not directly imply the truth of his tale. Were he to do

so it would be read as straight fiction and seen as an impossible reality. Instead he

24
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”, The Norton Anthology of American Literature:
Fifth Edition, Volume 1, ed. Nina Baym, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998), pp. 1236-45,
here: p. 1237.
25
Michael J. Colacurcio, “Visible Sanctity and Specter Evidence: The Moral World of Hawthorne’s
“Young Goodman Brown””, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales, ed. James McIntosh, (New York: W.W.
Norton and company, 1987), pp. 389-404, here: p. 394.
26
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”, p. 1238.
27
Ibid, p. 1240 & 1242.
creates a loose border between what is real and what is imagined. The ending is a

case of the ‘device of multiple choice’, the ambiguity of which Hawthorne uses to

“make free of the two opposed worlds of actuality and imagination”. 28 The bulk of

the narrative could be read as Brown dreaming or simply imagining things. For

example there are multiple allusions to the events occurring being “ocular

deception [s]”, or “whether he had heard “aught but the murmur of the old

forest”.29 As one critic points out “no one is substantial enough to cast a shadow.”30

Therefore, certain doubts about the nature of puritanism – i.e. its goodness or

virtuousness – are evoked in the reader. The story is not simply a fiction. It is

alerting the reader to the possibility that the puritan foundations of American

identity may be unsound.

The same tactic of harnessing the play between real and imagined is also

employed in “YGB” in a reading which sees the entire episode as occurring in

Brown’s head, the necessary result of the psychological pressures and “moral

climate” associated with puritanism.31 He imagines the whole journey into the

forest because of the ideology he has been inducted into. These are “the social

implications of Calvinism”.32 This, also, is an implicit critique of Puritanism. Any

belief system, through means of psychological/ social pressures and forced

anxieties, which induces its members to imagine such occurrences as Brown

imagines must be very suspect indeed.

28
Richard Harter Fogle, Hawthorne’s Fiction: The Light and the Dark, (Oklahoma City, OA: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 15-32, here: pp. 16-7.
29
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”, p. 1237 & p. 1241.
30
Colacurcio, “Visible Sanctity and Specter Evidence”, p. 397.
31
Ibid, p. 404.
32
Adrian Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Biography, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980), p. 67.
 The pressures are so great and the ideology so powerful that Brown ends up

conceiving of an “impious assembly” before him. The Devil presides over it and

welcomes the new inductees to Satanism, including Brown and his wife, to “the

communion” of their “race”. Brown declares “there is no good on earth; and sin is

but a name”.33

In reality most of the evidence points to the whole excursion into the forest being

part of a dream or imagination. Its ending is abrupt. Faith retains her pink ribbons

when Brown returns to his home. The “dreadful anthem” sung in Salem is heard by

him alone. His “dying hour was gloom” because of his belief in what he had seen in

the forest that night, not because it actually happened.34 Such a belief stemmed

from Brown’s own mental state which could not withstand the pressures of

Puritanism and the quasi-Manichaean implications of its teaching. 35 From the

morning after his journey into the forest until his death Brown convinced himself of

the truth pertaining to ideas like the universality of sin and that “evil is the nature

of mankind”.36 It is conclusive, then, that Hawthorne – in spite of the fact he had

some admiration for the Puritanism of his ancestors37 – was aiming at

deconstructing puritan myths in “YGB”.

Written by Hawthorne’s near contemporary Hermann Melville “Benito Cereno” is

another story which attempts to deconstruct American myths and assumptions.

33
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”, pp. 1241-3.
34
Ibid, p. 1242 & 1245.
35
John E. Becker, Hawthorne’s Historical Allegory, (Port Washington, N.Y. : Kennikat Press, 1971), p.
19.
36
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”, p. 1244.
37
Becker, Hawthorne’s Historical Allegory, p. 157.
This time the myth in question is that of African/Black primitivism, including the

corollary pseudo-scientific notion that Africans were a lower species. 38 Melville

approaches it by writing a story there are three distinct narratives, one real and

two imagined. The first narrative the reader is met with and is followed for much of

the story turns out to be an imagined one. It is imagined because it is sustained

entirely by Delano himself who cannot see past his own assumptions and myths he

has accepted to recognise the true situation of things.39 The second imagined

narrative is the one Delano constructs in order to reconcile himself to the strange

occurrences on board the San Dominick. The third narrative is the real one; i.e. the

one the reader is provided with toward the end of the story, that the slaves have

taken over the ship. Melville battles the myths of African inferiority head on by

rendering the first two narratives false at the story’s conclusion. The real narrative

– what has actually been taking place – presents Africans as intelligent, well-

ordered and “full of vitality”, despite their malevolence on the San Dominick.40

Beginning with the first narrative, the narrative as it unfolds prima facie. The

American Captain Delano, working off the coast of Chile, spots a Spanish

Merchantman and goes aboard. Speaking to the Spanish captain, Don Benito

Cereno, Delano is told the history of the San Dominick’s voyage. The reader is

forced to accept this version of events as he has no alternative. A number of

incidents and situations on board perturb Delano. The position of the “monitorial

constables”, the oakum pickers, “in venerable contrast to the tumult below them”

38
Richard E. Ray, “”Benito Cereno”: Babo as leader”, Melville’s Short Novels, ed. Dan McCall,(New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002), pp. 329-40, here: p. 334.
39
Sterling Stuckey, “The Tambourine in Glory: African Culture and Melville’s Art”, The Cambridge
Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Robert S. Levine, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), pp. 52-3.
40
Yvor Winters and Darrel Abel, “On Benito Cereno: Opposing Views”, Melville’s Short Novels, ed.
Dan McCall, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002), pp. 287-8, here: p. 287.
is disconcerting, as is the sight of “six other blacks” working with hatchets “some

eight feet above the general throng”.41

In general the “noisy indocility of the blacks” and the “sullen inefficiency of the

whites” disturbs Delano.42 Most of all it is the behaviour of Cereno who behaves

with “a sour and gloomy disdain” and questions Delano, with “a strange sort of

intriguing intonation”, about his ship that creates suspicion in the mind of the

latter.43 However despite misgivings and strange scenes involving Cereno and his

servant, the slave Babo, Delano never suspects that there may be a slave revolt

occurring on the ship, with Babo the “helm and keel” of all.44

Delano is blinded to reality because of his own assumptions about African

inferiority. It is a myth in which he firmly believes. Blacks may make “natural valets

and hairdressers” but they possess a “limited mind” and are characterised by their

“docility”.45 They are simply “too stupid” to be able to launch a revolt. 46 The

‘elaborate web of deception’ which constitutes this first narrative has been ‘woven’

by Babo ‘from the American’s own prejudices’.47 Not even the recurrence of

Egyptian imagery – the “sphinx-like” oakum pickers, the Spanish sailor constructing

a knot “like some Egyptian priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of Ammon,

the shaving scene where “the negro seemed like a Nubian sculptor finishing off a

41
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno, ”, The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Fifth Edition,
Volume 1, ed. Nina Baym, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998), pp. 2372-2427, here: p.
2375.
42
Ibid, p. 2377.
43
Ibid, p. 2377 & p. 2387.
44
Ibid, p. 2423.
45
Ibid, p. 2401.
46
Ibid, p. 2395
47
Laurie Robertson-Lorant, “Melville”, Melville’s Short Novels, ed. Dan McCall, (New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 2002), pp. 290-4, here: p. 291.
white statue-head” – a reminder of the possibilities of African civilisation, can

convince Delano that the Blacks may possess intelligence. 48

That notwithstanding Delano does attempt to reconcile the incongruities aboard

the San Dominick. He does so by constructing his own counter-narrative where he

is being deceived by the Spaniard. His “singular alterations of courtesy and ill-

breeding […] were unaccountable except on one of two suppositions – innocent

lunacy or wicked imposture.”49 The vessel is of “a piratical nature” and Cereno’s

tale is constructed for “evil purposes”. During the shaving episode the American

suspects “that possible master and man […] were acting out, both in word and

deed […] some juggling play before him”.50 This alternative narrative is only within

Delano’s imagination and he does not act on it until the startling moment when he

is boarding his own ship, Cereno jumps after him and is followed by Babo. Grabbing

the Spaniard Delano exclaims “This plotting pirate means murder!”51

Of course he soon realises that he is mistaken and the real story of the San

Dominick is revealed. The strangeness of the situation on board the Spanish vessel

induced Captain Delano to believe he was somehow being deceived. However,

instead of concluding rightly, his reason was impaired by his assumptions. 52 His

acceptance of the myth of Black primitivism pushed him into imagining a less-

plausible situation whereby Benito Cereno was the malevolent deceiver, not his

servant, Babo, nor the other slaves.

48
Melville, Benito Cereno, p. 2375, 2395 & p. 2404.
49
Ibid, p. 2386.
50
Ibid, p. 2304.
51
Ibid, p. 2413.
52
Q.D. Leavis, “Melville: The 1853-6 Phase”, New Perspectives on Melville, ed. Faith Pullin,
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1978), pp. 197-228, here: p. 207.
 Both the first and second narratives, then, are imagined. They prove to be

incorrect at the story’s conclusion when the reader realises the true state of

events. As the imagined narratives fall into obsolescence so does the theory of

Black inferiority and primitivity. Such a myth was implicit in the United States in the

1850’s when slavery still existed, a system accepted by North and South. Melville

was in favour of its abolition.53 Deconstructing it asked questions of America, its

system of morality and its claims to be a place of liberty.

53
Glenn C. Altschuler, “Whose Foot on Whose Throat? A Re-Examination of Melville’s Benito
Cereno”, Melville’s Short Novels, ed. Dan McCall, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2002) , pp.
296-302, here: p. 301.