his is merely a comic convention; the hopeless husband and the wife who hopelessly hounds him. But the situation functions as a symbol of the changes in government that take place during his long nap. For just as Rip Van Winkle's life was nowhere near so terrible or undeserved as he thought it was, so too the American dilemma was never as terrible as people believed and the great new society has changed only to the extent that Rip Van Winkle's loafing is no longer disturbed by his wife. As can be seen by the description of his life up to that point, his wife's nagging had had very little effect on what he did anyway.
The story is established in its historical setting while the people are still under British rule. In this period Rip Van Winkle and his friends sit in front of the tavern, under the portrait of the king, and gossip. Their awareness of the affairs of the state is very limited and Irving mocks "how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place" (34). The unsmiling, apparently disapproving Dutch men that Rip Van Winkle meets in the woods symbolize the Dutch ancestors of the settlers in the area -- hardworking men who were so different from their spineless desc
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