In Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, the main character, Rip Van Winkle, is presented as "a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen pecked husband." He is depicted as the victim of a vicious prank that causes him to sleep twenty years. His disappearance in the Catskills has been analyzed and approached in various ways. Marcel Heiman psychoanalyzes the nap, Philip Young comments on its mythic significance, and Amanda M. Ellis doesn't interpret the disappearance at all, but relies on it as an actual supernatural occurrence. It is speculated, however that his missing twenty years were not spent in slumber, but were more likely a timely journey of a promiscuous individual.
             Classifying Rip Van Winkle as an innocent victim may not be entirely accurate, for he may be more like a devious scoundrel. Through puns and imagery, Irving depicts Rip Van Winkle as an unfaithful husband who eventually abandons Dame Van Winkle and their children for a twenty -year romp in the hay. One prime example of this, brought to attention by William P. Dawson, is presented as an innocent description, but reveals far more:
             Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual, with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those manners over their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village he was surrounded by a troop of them hanging on his skirt, clambering on his back and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. (McQuade 849)
             Though the passage does not direc...