William P.
Libertine Dawson, in ESQ: A Journal of the Ameri-can Renaissance (4th quarter, 1981), De-partment of English, Washington State University, Pullman, Wash. 99164.
When Rip Van Winkle settled down for his long nap, he was the quin- tessential hen-pecked husband, and America was a tidy English colony. When he awoke 20 years later, on Election Day, Rip found his shrewish wife had died, and his peaceful, patriarchal village had been changed America's independence into a confused and quarrelsome...