THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER: ITS ORIGINS
AND DEVELOP:MENT IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE THROUGH 1830
By
ALECIA A CRAMER
Bachelor of Arts
Oklahoma State University
StiUwater, Oklahoma
1991
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate College of the
Oklahoma State University
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
July, ]995
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER: ITS ORIGINS
AND DEVELOP:MENT IN AMERICAN
LITERATURE THROUGH 1830
Thesis Approved:
a-L C.
ii
PREFACE
This study attempts to address why the Yankee comic character became the butt of
early American humor and how the character developed into an enduring comic figure in
American literature. The Yankee comic character has developed into one of the most
enduring comic characters in American Literature, appearing many times in Mark Twain's
fiction and in various works of comedy in the twentieth century. Many scholars have
addressed the development of the Yankee in American literature after the 1830s, but little
attention is paid to the origins of this character type and the development of the Yankee
character into the mature, weU-developed type of the 1830s. The Yankee character was at
once both a simple, naive rustic with a uruque dialect and a shrewd, practical manipulator
full of ambition and greed. As he changes and develops, the Yankee comic character
:embodies the complexities and incongruities of a democratic society struggling to fuse the
ideal with the real, the language of culture with the language of the ordinary man.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis adviser, Dr. Jeffrey Walker, for
his unlimited help, patience and encouragement of my research and writing efforts. I am
grateful to the other committee members, Drs. William Decker and Edward Walkiewicz,
who contributed insightful comments and helpful suggestions. Thanks also to my family
for their support and encouragement; and, finally, I express my heartfelt gratitude to my
husband Mark for his love and unfailing support throughout the entire project.
III
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. AN OVERVIEW OF THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER ]
II. COLONIAL WRITERS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE YANKEE
COMIC CHARACTER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 20
III. THE YANKEE: USED AS POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
AND EMBROILED IN REGIONAL CONFLICT 53
IV. DECLINE AND DEMISE OF THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER 78
NOTES , 82
WORKS CITED , , , 84
iv
CHAPTER I
AN OVERVIEW OF THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER
Early American literature has not been traditionally studied for its humor. In fact,
the subject has been virtually ignored or summarily dismissed by most critics. W.
Howland Kenney points to one scholar who asserts that "the early settlers were a sel;ous
people struggling to establish themselves in a wilderness and they had little time for polite
letters or for a literature of sheer entertainment" (5). A more recent critic, Jesse Bier in
The Rise and Fall ofAmerican Humor (1968), asserts emphaticaHy "The fact is that our
initial excursions into humor were largely weak and immature ... indecisive and confused,
higWy derivative and labored, severely topical, and otherwise inexpert" (32). Even
Constance Rourke, writer of one of the most comprehensive studies of American humor,
dismisses colonial comic works almost entirely, warning the reader against the "beguiling
pedantry" of digging up pre-Jacksonian texts and making greater claims for them than they
deserve (Micklus 139). This decided bias against looking for any glimmer of humor in
early American literature has stunted the growth of interest in the development of a unique
American literary genre. Walter Blair, in his study, Native American Humor (1937),
exemplifies this prejudice when he includes various groups of early humorists (local
colorists, frontier humorists) and individual writers as purely a background to show the
development of the genre, not considering humor as truly American until it comes to
fruition in the celebrated American humorist, M.ark Twain. Samuel Clemens is usually
characterized as belonging to several of the "schools" of humor which Blair defines: the
local colorists, the southwestern humorists, and the literary comedians. Kolb claims for
Twain the «production ofa succession ofmajor works, from 'Old Times on the
Mississippi' to Connecticut Yankee, that weave together an extraordinary blend of
compelling narrative, humorous observation, and perceptive understanding of the human
condition" (56). In the character ofHank Morgan, in The Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court, Twain incorporates the major social and political conflicts from which the
Yankee comic character is formed: city/country, aristocracy/peasant, rich/poor,
educated/ignorant. Twain truly exhibits quahties that no other writer of American humor
had thus far embodied; however, to assert, as Blair seems to, that American literary humor
did not fully exist before Twain brought together vivid character types and appropriate
form, ignores much good literature that must be accounted for in some other way. People
laughed and enjoyed the character types produced by various writers, including Knight,
Franklin, Irving, and Stowe, proving that American literary humor did indeed exist (if,
arguably, in an inferior form) before Twain's appearance.
However, modern critics do not bear al] the blame for the exclusion from serious
study of humor in early American literature. At least two other elements intluenced the
characterization of this literature as unworthy part of scholarly review. Early Americans
suffered from a cultural and literary inferiority complex that encouraged the view that the
potential to create anything authenticaUy American was virtually non-existent. In 1805,
Hugh Henry Brackenridge stated that "the American has, in fact, yet no character; neither
the clown nor the gentleman; so that I could not take one from our country which I would
much rather have done as the scene lay there" (Blair 14). This perceived lack of
2
foundational myth and tradition co-existed with the idea that humor was a non-legitimate
form of literature. Smith suggests that "the usual assumption in this country was that no
merger was possible between serious literature and humor. Literature was a part of high
culture; and humor, certainly the backwoods variety, was considered irremediably low"
(59). Harold H Ko~b, Jr., in an essay on Twain, reiterates the same assertion:
Humorous writing in nineteenth-century America, like sex, was privately
enjoyed by many people but publicly defended by few. An appetite for
laughter seemed to represent man's lower instincts. Art and literature, in
the view of many critics, are "ever pointing upward, and the influence of
true art upon man is to make him look upward, too, to the vast where his
Ideal sits, pinnicled in the lofty ether dim." (52)
Both men and women continued to write comedy, parody, wit, and satire, knowing they
would most likely never receive fame nor fortune for it. As late as 1865, this distinction
between high forms of literature (serious) and low forms of Literature (comic) existed.
Even Mark Twain, America's greatest humorist, suffered from this prejudice, as
demonstrated in a letter that he wrote to his brother:
I have had a "call" to literature of a [awarder -- i.e. humorous. It is
nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit, & if I were to listen to
that maxim of stem duty which says that to do right you must multiply the
one or the two or the three talents which the Almighty entrusted to your
keeping, I would long ago have ceased to meddle with things for which I
3
was by nature unfitted & turned my attention to seriously scribbling to
excite the laughter of God's creatures. Poor pitiful business. (Kolb 6)
Early American humorists struggled themselves to give serious recognition to the,r
scribblings, thus giving credence to the same attitude among modern critics. With the
exception of a handful of reoent scholars, little serious study has been given to humorous
literature written before the Revolution and even the decades after the war; it is no wonder
that colonial Americans are shrouded in a humorless haze of piety and prod.ty. Certainly,
"by inheritance and tradition they were ambitious, by necessary training diligent, and
through experience self-confident" (Fox 220). But to say with Dickens in the 1840s that
Americans "certainly are not a humorous people, and their temperament always impressed
me as being of a dun and gloomy character" (Blair & HiU 20) is to make a mistake of
gigantic proportions. Colonial Americans enjoyed comic anecdotes and humorous
aphorisms, as evidenced by the popularity of the almanac that hung by every chimney side.
By the time Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanac, one in every hundred Americans
owned an almanac. Interlaced with proverbs and entertaining anecdotes, the almanac
embodied an old traditional taste ofearthy humor, a tradition on which Franklin
capitalized and improved.
Other types of American humor, aided by political and social tensions, were
developing in addition to the earthy humor of the popular almanac. The hardships of
colonial life initiated several of the original character types found in the humor of the mid-
nineteenth century. W. Howland Kenney, who has compiled much evidence of colonial
humor in his study called Laughter in the Wilderness (1976), suggests that «humor is one
4
part of a complex process of human perception and we can expect to encounter it in aU
societies even if only some of them can afford to produce specialists" (6-7). Kenney
continues to argue for the existence of colonial humorists when he contends that humor is
a "very human trait which often requires great courage and strength. The comic insists on
telling the whole truth when the pretenders to majesty, power and control are imposing
their various systems and definitions oflife. One cannot quite grasp American history as a
continuing reality until one poses the question 'did they never laugh?' "(5). Colonial
conditions required some reprieve from the drudgery and hardships of the struggle just to
stay alive. A grim reminder of the harshness ofthe New England coast is the account
related by Master George Percy in Jamestown in 1607:
There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery ...
We watched every three nights, lying on the bare cold ground, what
weather soever came; [and] warded all the next day: which brought our
men to be most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small can of barley
sodden in water, to five men a day. Our drink, cold water taken out of the
filth; which was the destruction ofmany ... three or four in a night; in the
morning, their bodies being trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be
buried. (Blair & Hill 4)
This was the stark reality of coloniallife--death was no respecter of persons. Amid the
grim circumstances oflife in the New World, more and more immigrants flocked to
America, and among the vast multitudes of different people, there emerged a tradition of
humor.
5
For most humorists, the ultimate objective is to say something more about the
human condition than merely that it is amusing. Seelye suggests that one ofthe root
causes of humor is fear, and the colonists were deluged with reasons to be fearful. The
various types of cultures and nationalities with which immigrants were faced upon their
arrival in the New World, and the struggles to forge a unified nation from the fragmented
elements that typified the colonies emerge probable sources of fear, and, thus, as two of
the primary sources of humor in early American literature.
With such a variety of people with divergent socia and political backgrounds,
colonial America became a fertile testing ground to test ideologies against reality. In
Comic Imagination in American Literature (1973), Louis D. Rubin, Jr., discusses the
contrast between the ideal and the real. On one hand there are the ideals offreedom,
equality, self-govemment--the convictmon that ordinary people possess the discernment to
vote wisely and understand and cherish the highest human values by embodying them in
their political and social institutions. In contrast, one has to consider that the citizen is
indeed an ordinary person who acts in ordinary ways, motivated by individual ideals and
values (5). Rubin calls this clash "the Great American joke" and summarizes it in these
terms:
Out of the incongruity between the mundane circumstances and
heroic ideal, material fact and spiritual hunger, democratic, middle-class
society and desire for cultural definition, theory of equality and fact of
social and economic inequality, the Declaration of Independence and the
Mann Act, the Gettysburg Address and the Gross National Product, the
6
Battle Hymn ofthe Republic and the Union Trust Company, the Horatio
Alg,er ideal and the New York Social Register -- between what men would
be and must be, as acted out in American experience, has come much
pathos, no small amount of tragedy, and also a great deal of humor. Both
the pathos and the humor have been present from the start, and the writers
have been busy pointing them out. This, then, has been what has been
called "the great American joke," which comedy has explored and imaged.
(9)
This clash between the ideal and the ordinary became the catalyst for distinctive American
character types. When the behavior ofgroups or individuals clashed too strongly with the
rest of society, humor was often used as the sandpaper to smooth edges and round off the
sharp comers (Bla~r and McDavid 159).
Satire became one of the primary tools used by colonial writers as they observed
the flora and fauna as well as the people. Because it allowed the writer to ridicule the
people and customs that contradicted a way oflife, satire was a comfortable pose to
assume, convincing him that all would become right in his own world: "The satirist used
exaggeration and the juxtaposition of ideals and realities to stimulate reform. The writer
of satire could thus present himself as a bastion of social and cultural purity and his humor
as an instrument for social ordering" (Kenney 19). Most of the consciously humorous
writing in early American literature is satirical. Satire allows the writer to elevate himself
while ridiculing others, and when a reader laughs at satire, he also elevates himself,
excluding himself from the writer's scorn. Micklus asserts that "throughout the colonies,
7
there was a sort of unspoken argument that the butt of the joke always had to be 'out
ther,e' among the British, the Indians, or, perhaps, some country bumpkin, but, before
Franklin's time, rardy was it the author himself or even his persona" (140).
Colonial Americans did laugh, and often their laughter was characterized by a
satiric chuckle at anyone but themsdves. Aided by the diversity of the colonial
population, early humorists focused on comical types of people who seemed to exist in
every community or lived in a specific part of the country. One ofthe earliest character
types to develop in American literature is the Yankee comic character. Influenced by a
variety of social and political factors, the cornie Yankee character has proved to be one of
our most enduring character types. Complex and at times contradictory, the Yankee
develops from a simple country bumpkin in the earliest colonial literature into a national
symbol of pride during the Revolutionary War. Maturing through the years in almanacs,
newspapers, journals and dramas, the Yankee grows in complexity, influenced by religious
views, political parties, economic growth, and regional conflict. The first vestiges of the
Yankee alluded to in such early works as The Simple Cobler ofAggawam mature into a
fleshed-out character in Irving's mythical "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Because the
Yankee comic character developed from political and social tensions present throughout
two and a half centuries of American history and because he possesses such an enduring
charm, the Yankee comic character maintains a vital position in American literary humor.
The origins of the Yankee comic character cannot truly be traced to a specific
colonial writer or even a particular time period in American history. Scholars Blair and
Hill explain how folklorists Axel Olrik and Max Luthi cite worldwide uses of "a simple
8
conflict ending in 'the defeat of the great by the small, the mighty by the apparendy
powerless' (e. g. hunters who conquer mighty beasts; and trickster, peddlers, staves and
confidence men who triumph)" (29). American writers incorporate into the American
Yankee this element of powerlessness and apparent weakness. Just living in the American
colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries defmed a person as subordinated,
subject to the mighty nation of Great Britain. However, other elements influenced the
colonial writers who would eventually record the first characteristics of the comic Yankee.
Great Britain, the mother country for most colonists in the seventeenth century,
wielded her dominating wiU over the colonies and influenced the way in which colonial
writers saw themselves. British literary influences in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries such as Pope, Swift, Fielding and Sterne served the colonists with early samples
of exemplary literature. Characters such as Fielding's Squire Western in Tom Jones
(1749) and Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773) were famous examples of country
squires who became the butt ofthe joke. Colonial writers such as Franklin borrowed from
writers such as Chaucer, Pope, Swift, Shakespeare, and Fielding, so the American Yankee
character remains indebted to the Mother Country for her influence on early colonial
writers.
An equal but, in some respects, opposing influence was the anti-intellectual
movement that swept the colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "Again and
again, Americans would find hilarious the fact that a man's education is likely to make him
think and act like a damned fool. 'The learned fool,' says Poor Richard, 'writes his
nonsense in better language than the unlearned; but still 't~s nonsense' Again: 'Tim was
9
so learned, that he could name a horse in nine languages. So ignorant, that he bought a
cow to ride on'" (Blair and Hill 72). This anti-intellectua.] attitude flourished because the
learned, educated immigrant coming to the wild, untamed frontier of the New World
experienced aspects of rugged frontier life that aU of the book-learning in the world would
not address. Simple common sense was much more valuable than Latin or Greek.
Besides learning how to survive, the colonists also experienced religious life away from
state-controlled mandates and the tradition of centuries of learned religious scholars and
ministers who taught in the prominent seminaries of the past several centuries. "From
1640 on, though, when faith spread to lower-class 'Diggers' and 'Levelers' such 'dirty-
people of no name' bad-mouthed education ... A pastor who 'would rather hear a plain
country man speak in church, that came from the plough, than the best orthodox minister'
welcomed to his pulpit the unschooled tinker John Bunyan ... Quakers compared learned
ministers to shopkeepers who clanged church bells to lure customers, and then conned
them into buying wortWess goods" (Blair and Hill 69). Sound thinking and practical
experience were valued above book-learning, and the more farmers and frontiersmen
succeeded, the more popular this anti-intellectual movement became.
Thus, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, two major currents could be felt
in the American colonjes: the self-conscious desire to please and imitate the ~iterary
circles and wits of the mother country, Great Britain, and a movement against formal
education and book-learning that instead valued common sense and practical knowledge
gained from experience. Both currents affected the development of the Yankee comic
character in its initial stages of transformation from an Old World stock character like the
10
English country squire into a lasting, original American character. They influenced the
colonial writer to move beyond the familiar conception formed by the rest of the world
(with contempt and derision) and to actually find dements ofthe Yankee comic character
in himself. This allowed him to laugh not only at the Yankee as an object of satire, but
also with the Yankee as part of the national character ofAmerica.
One of the most recognized references to the Yankee cornie character today is
found in the popular ditty sung by the American troops during the American
Revolutionary War.
Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Good'ng
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty Puddin.
The verse is followed by the chorus:
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle, Dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the g~rls be handy.
(Green 2-3)
Besides it was a Revolutionary War song, little dse about the origins of the song or the
origins of the term "Yankee" can be agreed upon by historians or even etymologists.
Numerous theories about the origins of the term Yankee exist, revealing interesting
aspects of the legend of the Yankee character in American history.
11
Most scholars agree that the word "Yankee>' is an Anglicized corruption of "Jan
Kees" -- Of "John Cheese" -- a pejorative term which the original Dutch settlers of New
Amsterdam applied to colonists hving in Connecticut. l W. Storrs Lee, an historian who
wrote The Yankees ofConnecticut (1957), proposes a different variation on the theory
that the Dutch referred to all the men of Connecticut as "Johnnies" or "Jankins." As Lee
explains, "But the English '1' was difficult for Germanic tongues, and after a while the
'Jankin' degenerated into 'Yankee,' .. " (3)2 One critic even writes in jest that "the term
Yankey is but a corruption of Yorkshire, being simply the Indian pronunciation" (Carson
77). Many of the original Pilgrims came from Yorkshire, but Constance Rourke clarifies
that "the [racial] strain cannot be proven as determining the Yankee character... Racial
strains in the Yankee were well mixed" (9).
However the term Yankee originated, the name was not popularized until the
Connecticut farm boys (or possibly Albany townspeoplei bounded into town wearing
farm clothes and their only distinguishing article of c1othing--a turkey feather stuck in their
hats by loving wives and mothers (Lee 167). Such ridiculous plumage was all the
provocation the British soldiers needed. Soon, the term "Yankee" was revived as a label
of ridicule for the upstart colonists who demanded liberty from Great Britain. "Dandies!
Popinjays! Stab my vitals, they're macoronies," cried Britishers in derision at the farm
boys and frontiersmen from the rugged country of the New World (Lee 167).
A British surgeon is credited with singing the "Yankee Doodle" jingle to the
familiar folk tune of "Lucy Locket Lost Her Pocket." Charles O. F. Thompson in A
History ofthe Declaration ofIndependence, claims the song was adapted from "Nankee
Doodle" sung by Oliver Cromwell's troops in the English civil wars of the 1660s. Despite
its mysterious history, the song caught on in American society. Originally meant to
lampoon the absurd incompetence of the American militia as it organized to fight the well-
trained and disciplined British army, "Yankee Doodle" eventually symbolized American
pride as the colonists turned the tables on the British by laughing at themselves and
embracing the song as their first battle hymn and national anthem (Rubin 77-78). This
Revolutionary War chorus was playing in the background as the British troops
surrendered at Yorktown and was played again during the Civil War when the Blue
marched to it. The term "Yankee" served as a nickname for American soldiers during
World Wars I and II, transforming the original disparagement into a heroic term for all
Americans.
The famed song characterized a young yokel from the country on a visit to one of
the troops stationed in various cities around the colonies. This image of the Yankee as a
comic New England rustic bumpkin out of his element in the city--a figure both ignorant
and wise--has faded into history. Gradually, the term Yankee came to signifY the
Northerners during the American Civil War, then expanded to include aU Americans. Yet,
for a brief time in American history during the mid-nineteenth century, the Yankee figure,
in aU his complexity, held center stage in American humorous literature.
The Yankee comic character developed into a complex character type that
encompassed the simple New England rustic but expanded to include more universal
characteristics that have endured through the literature of the early twentieth century,
13
including works by such writers as Faulkner, James, and Fitzgerald. Walter Blair and
Hamlin Hill discuss the complexities of this national character:
As complex a character as American humor has invented, the Yankee could
be shrewd and cunning-- "a wily, cozening trickster, poised under a mask
of ingenious and seeming good will," as Richard Dorson has called him.
When he wandered into the backwoods, with his pack of notions to peddle,
he was, ifSut Lovingood of the Tennessee Knobs is to be believed, the
man who invented "new fangled doctrines fur the aid of the devil. In fact
[New England] am his garden, whar he can grow what won't sprout any
whar else.' But when he went into town, as Dorson also notes, comic
picturings showed him to be 'a fool, an ignorant countryman, baffled by
urban ways, befuddled by modem machinery, legitimate game for dupes
and hoaxes ... Inevitable the bewildered rustic found himself cozened by
city sharpers." (159-60)
This duality of personality which developed as the Yankee was characterized by an
increasing number of writers in pre-Civil War literature proves to be a fascinating subject
to trace throughout the literature ofearly America. Two subtle influences shaped the
colonial writers' perceptions of their feHow countrymen in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: self-consciousness and an inferiority complex spawned by the British
perceptions of social and literary conditions in the colonies, and a growing dissatisfaction
with education and book-learning with an increased reliance on common sense and
practical experience. Combined with the dominant religion of the period (Puritanism), and
l4
the political power of aristocratic landowners, the colonists' inferiority complex and anti-
intellectual bent propeUed the development of the Yankee comic character toward the
simple New England rustic. Most of the colonial writers were wen-educated, well-read
and members of the aristocratic, landed segment ofsociety, viewing the common man with
contempt and disdain. "In short, the conservative faction seized upon the 'common man'
as a rich vein of humor" (Rubin 79). This Yankee comic character was the equivalent of
the rustic bumpkins who were first bewildered then terrified as they entered the limits ofa
modem city (Seelye "Root" 417). The aristocratic city-dweller who was writing during
colonial days had plenty of opportunity to observe and satirize the country bumpkin who
had trav,eled in for supplies. Numerous writers, such as William Byrd, II, and Ebenezer
Cooke ventured out to the frontier, making observations about the uninhibited, semi-
civilized crudeness of the frontier folks. As Blair and Hill observe, "Most humorists,
whatever their political, geographical, and cultural allegiances, saw the ludicrous
possibilities of, say, having an ignorant Yankee of the servant class invade an upper-crust
drawingroom, ... or of having a prissy stranger try to maintain his dignity while
undressing before the members of a rural family whose single bedroom he has been forced
to use for the night" (161). By the end of the eighteenth century, this simple New
England rustic, who had been nicknamed "Brother Jonathan" at some vague point in his
development, was poised on the brink of becoming a national phenomenon. With the
election of President Jackson in the late 1820s, Brother Jonathan gained a popularity on
stage and in newspaper, magazines and almanacs that would continue until the eve of the
Civil War. He would serve as the pattern for a lasting American institution--a man
15
dressed in "a white bell-crowned hat, a coat with long tails that was usually blue, eccentric
red and white trousers, and long boot straps. Brother Jonathan had in fact turned into
Uncle Sam" (Rourke 17).
If the Yankee was characterized on one side as a simple rustic, naive and
awkward, on the flip side he was a shrewd, practical, thrifty, industrious peddler. Henry
David Thoreau wrote that "the Yankee, though undisciplined, had this advantage at least,
that he is especially a man who, everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved
to better his condition" (Green 2). As the colonist felt more comfortable with his
surroundings and began to value increasingly his common sense and practical knowledge,
the image of the Yankee as naive and vulnerable to the street-wise city slicker began to
change. Little by little, the Yankee began to develop a practical, shrewd element to his
character, one vividly described by Constance Rourke:
Toward evening ofa midsummer day at the latter end of the eighteenth
century a traveler was seen descending a steep red road into a fertile
Carolina valley. He carried a staff and walked with a wide, fast, sprawling
ga~t, his tall shadow cutting across the lengthening shadows of the trees.
His head was crouched, his back long, a heavy pack lay across his
shoulders.
A close view ofhis figure brought consternation to the men and
women lounging at the tavern or near the sheds that clustered around the
planter's gate. ''I'll be shot ifit ain't a Yankee!" cried one. The yard was
suddenly vacant. Doors banged and windows were shut. The peddler
16
moved relentlessly nearer, reached a doorway, and laid his pack on tbe half
hatch. With scarcely a halt the peddler made his way into their houses, and
silver ~eapt into his pockets. When his pack was unrolled, calicoes,
glittering knives, razors, scissors, clocks, cotton caps, shoes, and notions
made a holiday at a fair ... In the end he invaded every house. Every one
bought. The Negroes came up from their cabins to watch his driving
pantomime and hear his slow, high talk. Staying the night at a tavern, he
traded the landlord out of bed and breakfast and left with most of the
money in the settlement. (3-4)
In a few short paragraphs, Rourke graphicaUy and eloquently captures the image of the
Yankee peddler as a ferociously ambitious and greedy character who preyed on the
vulnerability of settlers and frontiersmen who relied on the peddler's supplies. By the mid-
1800s, his prowess was legendary.
This image of the greedy Yankee lives on in some respects, as we Americans are
viewed at times by other nationalities as a materialistic people with a gift for ingenuity;
mobile and impatient for action; and uninspired in our diplomacy (Lee xi). These Yankees
had a wonderful strength of character about them, but they did nothing to improve their
image as wily traders disguised under the mask of good will and practicality, waiting to
take advantage of an unsuspecting customer. The habit of bragging fit right in with the
boastful pride of the Yankee peddler, as the following anecdote demonstrates:
One Englishman who knew the Yankee habit of bragging is reported in The
American Joe Miller (1865) to have seen some huge watermelons at a fruit
17
sener's stand in New York. Walking up to look at them, he said
disappoint,edly, "What! don't you raise bigger apples than these in
America?" The woman looked at him for a moment and then retorted,
"Apples! anybody might know you was an Englishman. Thems
huckleberries." Vulgar dialect, naturalistic motifs, and exaggeration show
up even in the northern market place. (Sloane 2)
Of course, what better way to sell one's goods and notions than to boast and brag about
them? In fact, Americans thought so much of the art of exaggeration that they developed
a uniquely American genre--the tall tale. Some of the same elements characterize both the
Yankee comic character and the "teller of tales," but they remain two distinct categories
in American literature.
One must also remember that not every New Englander was either a New England
rustic or a wily New England peddler out to trick the unwary. The development of the
Yankee comic character can be traced from the colonial through the ante-bellum period.
Diverse elements contributed to the growth of the Yankee comic character as he
traveled in time through the pen ofearly American writers. The Yankee character was at
once both a simple, naive rustic with a unique dialect such as Jonathan in lhe Contrast,
and a shrewd, practical manipulator full of ambition and greed such as Ichabod Crane in
The Legend ofSleepy Hollow. This dichotomy of two apparent contradi.ctions
demonstrates many of the tensions present throughout two centuries of American history.
As he changes and develops, the Yankee character incorporates conflict between
traditional and practical religion, city and country, aristocrat and common man, and
18
education and common sense practicality. Emerging from the shadow of British influence
and Old World folldore, a uniquely American character type embodied the complexities
and incongruities of a democratic society struggling to fuse the ideal with the real, the
language of culture with the common language of the ordinary man. The Yankee comic
character allowed readers and writers alike to understand each other and begin to laugh at
themselves.
19
CHAPTERH
COLONIAL WRITERS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE YANKEE COMIC
CHARACTER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
As the Yankee comic character matured through the writing ofgenerations of
American authors, authors began to incorporate more specific characteristics which
allowed a wider audience to enjoy the more narrowly focused satire of the writer. In early
colonial days, this was not the case. Instead, educated, aristocratic writers targeted a
large portion of the colonists with their ridicule and disdain. Political and religious
philosophies influenced this trend by creating a hierarchy of landowners and the Puritan
elect. Outsiders, or non-elect and the poor, became the target for aristocratic disdain and
religious piety. From these vestiges ofprejudice and seclusion the Yankee comic
character was born.
In 1639, Parson Thomas Hooker outlined in a notable sermon the type of
government Connecticut should have. Shortly thereafter, Roger Ludlow wrote the first
constitutional document in the New World. "Fundamental Order," as the document was
called, expressed the ideas that the residents of the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and
Weathersford would become one "Publicke State and Commonwelth and doe ... enter
into Combination and Confederation togather to mayntayne and preserve the liberty and
purity of the gospell of our lord Jesus." In a similar document, the Plantation Covenant,
New Haven Puritans pledged to "advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ," enjoy
the freedoms of the gospel, and "conceive it our bounden duty, without delay, to enter
20
into present consolatmon among ourselves ... That as in nation, and Religion, so in other
respects, we be, and continue, one ..." (Lee 23). With these early documents to tie
church and state together, the two institutions became virtually inseparable. From the
beginning, the church was the center of colonial life. Connecticut law made church
attendance compulsory, and since the "established" church was Congregational, Puritan
ministers virtually had complete control over both church and state. Desiring to establish
a "community set on a hill," Puritans were determined to suppress heresy--meaning
anything that differed from their views. "According to the fundamental tenets of
Congregationalism, every individual, regardless of his station in life, was' called to work, ,
and that: can was a kind of investiture to join in the home-front struggle against sin,
physical suffering, moral depravity, ... " (Lee 41). Covenant Theology by its very nature
applied pressure on Puritans to conform to the community because it required a "working
out," a continual outward demonstration that one was part of the elect, called as a child of
God. The constant pressure to prove by one's degree of faith and reaction to suffering
that he or she was chosen constructed a dynamic of community interest in each individual.
"Thus, Puritanism appears, from the social and economic point of view, to have been a
philosophy of social stratification, placing the command in the hands of the properly
qualified and demanding implicit obedience from the uneducated; from the religious point
of view it was the dogged assertion ofthe unity of intellect and spirit in the face of a rising
tide of democratic sentiment suspicious of the intellect and intoxicated with the spirit"
(Miller 16). Their dedication to the unified purpose of the "caning" caused Puritans to
believe that if art had to exist, it should be used for didactic purposes, not for
21
entertainment. "As a result of such attitudes, the government of the Bay Colony legislated
against any public displays of humor which were ribald, satiric of the godly, or in any way
profane" (Kenney 8-9). In 1712, the government aimed to stifle an apparent growth of
secular humor through "An Act Against Intemperence, Immorality, and Profaneness, and
for Reformation ofManners," which states in brief
And whereas evil communication, wicked, profane, filthy and obscene
songs, composures, writings or prints, do corrupt the mind, and are
incentives to aU manner of imputies and debaucheries, more especially
when digested, composed or uttered in imitation or mockery of devotion or
religious exercises ... whosoever shall be convicted ofwriting, printing,
publishing of any filthy, obscene, or profane song, pamphlet, libel or mock
sermon, in imitation or in mimicking of preaching, or any other part of
divine worship ... shall be punished by fme ... not exceeding twenty
pounds, or by standing on the pillory once or oftener, with an inscription of
his crime in capital letters affixed over his head ... (Kenney 8-9)
Obviously, Puritans knew how to laugh and ridicule the most sacred parts of their lives, or
the legislature would not have felt it necessary to publish the strict punishment for this
type of humor. They laughed, but in certain strictly stylized ways. Within the confines of
their "calling" Puritans found time to secretly ridicule the follies of others as they worked
out their reward. Given the strict consequences of laughing at subjects too dose to home
and the church, most Puritan satire was focused on outsiders, folks they met outside the
Colony, the non-elect. Laughing at those outsiders helped the Puritans as well as the
22
ar~stocrat to order their world and protect their identities, and in protecting themselves,
the Puritan satirist and the aristocratic colonist helped create the Yankee comic character.
It is in the barest satirical sketch in early Puritan literature that we first discern the shadow
of an undeveloped character type, the simple rustic. This satire, created by an author who
could not help but be influenced by the powerful Puritan dogma of the elect versus the
non-elect, the chosen versus the rejected, helped launch the Yankee cornic character on his
road to fame.
One of the earliest Puritan writers of satire, Nathaniel Ward was a preacher who
s,etded in Massachusetts in 1634. Thirteen years later, Ward wrote and published The
Simple Cobler ofAggawam in America. Ward, in reflections supposedly written by a
humble shoemaker, uses a satiric mask to criticize men and women in his society who, he
believed, were becoming too permissive and tolerant of divergent religious beliefs and
current customs and fashions. This simple cobbler even has the courage to confront his
king, using his wit to elude any threatening or audacious behavior that might anger the
king. In as much as The Simple Cobler is a satiric commentary on early American
customs, Ward accomplished two steps toward defining the Yankee character. First, he
assumes the guise of a humble shoemaker, a common working man with enough gumption
to address himsdfto no one less than a king. Ward gave the common man a voice, one
that would grow louder and more insistent on being heard until, in 1776, the king could no
longer ignore it. Second, Ward foreshadowed the Yankee types of Benjamin Franklin.
The simple cobbler bears a resemblance to Silence Dogood, Poor Richard and Father
Abraham in the way he comments on the manners and mores of the colonial Puritans.
23
Granted, Ward's Yankee character lacks many key ingredients, but the simple cobbler
begins the maturing process to be carried on by other colonial writers.
Samuel Bailey's reply to John Richardson's 1670 treatment ofthe farmer as a
ludicrous, unlearned bumpkin adds another satiric view of the country rustic. Bailey's
reply is a poem entided "The College Femia, Being a Reply to 'The Country-Man's
Apocrypha.'" Little more than a light-hearted satire, the piece contains language and
imagery that reflect an educated, learned author who poses behind the comic mask ofa
yeoman farmer defending himself against attack. Another colonial author, George Alsop,
satirized the characteristics of Marylanders, but no complex character development exists
in A Character ofthe Province ofMaryland to take it beyond the basic condescension of
an aristocrat peering down from his lofty perch to caustically comment on the lowly
frontiersman in the American colonies.
In 1708, Ebenezer Cooke wrote an engaging poem entitled The Sot-Weed Factor,
which purports to be a narrative of an English trader's visit to Maryland. One glance at
the sub-tide of the poem suggests the content and emphasis: A Voyage toMmy/and. A
Satire in Which is Described the Laws, Government, Courts, and Constitutions of the
Country and Also the Buildings, Feasts, rrolics, Entertainments, and Drunken Humors
of the inhabitants of That Part ofAmerica. In Burlesque Verse. Cooke's poem presents
another example of an aristocrat out of his element, satirizing the outsider in order to
maintain control ofhis own personal world, to cover his lack of knowledge of how to
exist in these foreign circumstances. Characterizing the sot-weed, or tobacco, farmer,
Cooke writes:
24
These Sot weed Planters crowd the Shore,
In Hew as tawny as a Moor;
Figures, so stmnge, no GOD design'd
To be a Part of Hurnan-kind:
But wanton Nature, void ofRest,
Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. (58)
Calling them "a detested Race," Cooke continues to belittle the folks his European trader
meets as he attempts to sell his goods:
A Female Voice pierc'd thro' my Ears,
Crying, You Rogue drive home the Steers:
I listen'd that attractive Sound,
And streight A Herd of Cattle found,
Drove by a Youth, and homeward bound. (59)
From female voices that attract herds of cattle to sluttish chamber maids to riotous
lawyers and drunken brawlers, Cooke allows only one Maryland Quaker a positive image-
-positive in that the American Quaker gets the upper hand on the condescending English
planter.
To this intent, with guide before,
I tripped it to the Eastern Shore.
Where riding near a sandy bay,
I met a Planter, in my Way,
A pious, conscientious Rogue,
25
As e'er wore Bonnet, Hat, or a Brogue;
Who neither swore, nor kept his Word,
But cheated in the Fear 0' th' Lord;
And when his Debts he could not pay,
From trusting Fools he'd run away.
My Goods I trusted to the Cheat,
Whose Crop was then 0' board the Fleet;
And going to receive my own,
I found the bird was newly flown. (72)
Perhaps more than any other author of the early eighteenth century, Cooke empowers the
rustics by allowing them to triumph over the European in the end. In their triumph, these
Maryland and Virginia colonists portray the same piety and practical sense that Madam
Knight describes of the people she encounters on her journey to New Haven. As colonial
writers developed the country yeoman, he would be seen again later in the eighteenth
century with more power--the power to take advantage of a naive traveler, thereby
becoming the Yankee peddler.
If anyone colonial writer embodied the aristocratic, educated stance of the elite,
William Byrd II, wealthy planter and member of the Royal Society, did. Educated in
England, Byrd settled down on his plantation at Westover situated on the James River,
and proceeded to become one of the most influential men in Virginia. Byrd was chosen to
head the surveying party for Virginia when the colony decided to mark the disputed
border between North Carolina and Virginia in the year 1728. Making observations on his
26
travels, Byrd wrote two chronicles of his journey, neither ofwlUch was published until the
nineteenth century. As r,ecorded in The History o/the Dividing Line, Byrd employs
humor to cope with "the many uncouth shapes and situations he encounters" (Micklus
145). In the Swamp country, Byrd encounters rustics who are "without culture,
refinement, ambition, or wealth, and who moreover do not seem to feel the lack ofsuch
commodities very much" (Rubin 13). Through his adaptation of a strikingly inappropriate
level of language to the insignificance of the situation and the sophistication of the settlers,
Byrd pokes fun at the country people with an amused attitude of superiority. Byrd's satire
earned few friends for the author. North Carolinians have complained about his
characterization of shiftless residents on the North Carolina frontier:
... The men for their parts, just like the Indians, impose all the work upon
the poor women. They make their wives rise out of their beds early in the
morning, at the same time that they lie and snore till the sun has risen one-
third of his course and dispersed all the unwholesome damps. Then after
stretching and yawning for half an hour, they light their pipes, and, under
the protection of a cloud of smoke, venture out into the open air; though if
it happens to be ever so little cold, they quickly return shivering to the
chimney corner ... Thus they loiter away their lives, like Solomon's
sluggard, with their arms across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely
have bread to eat. To speak the truth, 'tis a thorough aversion to labor that
makes people file off to North Carolina, where plenty and a warm sun
confirm them in their disposition of laziness for their who lives. (Rubin 27)
27
Practicing aristocratic satire at its best, William Byrd II was one of the most skilled and
entertaining writers of the colonial period, contrasting elevated diction with character
descriptions of the rustic North Carolinian to produce accomplished satire few other
colonial writers could achieve. However, ifleft up to Byrd, and all of those satirists
before him, the Yankee comic character would have remained a mere object of ridicule,
simply another poor creature to pity. It would take the extraordinary insights of a Puritan
woman traveling from Boston to New Haven to launch the Yankee comic character
beyond just an object of scorn found in much Old World literature and beyond the simple
stereotype portrayed by aristocratic writers such as Ward, Alsop, Cooke and Byrd.
Sarah Kemble Knight began her journey from Boston to New Haven and New
York in the fall of 1704. By this time, the Boston-New Haven road (later, the Post Road)
was already the route of the postal riders. For this reason, Sarah Kemble Knight had little
trouble fmding a guide to lead her to New Haven. Not published until 1825, Knight's
Journal gained an audience immediately after publication because, as Sargent Bush, Jr.,
explains in his introduction to Knight's Journal,
The travel journal of this remarkable colonial American woman surely
possesses the flavor of a true native voice, predicting various strands that
would grow and flower as the native qualities of America's literature
continued to become more pronounced. The voice had spoken a century
and more before the generation of Irving and Cooper, but it was presented
to the American reader only in the 1820s. In this way Sarah Kemble
Knight, all unawares, participated in two key moments i.n American cultural
28
history--that in which she wrote and that in which her writing received a
wider audience through publication. 5
At the time ofits publication, Knight's Journal initially was recognized for its early
account of historical sites, real towns, and an authentic rendition ofcolonial life because
the nation craved original American literature with distinctly American features. Little
recognition was given for its humorous view of Knight's journey. Harrison T. Meserole
explains that U[w]e have so long equated the words New England and Seventeenth-
Century with the label Puritan, and this ,equation in turn with the tones of solemnity heard
in every major voice that speaks to us from the time of the earliest settlements on the
North Atlantic coast, that we do not readily associate the terms wit and humor with these
voices" (12). Yet, slowly, in the later half of twentieth century, The Journal ofMadam
Knight has begun to receive critical attention for its humor and wit. Whether the work is
read as a mock-epic or picaresque narrative,6 most scholars agree that Knight's voice
makes her Journal distinctly humorous. William Spengemann claims there are two
separate voices, that of the disengaged Bostonian and that of the emotionally involved
traveler, while Fay Vowell indicates that the Journal incorporates four distinguishable
voices: the frightened female traveler, the curious recorder of facts, the acute business-
woman, and the superior, at times sarcastic, commentator.7 Yet, these questions of
whether Knight's Journal belongs in the picaresque or mock-epic genre, or to what extent
Knight uses distinct voices in the Journal avoid addressing the predominant strength that
distinguishes Madam Knight's Journal from other early colonial writings--its use ofwit
and its anticipation of the Yankee character type.
29
The Journal ofMadam Knight adds a fresh perspective to the history ofcomic
writing in America through Knight's showcasing of the comic Yankee character type. Her
observation of a wide variety of uniquely American characteristics places the Journal not
just in a position of foreshadowing or predicting8 the direction of American humor but
places it in the active, vital role of initiating development of the Yankee comic character
usually associated with Franklin, Tyler, Irving and Twain, to name a few. Sarah Kemble
Knight's Journal deserves more than just an acknowledgment that her character type
resembles fully-devdoped nineteenth-century figures; The Journal ofMadam Knight
should be re-evaluated and recognized for its anticipation, and vttal role in the
establishment of a uniquely American tradition ofhumor.
Because Knight's Journal significantly contributes to the literary history of
American humor, it deserves more attention than that given it by Walter Blair, a prominent
scholar of American humor for well over fifty years. The tradition of American humor
received a thorough analysis in 1937 when Blair published his well-researched and well-
respected study ofNative American Humor. Since that time, his work has basically been
accepted as a foundation for any study of our national humor. 9 Blair defines his premise
at the outset:
Humour is national when it is impregnated with the
convictions, customs, and associations of a nation.
. . . National American humour must be all this
transferred into shapes which produce laughter. The
humour of a people is their institutions, laws, customs,
30
manners, habits, characters, convictions,--their scenery
whether ofthe sea, the city, or the hills,--expressed in the
language of the ludicrous (3)
Blair outlines two developments that were necessary before the characteristic writing of
the American humorist could appear: "the development of the comic possibilities of the
American scene and of the American character, and the development of a fictional
technique which would revea~ them. Somehow, American authors had to become aware
of native materials for humorous literature; somehow they had to learn to exploit them"
(16).
Blair recognizes American humor as beginning with the appearance of the Down
East humorists of the mid-1800s, ignoring the contributions of The Journal ofMadam
Knight. Knight's characterization ofthe people she encounters and ofher reactions
throughout the journey satisfy Blair's criteria for a "national humor," yet she appears only
briefly in his lengthy study. Blair is not the only culprit in perpetuating this literary
oversight. Unfortunately, the humor of women has virtually been ignored until the last
twenty-five years. 10 Reginia Gagneir theorizes that "it seems that historically men have
preferred women's tears to their more threatening laughter" (137). This assertion about
women's threatening laughter certainly holds true with Sarah Kemble Knight.
Yet despite the fact that critics have overlooked Knight's contribution to the
tradition of American humor with her laughter at her own naivete and inability to cope
with New England frontier, Sarah Kemble Knight develops the Yankee into a truly unique
Am,erican character type by discerning the dual personality of the typical country bumpkin
31
(on one hand, his ambitious desire to better himself, on the other his simple innocence and
crudeness) and by personalizing the country bumpkin through detailed physical description
and use of authentic dialect. It is this gathering of characters and Knight's ability to
perceptively combine them into one predictable type that makes The Journal ofMadam
Knight memorable and important.
Knight begins to characterize the Yankee rustic by observing his desire to profit
from a stranger's need for a guide, a service only he can provide. John, the first guide she
encounters, ignores her initial plea for help, most likely one of those "tyed by the Lipps to
a pewter engine ..." (87). Found drinking in a tavern, John sells his services to Madame
Knight, ignoring the more ambitious desires of his mother, the tavern hostess. Looking as
old as his mother, "his shade on his Hors resembled a Globe on a Gate post. His habitt
and furniture, its look and goings Incomparably answered the rest" (90). He is an over-
weight, sloppy, middle-aged man who still allows his mother to find employment for him.
Knight uses the comparison of a globe on a gate post to ridicute his physical size,
completing the picture by allowing the reader to imagine what the rest must look like--a
fat, round blob, sitting suspended on a comparatively thin, elevated object. Knight
perceptively describes his character as boastful and bragging. Commenting on the
numerous late rides he has taken and high adventures he has encountered in these very
woods, John enjoys Madam Knight's company and her attention to his stories; the more
comfortable he becomes, the more extravagant his tales become. As Knight describes his
conversation in her Journal, she also details his demeanor, and the juxtaposition of the
two elements paints a humorous portrait of a quaint country bumpkin. "Thus Jogging on
32
with an easy paoe, my Guide telling mee it was dangeros to Ride hard in the Night, (weh
his horse had the sence to avoid,) Hee entertained me with Adventurs he had passed by
late Rideing, and eminent Dangers he had escaped, so that, Remembering the Hero's in
Parismus and the Knight of the oracle, I didn't know but I had mett wth a Prince
disguised" (90). Despite Knight's satirical tone, John fares well in her description,
impressing the reader as a relaxed colonist at ease in the back country of New England,
not too industrious but willing to work hard enough to get by. John's courage remains
strong and his character consistent as they travel deeper into the Gothic-like swamp. Her
guide's "Universal knowledge" and ready answers actually bring comfort to Madam
Knight's terror-stricken heart as they plod along toward their destination.
Throughout this descriptmon of John, Knight presents him as believing that he is in
the position of power because he is her guide and has experienced dangers, adventures and
thousands of swampy rides. Knight allows this character a certain amount of control and
power that most other colonial writers deny the rustic. John knows the territory and how
to survive in it, leaving Madam Knight at his mercy. This knowledge equals power
because Knight is helpless and reliant on the guidance of John. Most other colonial
writers maintain the position of power by sarcastically showing their superior intellect
compared to their ignorant, backwoods subjects. Yet, Knight, through her control of
language and description, indicates her superior social position to this backwoods Yankee,
one that enables her to mock her guide and his relaxed attitude, making him appear foolish
yet likable.
33
Knight continues this portrayaJ of the "backwoods Yankee II in her characterization
of the two "Town tope-ers" in the room next to hers who were debating the origin of their
county's name, Narraganset, over a few drinks.
One said it was named so by the Indians, because
there grew a Brier there, ofa prodigious Highth and
bigness, the like hardly ever known, called by the Indians
Narragansett; And quotes an Indian of so Barberous a
name for his Author, that I could not write it. His
Antagonist Replyd no--It was from a Spring it had its
name, wch hee well knew where it was, which was extreem
cold in summer, and as Hott as could be imagined in the
winter, which was much resorted too by the natives, and
by them Called Narrangansett, (Hott and Cold,) and that
was the original! of their place name ... (95)
Re-emphasizing the harmless but lazy, loafing attitude of the backwoodsman, she
iUustrat,es the same penchant for exaggeration she observed in John's tall-tales. Spending
his money foolishly on drink and wasting time over a trivial subject such as the origins of a
county name, the backwoods Yankee feels comfortable in his environment and at home
with the countryside of New England.
The rustic Yankee's crudeness becomes painfully abusive to others as Jemima soon
finds out from the behavior ofher father, Polly. Riding on a short, lean horse, Jemima
begins to feel the pain of thirty-mile journey with only a horse's bony back for a pillow.
34
Wee made Good speed along, weh made poor Jemima
make many a sow'r face, the mare being a very hard trotter, and
after many a hearty and bitter Oh, she at length Low'd out: Lawful
Heart father! this bare mare hurts mee Dingeely, rme direfull
sore I vow; with many words to that purpose; poor Child sais
Gaffer--she us't to serve your mother so. I don't care how
mother us't to do, quoth Jemima, in a pasionate tone. At which
the old man Laught, and kik't his Jade 0' the side, which made
her Jolt ten times harder. (100)
Polly's reaction to his daughter's sincere complaint is in total opposition to what a
sympathetic reader would expect. Added to this tense situation are the colloquial
expressions Knight incorporates into the text. This allows the reader to assume an
emotional distance from the character and her suffering because he cannot identify with
her speech or her predicament. Allowing him to laugh more comfortably at her suffering,
Knight ventures into new territory when she attempts to capture the slang and unfamiliar
phrases of the country yeoman such as "Lawful Heart" and "hurts me Dingeely, rme
direfull sore I vow" It is trus daring attempt to personalize and humanize the rustic
Yankee that distinguishes Knight's observations from those of other colonial writers and
sets the stage for later writers such as Royall Tyler, who capitalized on the Yankee's rustic
vernacular. Polly and Jemima, in their unique dialect and their strained relationship, serve
as an example ofKnight's development of the Yankee character beyond the typical
stereotype. Some rustic Yankees, such as John and the drunks, are jovial and social, but
3S
those same traits, love oflaughter and a good joke, can also become crude and harmful as
manifest in this father and daughter case.
Knight portrays the second aspect of the Yankee comic character in the New
England hostess. Frequenting roadside taverns, inns, and homes, Knight develops a clear
portrait of the typical hostess--a fairly cons,stent, one-dimensional view of an ambitious,
often meddlesome, Yankee out to make a profit. Knight's first hostess, mother to John
the backwoods Yankee, appears shortly after Knight starts her journey. This hostess
demonstrates her greed and stubbornness in trying to take advantage ofKnight's
vulnerable position. "Peices of eight, I told her no, I would not be accessary to such
extortion" (87). Greedy, the woman will not bargain or compromise with Knight.
Then John shan't go, sais she,e. No, indeed, shan't hee;
And held forth at that rate a long time, that I began to
fear I was got among the Quaking tribe, believing not a
Limbertong'd sister among them could out do Madm.
Hostes. (87)
With a sharp, critical tone, Knight capitalizes on her reader's familiarity with the Quaker
religion and assumption that a good Puritan would agree with ridicule of the Quaker
religion. Knight criticizes the hostess for talking incessantly, comparing her unfavorably
with a woman who felt the "divine call" to preach, and Knight also implies her greediness
(extreme thriftiness) by referring to the Quaker tribe, who were known to be frugal and
unfrivolous in every aspect oftheir daily lives including finances. A frugal person would
attempt to gain the best bargain he or she could, as this hostess does. Added to trus
36
gTeedy and stubborn attitude, the hostess at a Post down the road brings in left-overs to
serve for dinner, demonstrating again the hostess' efforts to save money.
Here, having called for something to eat, the woman bro't in
a Twisted thing like a cable, but something whiter; and laying it
on the bord, tugg'd for life to bring it into a capacity to spread;
wch having wth great pains accomplished, shee serv'd in a dish
ofPork and Cabage, I suppose the remains ofDinner. The
sause was of a deep purple, weh I tho't was boil'd in her dye
Kettle; the bread was Indian, and everything on the Table
service Agreeable to these. I, being hungry, gott a little down;
but my stomach was soon cloy'd, and what cabbage I swallowed
serv'd me for a Cudd the who~e day after. (91-92)
Encountering spoiled food becomes a reality as Knight meets landladies like the one who
come in "with her hair about her ears, and hands at full pay scratching" and serve spoiJed
mutton, curdled milk and such as this to paying customers. Knight does encounter some
friendly hostesses who talk pleasantly and intelligently, but a talkative, loud-mouth attitude
such as that exhibited by the first hostess seems to accompany the dirty demeanor ofmany
of the hostesses Knight meets. At one stop, the hostess proceeds to tell the whole
company about her every ache and p,ain while assuming that only a doctor in the company
can hear her. Knight's characterization of the "great Landly" grants the reader a fairly
unpleasant but consistent picture of a lazy, sloppy, obnoxious hostess with little or no
class. Dirty, loud, and so stingy with their food that they willingly serve it spoiled, these
37
hostesses demonstrate Knight's perception of the backwoods rustic as too selfish to treat
her guests with respect and decency. This image of a greedy, obnoxious Yankee appears
again in the portrait of the Yankee peddler.
Knight's portrayal of a younger version of the greedy hostess underscores the
ambitiousness of the rustic Yankee. The most memorable encounter with a young woman
on Knight's journey starts after her journey with John the Yankee guide. A young country
innkeeper's daughter, this woman rambles on incessantly, not stopping long enough to let
Madam Knight answer her questions.
Law for mee--what in the world brings you here at
this time a night? I never see a woman on the Road
so Dreadfull late, in all the days of my versiIllife.
Who are you? Where are you going? I'me scared
out of my wits--(91)
From the colloquial expressions such as "Law for mee," and "versililife, II Knight paints a
picture of a woman who has her mouth open most of the time. The character-sketch
continues after John enters and refuses to engage the girl in conversation. Undaunted,
"Debb," as Madam Knight nicknames her, turns her attention back to the newcomer and
"fell anew into her silly questions, without asking me to sit down" (91). Knight's use of
colloquial language prefigures its use by later authors such as l:;'ranklin, Tyler, Irving,
Cooper, and Stowe, who employ it as a method of characterization, as Knight does. The
language makes the girl appear melodramatic, inconsiderate, and loud. To add insult (and
humor for the reader), John, who has talked for the entire journey with Madam Knight,
38
refuses to engage in conversation with her, preferring to chew tobacco. This slight by a
fellow Yankee certainly stings, so in the face of an embarrassing situation the girl handles
it the only way she can--by flaunting her meager worldly possessions.
In one brief moment, Sarah Kemble Knight describes her own bewilderment and
disgust when the girl runs upstairs and returns, flaunting two or three rings which she
proceeds to display in the air as she talks to Madam Knight. Frustrated, Knight again
draws on her sense of humor to alleviate the emotion. "But her Granan's new Rung sow,
had it appeared, would [have] affected me as much" (91). Perplexed by her encounter
with the very real but unique people of backwoods colonial America, Knight makes the
reader laugh at her characterizations of the Yankee as ambitious and obnoxious, while her
use of dialect and colloquial speech anticipates the stage Yankee of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.
But Knight refuses to leave this Yankee character type until Bumpkin Simpers and
wife Jone Tawdry make an appearance, and it is with this rendition of the backwoods
Yankee that Knight's portrayal of the character type is complete.
{A] tall country fellow, wth his alfogeos full of Tobacco;
... he advanc't to the middle of the Room, makes an Awkward
Nodd, and spitting a Large deal of Aromatick Tincture, he gave
a scrape with his shovel like shoo, leaving a small shovel full
of dirt on the floor, made a full stop, Hugging his own pretty
Body with his hands under his arms, Stood staring rouwn'd him,
like a Catt let our of a Baskett... in comes Jone Tawdry, drop-
39
ping about 50 curtsees, and stands by him... They Generaly stand
after they come in a great while speechless, and sometimes dont
say a word till they are askt what they want... (106)
With this characterization, Knight captures the stance, the pace, the preoccupation, and
the attitude of a typical country man and woman--Bumpkin Simper and Jone Tawdry.
One famous character of the 1830s was Jack Downing, a backwoods Yankee traveling to
Washington to seek a political position in the Jackson administration. Jack became a
member of Old Hickory's Kitchen Cabinet and as such reported back home with wide-eyed
innocence what he observed in the corridors of power. Jack Downing is just a
transplanted Bumpkin Simper, gazing glassy-eyed at the wonders ofWashingtoll instead
of the wonders of the general store back home. Knight's introduction of this backwoods
Yankee fortifies her position as the originator of a unique element of American humor--
caricature-- and a unique American type--the rustic Yankee.
Throughout the Journal, Knight observes specific character traits of an emerging
American type, the Yankee. In her character sketches, the Yankee appears self-assured in
his own environment yet anxious to impress the sophisticated traveler, boastful, crude and
cruel, and finally, as a naive and simple creature who cannot comprehend and absorb the
wide variety of features and options that the "city" offers. These observations could easily
be interpreted as an aristocrat's satiric musings, if Sarah Kemble Knight had not had the
insight and strength to laugh at herself. Micklus argues that "only Sarah Kemble Knight
found much to laugh at herself Although she sometimes resorts to a humorous scapegoat
when she finds herself in an awkward predicament, Knight often manages to poke fun at
40
her own naivete" (144). Because she makes a conscious effort to shine a spotlight on her
own actions, Knight impresses the reader as a common, everyday person relating her
experiences to a cornmon human being.
Although her efforts are not altogether successful, Knight almost accomplishes
what Franklin does in his Autobiography, to write to her audience of middle-class
Bostonians, from the perspective ofa person dealing with situations that are unfamiliar
and out of her realm of ,experienoe. In a broad s,ense, Knight parallels her experience with
that of the rustic Yankee overcome by the aspects of city life, while at the same time, she,
a middle-class city dweller, embodies characteristics of the Yankee portrayed later by
Franklin in the characters of Silence Dogood and Poor Richard--thrift, industriousness,
and practicality. Martha Bruere and Mary Beard remark that "under stress especially it is
important to remember laughter, for it is more than a defense mechanism, a means of
adjusting to circumstances, a safety valve against tyranny--it is an agency in creative
enterprise" (v). Knight uses her fears, anxieties, and phobias to her advantage by making
the most of her guides when she can get them, knowing her dependence on their ability to
lead her from one point to another. Knight demonstrates her thriftiness in using the guides
when they come along despite what fears she might have about road conditions or
weather. Staying in one place unnecessarily long will waste money. She has to bargain
for her first guide John and after this initial introduction to the world of travel, Knight
spends her money wisely and conservatively.
As author and traveler, Knight is confident enough to admit the fear of traveling
through a foggy swamp at night and allows the reader a chuckle at her expense.
41
However, this persistence on her part to continue despite her fears demonstrates her
industrious nature. Her next adventure requires crossing the river by canoe, which
petrifies her.
The canoo was very small and shallow, so
that when we were in she seem'd ready to take
in water, which greatly terrified mee, and caused
me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands
fast on each side, my eyes stedy, not daring so much
as to lodg my tongue a hair's bredth more on one side
then tother, nor so much as think on Lott's wife, for a
wry thouth would have oversett our wherey. (94)
Knight laughs at her own fears and reactions by using the same techniques she employed
on others. She exaggerates to make a fearful situation seem humorous while showing her
reaction to the situation in detail as if even casting a glance to one side would upset the
boat. Using the religious image of Lot's wife and her punishment for disobeying a direct
command of God, Knight applies this image of God's wrath enacted on a disobedient
woman in order to make light of her own situation. By depicting her dilemma, emotions,
and behavior in a comic way, Knight shows her confidence and self-assurance at being
able to laugh at herself, but at the same time, she shares her fears and misgivings about the
dangers of the adventure she has undertaken. Her light tone allows the reader to
understand her emotion while at the same time to enjoy her version of it without becoming
over-burdened with serious lessons to apply to his life.
42
Knight ends the episode on a light note and "was soon put out of this pain, by
feeling the Cannoo on shore, weh I as soon almost saluted with my feet" (92). Knight
imagines herselftooking, at best "like a holy Sister Just come out of a Spiritual Bath in
dripping Garments" if she falls out of her canoe into the water (92). The image of a
soaking Madam Knight with a water-drenched dress clinging to her ankles, dripping hair
and watery eyes, none the worse for the wear and tear, laughing at her own misfortune
and wryly continuing toward her destination with a smile reinforces the character type of
the literary Yankee, a responsible, conscientious, educated character who meets with
humorous situations because he Of she is out of familiar territory.
Knight calls on her imagination to allay some of her emotions and to pass the time
when the ride seems more like thirty than the actual twenty-two miles. Inspired by the
"Kind Conductress of the night,'" Knight composes an ode to the moon, Fair Cynthia.
Fair Cynthia, all Homage that I may
Unto a Creature, unto thee I pay;
In Lonesome woods to meet so kind a guide,
To Mee's more worth than all the world beside.
Some Joy I felt just now, when safe got ore
Yon Surly River to this Rugged shore,
Deeming Rough welcomes from these clownish Trees,
Better than Lodgings wth Nereidees.
Yet swelling fears surprise; all dark appears--
Nothing but Light can disipate those fears.
43
My fainting vitals can't lend strength to say,
But softly whisper, a I wish 'twere day.
The murmer hardly warn1d the Ambient air;
E're thy Bright Aspect rescues from despair:
Makes the old Hagg her sable mantle loose,
And a Bright Joy do's through my Soul diffuse.
The Boistero's Trees now Lend a Passage Free,
And pleasent prospects thou givs't light to see. (94)
The poem expresses sentiments similar to those that lchabod Crane must have felt on that
fateful night the Headless Horseman stalked him. Elements of superstition and
exaggeration in this poem indicate that Knight was educated and familiar with classical
allusions. But in unfamiliar surroundings, she puts even such respected literature as the
classics to humorous employment to help dissipate the fear and anxiety a woman of the
seventeenth-century must have felt in the face of unknown, dark, unfriendly surroundings
in the backwoods between Boston and New Haven. Knight continues to characterize
herself as Madam Knight, commenting on accommodations as she compares them with her
ability to adapt to each new situation. It seems that when the narrative has become too
sober in tone, Knight jokes about a personal action or feature to draw the reader's
attention away from the realities of the discomforts and back to the purpose for reading
the Journal--for entertainment.
Knight's primary contributions to the tradition of American humor include her
varied perceptions of Yankee cornie characters, her use ofdialect, and her attempt to
44
place herself in her own narrative as a type ofYankee. Some critics, such as Robert
Arner, argue that Knight1s influence spreads much wider.
Knight's Journal represents in some ways the culmination of
nearly aU the comic themes and character types we have been
considering: courtship, cultural deprivation, the American
Indian, the talkative taciturn Yankee, the shrewd Yankee trickster,
the bumpkin; nearly all the stylistic techniques: mock epic
language, surprising and unusual metaphor, ... comic colloquialism,
and an important new dimension the interplay among sophisticated
Bostonian dialect, backwoods speech, and the pidgin English
of the Indian. There is folklore ... and withal the special poignancy
of the lost American, wandering through the tangled wilderness,
for the symbols and splendors of civilization and culture. (283)
While some of Arner's assertions seem to daim for the twenty-nine page Journal of
Madam Knight more influence on American literature in general than it has probably had,
Knight provided nineteenth-century writers with the Yankee character type from which to
work. Her early development of this character deserves to be recognized for its use of
rustic dialect and for specific descriptions of the rustic Yankee as naive, ambitious and
thrifty. As Arner so aptly phrased it, "Madam Knight's Journal [remains] a vastly
underrated contribution to American comic tradition 'I ("Wit, Humor" 284).
The year after Madam Knight journeyed from Boston to New Haven, Benjamin
Frankhn was born. Contemporary figures of the eighteenth century, both FrankJin and
45
Knight made sigrUficant contributions to the development of the Yankee comic character.
However, only one has received the recognition he deserves for his literary
accomplishments. Benjamin Franklin has been called the Father of all Yankees (Rubin
33). Though this assertion assigns too much credit to him while ignoring other
contributors and influences, Franklin certainly played a major part in developing the
Yankee comic character into a "homespun, unlittered, but shrewd man of common sense"
(Blair and Hill 54). Silence Dogood, Poor Richard and Father Abraham all attest to the
fact that through his ingenious reworking of literary maxims into sayings that a common
man would surmise from his experience, Franklin popularized a comic character with
which most Americans could identify. Yet, there exists between the pages of his
Autobiography characteristics that can be credited with helping to shape another aspect of
the Yankee character -- the peddler. Ifin fact the anti-intellectual movement in Franklin's
day and rumbles among colonists of discontent with British rule helped to increase the
popularity of the homey but witty Yankee, then improved traveling conditions coupled
with greater opportunities for economic gain opening in the frontier influenced the
development of the shrewd Yankee peddler. Although he is not entirely responsib}e for
the characterization of the Yankee peddler, Franklin's literary characters exhibit some of
the traits employed by later authors to embellish the character of the sly Yankee peddler.
Franklin's career as a printer/writer began at the very early age of twelve when he
was apprenticed to his brother James. Always striving to improve himself, Franklin wrote
and fe-wrote essays in an effort to refine his sentence structure and vocabulary. Having
had little formal education, Franklin spent his lifetime educating himselfon every
46
conceivable subject, thus accounting for many of his accomplishments in politics, science
and literature. A self-made man so successful in business that he retired from his print
shop at the age of 42, Franklin created characters that the common man could read about
and understand, and he printed gems of wisdom and common sense maxims in two of the
most popular media of the time--the almanac and the newspaper. Fourteen essays
commenting on the manners of Boston were printed in the Courant under the name of
Silence Dogood. Silence Dogood's distinguishing features consisted of her place in
society as a "New England countrywoman who spoke in native accent of local
idiosyncrasies. Her name alone -- impisWy suggestive of Cotton Mather's well-meaning
essays -- and her position in life were amusing. . . Her given name of Silence was
grotesquely inappropriate, for she loved to talk, especially about her neighbors" (Rubin
35). Blair and HiB comment that she was "a countrywoman, poor, frugal, hard-working,
friendly with farm folk and leather-apron men, 'fond of useful and desirable knowledge,'
but contemptuous of flossy writings 'in the learned languages'" (64). She was at times
colloquial, slangy and even earthy in her expressions. Franklin used the same character
traits to enliven Poor Richard and Father Abraham, and the public loved it. "The Way to
Wealth," a collection of witty sayings in essay form, has been named "an American
classic" that bears "the mark of our national spirit." Poor Richard's Almanac, first
published in 1732, carried on for twenty-five years, reaching one in a hundred people. The
characteristics embodied by Franklin's fictitious commentators clearly rang true to most
Americans, and because of this, Franklin deserves the credit for developing the Yankee
character into a respectable but simpl,e, plain American, " ... wise, sly and forthright at
47
the same time, ...sturdy, likable, and dependable, ...grave but seldom serious, 81 good
man to have around in almost any emergency, just as Franklin was, who invented him"
(Rubin 47). As Rubin suggests, Franklin appears to embody many of the characteristics he
celebrates in the simple Yankee. A glance at his Autobiography, however, shines
additional light on this gigantic figure of a Neo-classical man who looms in American
history, and shows him to be part Yankee peddler as well as the witty, homespun
character portrayed in his other works.
Raised in a home that valued frugality and practicality, Franklin esteemed these
virtues for a lifetime. In addition, Franklin's acumen for business appeared early, as he
recounts:
Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John
Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enab~e
me to buy P. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's
books, and cheap, 40 to 50 in aU. (61)
At an early age he showed an affinity for bargaining, trading, and dealing, all qualities
essential for success in business, especially peddling. His thriftiness was demonstrated
when he proposed to his brother to give him half the money James was paid to board him
and offered to board himself "He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could
save halfwhat he paid me" (65). Thrifty and shrewd, Franklin also reveals in the
Autobiography three traits that would characterize the peddler in years to come -- slyness,
eloquence, and dishonesty.
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Studying the rhetorical techniques of Socrates, Franklin practiced the guise of the
humble inquirer and doubter. "I took a dehght in it, practiced it continually, and grew
very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions,
the consequences ofwhich they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of
which they could not extricate themselves ..." (66). Franklin became an eloquent
speaker, a "sweet-talker" in the language of the simple Yankee, something that had a great
effect on rus career as a politician and diplomat. No doubt the most successful peddlers
also employed this technique in order to sell more goods and make bigger profits. As
described in Constance Rourke's earlier dramatization of the success of the Yankee
peddler, this characteristic of the traveling salesman was one that frontiersmen dreaded
most. Coupled with his ability to successfully state his point, Franklin demonstrated early
on a tendency to be sly and sneaky by secretly writing essays for the Courant then slipping
them under the door of the printing house, knowing that his brother would publish them as
long as he thought they were not Franklin's.
With virtually no government restraints on his business and little or no
accountability to the buyer, the peddler quickly developed a reputation for being sly and,
at times, dishonest. This aspect of the Yankee comic character was rarely displayed by
Franklin himself, but in dealing with his brother James, Franklin demonstrates the very
characteristic for which peddlers acquired an unscrupulous reputation. James was
imprisoned, and upon release, was ordered to quit printing his newspaper. After much
deliberation, it was agreed that James would sign over Benjamin's indenture papers so that
the paper could be printed in Benjamin's name. However, Benjamin agreed to abide by
49
new, private apprenticeship tenns, although according to public record, he had been fully
discharged and possessed all the rights and freedoms ofany man. "At length, a fresh
difference arising between my brother and me, I took upon me to assert my freedom,
presuming that he would not venture to produce the new indentures" (69). Young
Benjamin swindled and took advantage ofrus own flesh and blood, demonstrating that
ambitious Yankee flare for pressing the advantage when possible. Granted, Franklin later
came to regard this incident as one of the great mistakes of his life, but it illustrates a
Yankee characteristic that clashes with the image of the simple, honest, hard-working
Yankee laborer. The same Yankee usually associated with Franklin and characterized by
frugalness, thriftiness, and practicality also at times tended toward ambition, shrewdness,
slyness, and, at times, dishonesty.
J. R. Dolan, in his extensive commentary on Yankee peddlers, The Yankee
Peddlers ojEarly American (1964), explains the economic reasons for society's need for
the Yankee peddler, one being that the restrictive trade policies ofEngland and the
confused currency situation in the New World created a difficult situation for a young man
to get started in business (27). Besid,es the sea, peddling was the only business that
offered possibilities for adventure. So as the eighteenth century drew to a close,
thousands of peddlers were strapping on a pack stuffed with needles, pins, buttons, combs,
spools of thread, and spoons and knives forging into new territories, as new towns
appeared and travel became more accessible. "In the fifteen years between the close of the
war and the opening of the nineteenth century the number of peddlers on the roads
doubled and tripled" (Dolan 40). One authority says that by 1850 there were 10,669, and
50
he follows this up with a figure of 16,595 in 1860 (231). Eventually, transportation
improvements such as the railroad, canals, and steamslrips forced the Yankee peddler to
settle down in a country store somewhere on the frontier, but by then the Yankee comic
charact,er had developed a different attitude. Spawned by the image of a frugal, shrewd
New England businessman, a legendary r,eputation quickly grew up around the profession
of the Yankee peddler. "In the eighteenth century he was considered a rascal, in the
nineteenth he was thought to be a cheat: he was sharp, crafty, mean, and always on the
lookout for a chance to make a shady deal. In the South he was the original reason
'Damnyankee' became one word" (Dolan 229).
Curiously enough, Americans developed a strange attitude about the Yankee
peddler. "When a peddler is deitected in having sold you, from the store of his spice box,
wooden nutmegs instead of the true and genuine East Indian article, instead of any
particular odium attaching to him for having cheated you, you get heartily laughed at for
having suffered yourselfto be imposed upon, while he escapes with the fruits of
imposition and the general remark, '''I guess it was only a regular Yankee trick'" (Blair
and Hill 43-44). This was a typical response in the eighteenth century.
Lit,erary examples of the Yankee peddler abound, capitalizing on this legendary
silver-tongued, sly tradesman. Irving's Mrs. Rip Van Winkle left this world after she
"broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler" who had outclevered
her. Always nagging her husband Rip VanWinkle about something and keeping him in
line, Mrs. Van Winkle probably detested the slick and sly demeanor of the local peddler
and his ability to maintain control in each situation. Her desire to out-wit the Yankee
51
peddler eventually killed her. The feats of the Yankee peddler and his legendary
reputation grew in popularity so that by 1821 Alphonso Wetmore could throw together a
play, The Pedlar, in forty-eight hours that typified the Yankee comic character as the
peddler. This play was performed «with great applause" by amateurs in 1821, 1825 and
1835 (43).
The Yankee peddler lived as much in the imagination and oral tradition of the
frontiersmen as he did in literature, but his character helped develop the home-spun
Yankee of Benjamin Franklin fame beyond one-line maxims of common sense to include
elements of shrewdness and ambition. Influenced by Puritans, aristocrats, the anti-
intellectual movement, economics, one colonial businesswoman, and one American
forefather, the Yankee comic character bloss.omed during the mid-to-Iate-eighteenth
century, setting the stage for the explosion ofJonathans in the years to come.
52
CHAPTER ill
THE YANKEE: USED AS POLITICAL PROPAGANDA
AND EMBROILED IN REGIONAL CONFLICT
Moving toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century, American colonists grew
increasingly dissatisfied with British rule. Excessive taxation and the denial of their desire
as individuals to live peaceable and quiet lives in the New World represented just a few of
the grievances which drove prominent colonialleaders to sign the Declaration of
Independence in the summer of 1776. Shortly thereafter the thirteen colonies of the New
World took action against one ofthe world's most powerful nations and launched a
desperate fight for the fundamental rights ofdemocracy--individualliberty and freedom.
The colonists were at an extreme disadvantage from the very beginning. There
existed no national militia, experienced and well-trained. Instead, the common citizen left
his farm, his homestead and his tiny village to lend a hand, To add to the complications of
a untrained militia, the colonies lacked money because England strictly controUed the flow
ofcurrency into and out of the colonies. Therefore, difficulties arose in supplying the
needs of an army. In addition, a mixture of languages and cultures confounded
communication, thus increasing the difficult circumstances which the colonies had to
overcome before they even contemplated tackling the opposition.
Britain had all the advantages the American were lacking. It boasted a well-trained
and disciplined military with a notorious navy, wealth enough to support its troops
overseas, and plenty of ammunition. Yet, despite the American's lack of sophistication,
53
they defeated the British and began a new struggle ito form a united democratic
government.
Thus, for a handful ofgreat statesmen, the monumental task of building the
framework on which the pre-Revolutionary dream of freedom and liberty for an
Americans would rest began. Many of these statesmen were from the traditional,
aristocratic segment ofEuropean society, while other statesmen came from more ordinary,
common circumstances, such as Benjamin Franklin. Forced together, these people from
very different backgrounds disagreed over political philosophies and the basic issue of how
much power should be given to the average man to make his own political decisions.
Noblemen and the wealthy educated men feared "rule by the mob" and yearned for a
government controlled by the aristocrats speaking for the common man, while another
group represented the common man and his ability to make proper and correct choices for
his own benefit despite his educational level or his bank account balance. These
revolutionary thinkers and leaders of the colonies had fought for freedom for "all," but
how should "all" be interpreted--all the educated, landed aristocrats--or all men, wealthy
or poor, well-educated or ignorant?
During the last quarter of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century this political
argument co-existed with several other issues and caused dashes between groups of
people in this new nation of the United States of America. An uneasy friction remained
between the victorious colonists who, with all of their energy and might, put their lives on
the line to defend their belief in individual rights, and the loyal Tories who, whether openly
or secretly, fought for their belief in British rule and supported the mother country in her
54
unsuccessful bid to crush the audacious, insolent settlers and their growing insistence on
freedom for all These political tensions proved fertile ground for American humor,
helping to develop the Yankee comic character into a national comic character used as a
vehicle for a variety of pobtical propaganda.
Royall Tyler, a lawyer by profession, wrote his most admired drama, The Contrast,
in three weeks time. Produced on the New York stage in 1787, Tyler's play introduced a
Yanke,e comic character named Jonathan who was the first in a long line of popular stage
Yankees. Yet Tyler's basic characterization ofJonathan as a simple and naive rustic
country bumpkin on a visit to the city and the adventures he experiences were nothing new
to American literature. Almost a century earlier, Madam Sarah Kemble Knight introduced
her readers to Bumpkin Simpers and the Yankee comic character continued to develop
during the eighteenth century. Tyler, however, exaggerates the character of the rustic
"Yankee Doodle" from the farmlands of America, broadening his appeal, so that it is not
just the aristocrat laughing at him, but the common man as well, finding his rustic qualities
different enough from his own that he can laugh. Through exaggeration of specific
elements, Tyler infuses sufficient distance between the average man and this "Jonathan"
character that it enables the average man to join in making fun of this uniquely American
character type, Jonathan the Yankee. As if accomplishing this were not enough, Tyler
captures the naive faith, the simplicity and sincerity of the common American's pride in his
new nation and the freedom for which he fought and defeated the British. Tyler
champions the "Son ofLiberty," and in so doing moves the Yankee character type past
merely serving to entertain or as the vehicle for a quick laugh. Moving beyond the catchy
55
maxims ofpractica:! philosophy as developed in Franklin's writings, he becomes instead a
comic symbol of the national pride ofthe average American provincial in his/her victory
over tyranny and the British.
One of the unique features of the Yankee character which Tyler exaggerates for
comic effect is dialect. Jonathan's character is created through his word choice, including
malapropisms, rural terms, lusty hyperbole and boundless exaggeration. In the opening
scene, Jonathan emphatically denies being Colonel Manley's servant but accepts the title
of Colonel Manley's waiter. Clearly, the job descriptions are the same, but the
connotation of servanthood is negative to the rustic Yankee. Such minute distinctions
create a comic effect in a character who uses such slang terms as "what the dogs," "lingo,"
"by the living jingo" and "swamp it." Jonathan's use of such expletives as "gor,"
"tarnation," "tarnal," "tarnal curse and damn," adds to the humor, especially when he
relates his meeting with a sailor at the playhouse. This sailor swears in his conversation
with Jonathan and offends the rustic Yankee, prompting Jonathan to reprimand him and
ask him to refrain from using those words again. Jonathan repeats the very expletives he
condemns in his repetition of the story, thus creat~ng the irony and humor in the scene. By
infusing Jonathan's speech with numerous slang terms and expletives, Tyler is
exaggerating the speech of the average rustic Yankee for comic effect, allowing aristocrats
and provincials alike to laugh at the rustic's enthusiastic vocabulary.
Intertwined with these slang expressions are descriptive, vivid word pictures which
Jonathan uses as he relates various experiences he has in the city. Descriptive and simple,
56
Jonathan's dialect seems authentic to the common man as Jonathan uses images from his
father's farm and the meeting house back home.
. . I went to a place they call Holy Ground. Now I counted this was a
place where folks go to meeting; so I put my hymn-book in my pocket, and
walked softly and grave as a minister; and when I came there, the dogs a
bit of a meeting-house could I see. At last I spied a young gentlewoman
standing by one of the seats, which they have here at the doors--I took her
to be the deacon's daughter, and she looked so kind and so obliging, that I
thought I would go and ask her the way to lecture... (765)
Re-telling his adventure in the whore district, Jonathan uses simple, straight-forward
speech dominated by clear sentences and ordinary words. Later in the action, Jonathan
again wanders into a playhouse, never guessing he is participating in "the devil's drawing
room" (770). Using such phrases as "just like father's corncribs," "just like a meeting-
house gaUery," "hissing - hiss - like so many mad cats," "just like our Peleg threshing
wheat," and "as thick as mustard," Tyler allows Jonathan to identify with the country
yeoman who may not swear and speak slang like this Yankee but who understands his
metaphors from farm life. This simple yet descriptive speech of the Yankee contrasts
sharply with the stilted phrases of Jessamy, the servant to the European-influenced
Dimple. Jessamy interlaces his speech with foreign phrases like "sans ceremonie" and
ridicules himself for almost using "a vile proverb" (764, 766). The contrast between the
two vernaculars of speech is stark and emphasizes the differences between the British and
57
Americans. Early in the play, Tyler dearly show his support of the simple, sometimes
crude, American when Jonathan questions Jessamy's aristocratic language.
JONATHAN: "Well, and 1 vow too, I am pretty considerably glad to see you--but
what the dogs need of aU this outlandish lingo? Who may you be, Sir, ifl may be
so bold?"
JESSAMY: "1 have the honour to be Mr. Dimple's servant, or, if you please,
waiter. We lodge under the same roof, and should be glad of the honour of your
acquaintance."
JONATHAN: "You a waiter! By the living jingo, you look so topping, I took
you for one of the agents to Congress."
JESSAMY: "The brute has discernment notwithstanding his appearance--Give me
leave to say I wonder then at your familiarity."
JONATHAN: "Why as to the matter of that, Mr. ---- pray, what's your name?"
JESSAMY: "Jessamy, at your service."
JONATHAN: "Why, I swear we don't make any great matter of distinction in our
state, between quality and other folks." [emphasis mine] (764)
In this example, Tyler emphasizes the democratic ideal on which America is founded,
essentially squaring off with the British aristocracy through his Yankee character
Jonathan.
Jonathan proves time and again throughout the play that his naivete and simplistic
trust border on stupidity. Jessamy blatantly uses him as the fool in order to make himself
look better. Tyler exaggerates a familiar Yankee characteristic for the purpose of
58
broadening the comedy to include the laughter of the common man. Jonathan's
interactions with Jenny clearly show that everything Jessamy suggests to try in fact
backfires. He bows six times, then kisses her and, in return, receives a slap in the face.
Surprised by her reaction, he tries to rectify the situation by talking to her of marriage and
"cherubim consequences" only to enrage her the more (774). Even the most dim-witted
country yokel would know that a man must court a woman properly before he kisses her
and proposes marriage. This exaggeration offamiliar characteristics of naivete and
innocence in the Yankee character acts as another distancing factor for the common man;
for in watching Jonathan, he can see actions directly opposed to his own way of thinking.
Tyler enriches the exaggerated character of the Yankee with an underlying
practicality and honesty, a lack of pretension, that is admirable. Tyler combines these
character traits with Jessamy's aristocratic superficiality and willingness to take advantage
of Jonathan the innocent, thereby emphasizing the American's loyalty to his country and
his rustic heritage and showing the shallowness of the Europeans. In the second scene of
Act Two, where Jonathan is introduced, he makes it clear that he has chosen to serve
Colonel Manly in order to better himself, to expose himself to the adventures of the world.
"... [B]ut I am a true blue son ofliberty, for all that. Father said I should come as
Colonel Manley's waiter to see the world, and all that; but no man shall master me: my
father has as good a farm as the colonel" (764), His proud proclamation that he was not
born into a servant class of society but possesses the freedoms and rights of any American
asserts an honesty and directness about his character. In his pursuit of Jenny, Jonathan
almost forsak,es his country heritage by breaking his promise to Tabitha, his hometown
59
sweetheart. His ambition to make a better d,eal with the marriage of a city girl than the
dowry of "twenty acres of Jand--somewhat rocky though--a bible, and a cow" nearly
compromises his characteristic honesty. In the end, Jonathan yearns for the simplicity of
his hometown. "Gor! she's gone off in a swinging passion, before I had time to think: of
consequences. If this is the way with your city ~adies, give me the twenty acres of rocks,
the bible, the cow, and Tabitha, and a little peaceable bundling" (774). Several more times
throughout the drama, Tyler emphasizes the fact that Jonathan is a true born Yankee
American son of liberty, launching into the battle hymn ofthe American troops, "Yankee
Doodle." Overcome with enthusiasm and pride, he sings three stanzas, then stops to
exp~ain:
No, no, that won't do. Now, if I was with Tabitha Wymen and Jemima
Cawley, down at father Chase's, I shouldn't mind singing this all out before
them--you would be affronted if I was to sing that, though that's a lucky
thought; ifyou should be affronted, I have something dang'd cute, which
Jessamy told me to say to you. (773)
Bragging that Tabitha can sing aU the song's verses, exceeding a hundred and ninety,
Jonathan exclaims that singing his hometown song has brightened his mood. What more
loyal and expressive way can he demonstrate his pride and dedication to his country and
his simple heritage? Again, Tyler contrasts the "son of liberty," the Yankee comic
character, with the superficial, insinoere Jessamy and shows the American in more
favorable, albeit comic, light.
60
In addition to exaggerating the country man's dialect and simple, naive character,
Tyler shows him to have an eagerness, an agreeableness and cooperativeness of nature
that stems from the rustic's naivet,e. After his disastrous attempt to seduce Jenny,
Jonathan should have done what any man, rustic or not, would have done--rejected any
additional advice or criticism from Jessamy. Yet, the country man's eagerness to please is
exaggerated in Jonathan, and Tyler uses this quality to reinforce the differences between
British and American character. One key scene involves Jessamy and Jonathan evaluating
what transpired with Jenny and conSIdering how much blame Jonathan should accept for
the miscommunication. "May be it is because you have not the Graces, Mr. Jonathan"
(783). Mistaking his meaning, Jonathan is insulted until Jessamy exp1ains that he means
graces of person, not godly graces. The Yankee wants to please Jessamy, and follows his
instructions on the method of laughing by rule. As he proceeds with the rules, Jessamy
appears more and more ridiculous because the system is complicated, superficial and cruel.
But, Mr. Jonathan, you must not laugh so. Why, you ought to have
tiueredpiano, and you laughedfortissimo. Look here; you see these
marks, A. B. C. and so on; these are the references to the other part of the
book. Let us turn to it, and you will see the directions how to manage the
muscles. This [turns over] was note D you blundered at-- "You must purse
the mouth into a smile, then titter, discovering the lower part of the three
front upper teeth." (784)
Asked to laugh at inappropriate places in contrived manners, Jonathan has difficulty
understanding or implementing the system, but he tries, asking Jessamy to give him
61
numerous chances to perfect his laugh. Finally, Jessamy hears his master's call and leaves
with a parting admonition to Jonathan. "'And she asked her husband' -- [Bell rings] My
master's bell! he's returned, I fear -- Here, Mr. Jonathan, take this gamut; and, I make no
doubt but with a few years' close application, you may be able to smile gracefully" (784).
Tyler reinforces with this final exchange between Jessamy and Jonathan the vast
differences in character between the British and the Americans. The colonists, like
Jonathan, attempted to reason with England regarding issues they found troublesome, but
the British stubbornly stayed with their stringent and ridiculous requirements, eventuaUy
forcing the colonists to rebel. The final line uttered by Jessamy as he leaves indicates the
view common among the British that it would take Americans years to develop any level
of sophistication that could -compete with European nations. With no history, myths, or
legends on which to build, Americans might accomplish one small act worth recognizing
after decades of hard work. Tyler uses the Jessamy/Jonathanencounter with
Chesterfield's rules to show the foolishness, futility, and superficiality of many British
traditions. To laugh should be a natural reaction to a comic action, not a carefully
controlled, monitored exercise. The laughing lessons have little affect on Jonathan
because he fails to understand their importance, although he is willing to try. Tyler seems
to emphasize the notion that Americans had already tried to please the British, but it
failed. Instead, the new nation should capitalize on the strengths of its own culture and
society, developing an identity of its own. Success and respect from other nations will
come eventually if America concentrates on the worth and goodness in its own people--
the Yankees who fought for liberty.
62
Challenging Tyler's blatant nationalistic stance and his portrayal of the Yankee
comic character as a more desirable man than the man influenced and controlled by
European traditions, the Federalists used the Yankee comic character in the mock pastoral
to criticize Jeffersonian Republicanism and the democratization ofAmerican culture.
Instead of portraying Jonathan in a basically positive light, «the Yankee poems juxtapose
idealized rural life and the ostensibly 'real' peculiarities of rustic character, manners, and
language" (Nickels 141). In these mock pastorals, the Yankee typically expresses the
sentiments oflove for a country maiden in colloquial, rustic terms with earthy comparisons
that illustrate his experience, but prove comically inappropriate to the higher sentiments
usually associated with love. Fessenden, whose Original Poems (1806) contains mock
pastorals previously published in newspapers and various forms, was the most prolific
Federalist writer of poems satirizing the Yankee. Two of the most popular poems written
by Fessenden include "The Country Lovers," published as early as 1795 in broadsides and
reprinted in almanacs, newspapers and Original Poems, and "Peter Periwinkle, to Tabitha
Towzer," printed in the farmer's Weekly Museum on August 20, ]798 (Nickels ]41).
In "The Country Lovers," Jonathan Jolthead is characterized as a thickheaded,
incompetent lover who attempts various forms of courtship, but muddles them up,
confusing his lover by his inept attempts to gain her approval. A few stanzas from "Peter
Periwinkle, to Tabitha Towzer" illustrates the Federalist poets attempts to characterize the
Yankee rustic as incompetent and ignorant.
My Tabitha Towzer is fair,
No guinea pig ever was neater,
63
Like a hadanatak slender and spare,
And sweet as a musk rat, or sweeter!
"... [N]ot only does the rustic fail to see the contradiction in the comparison of 'sweet'
and 'musk,' but in his ignorance and passionate enthusiasm he compounds the travesty
with the comparative' sweeter' as well. In the course ofthe poem these rude, ludicrous
metaphors ultimately dehumanize the loved one, portraying her to the reader, at least, as
grotesque and unworthy of the romantic effusion" (Nickels 143) The rustic's sincerity
and transparency endear the reader to him, but the underlying sarcasm is unmistakable. In
the end, the reader laughs at the sentiments of the rustic, no matter how sincerely
transcribed, because the language fails to represent the dignity of the expressed emotions.
The mock pastoral poems used by Federalists contrast with Tyler's use of the
Yankee, yet each one exaggerates the traits of the average country rustic to iIlustrate his
particular bias. Tyler stresses the innocence, loyalty and trustful nature of the Yankee,
contrasting him with the conniving, superficial nature of the British-influenced American in
order to champion the new nation and instill pride in the colonists for their courageous
fight for liberty. On the other hand, the Federalist poets exploit the same comic
characteristics of the Yankee figure to emphasize the crudity and ignorance of the
common man, showing their disdain and dlsgust for the democratic movement in
American politics.
After the War of 1812, the Yankee comic character became one of the most
popular figures in American humor. With the election of Andrew Jackson as President in
1828, Federalists poured all of their energy into satirizing this symbol of the western
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frontier, a man of humble origin, a frightening specter of the people's power. tLThe
traditionalists viewed Jackson's rise into power as the first symptoms of runaway
anarchism, as an explosion in the sewer which brought forth the unleavened mass of
humanity recruited from urban mobs and country-bred know-nothings" (Rubin 79). The
Yankee, who had been slowly developing over the past two centuries in American
literature emerged as a vehicle for political propaganda for numerous schools of thought
from Tyler's nationalism to the blatant criticism of democracy by the Federalists. The
Yankee cornie character had truly emerged as an all-American figure.
These political conflicts exercised a tremendous influence on the development of
the Yankee comic character in early American literature, with Federalists and
traditionalists showing "Brother Jonathan" to be a naive rustic bumpkin ill at ease in the
city, who spoke in a dialect riddled with expletives, slang, and countrified descriptions.
This portrait of the Yankee would live a long life in the forefront of American humor, but
he did not claim that place alone. Another image was emerging from the mid-eighteenth
century writings ofFranklin, stimulated by the economic growth of the country. By the
1820s, this shrewd, ambitious and greedy character was primed for comic exposure, and it
was provocation of regional conflict between New York and Connecticut that motivated
several prominent American authors to develop this aspect of the Yankee cornie character.
By the early nineteenth century when Irving and Cooper utilized the rich tradition
between New York and Connecticut in their writing, centuries of conflict over borders
between the two states had forged a deep resentment among their inhabitants. In 1602,
only two years after the English charter, the United East India Company secured a trading
65
monopoly from Cape ofGood Hope to Cape Horn. With seven times the capital of the
English, the Dutch had the potential for expansive development of the New World.
Howev,er, political and social dynamics in The Netherlands were dramatically different
from those that ,exi.sted for the English diss,enters, thus causing contrasting visions for thek
charters in the new world. There were no large groups or companies ofDutch that
flocked to the colonies. In fact, most Dutchmen were content with their lives in Europe.
The national government of the Netherlands also saw little need of encouraging Dutchmen
to emigrate to the new colony because they had no vision of the potential benefits this new
land afforded. This lackadaisical attitude began to change. Threatened by aggressive and
mobile Englishmen, in 1623 the Company decided it should send over six families to
establish a permanent reminder to the English that the land along the Hudson belonged to
the Dutch. Shortly thereafter, acknowledging the potential profit in a larger colony, the
government set out to encourage town settlement and continued to do so well into the late
seventeenth century.
Simultaneous with the Dutch setdement ofNew York was the invasion of the New
World by the English. Fox aptly discusses the motivation for English immigration:
Those who settled New England came, for the most part, because they
strongly wanted to. They were not sent or persuaded by authority; they
came on their own motion, and came, as we shall see, in large numbers ...
Men, and especially women, do not usually undertake an ocean voyage
months long in little boats in order to make their homes in a wilderness
unless they want to escape from something. (29)
66
New Englanders, strongly motivated by their own desires, pushed their way into the
colonies. Scarcely a month passed without the Dutch settlements on the frontiers being
alarmed by the sudden appearance of an invading army from Connecticut (Fox 57).
Confusion over Connecticut's boundaries stemmed from a 1662 grant by Charles II that
ceded to Connecticut virtually all ofRhode Island, large sections ofNew York, Long
Island, a part ofMassachusetts and the whole colony of New Haven (Lee 32-33). Fox
vividly describes how this invasion must have looked to the Dutch settler:
This would advance resolutely through the country like a puissant caravan
of the serts, the women and children mounted in carts loaded with pots and
kettles, as though they were meant to boil the Dutchmen alive, and devour
them like so many lobsters. At the tails of these carts would stalk a crew
oflong-limbed, land-sided varlets, with axes on their shoulders and packs
on their backs, resolutely bent on improving the country in spite of its
proprietors. These, settling themselves down would in a short time
completely dislodge the unfortunate Nederlanders;elbowing them out of
those rich bottoms and fertile valleys ... For it is notorious, that wherever
these shrewd men of the east get a footing, the honest Dutchmen do
gradually disappear, retiring slowly like the Indians before the whites; being
totally discomfited by the talking, chattering, swapping, bargaining
dispositions of their new neighbors. (57)
New Yorkers tried for many years to hold back the tide of New Englanders, with the
boundary dispute between New York and Connecticut lasting actively from the 1620s to
67
1790, counterclaims being not entirely settled until the 1870s and issues before the
Supreme Court of the United States as late as 1932. New Yorkers and New Englanders
alike were Americans, but they came from different countries valuing different cultures,
politics, and social structures. However, since New Englanders were "more numerous
and aggressive, since they coveted New York lands, and since they sincerely felt that they
had a sort ofdivine right to anything they could take, the bitterness developed chiefly on
the New York side" (Fox forward).
This bitterness, as Fox labels it, or resentment against Yankees from Connecticut
clearly projects itself in literature written by New Yorkers such as Irving and Cooper, who
both portray Yankees in unfavorable light. Two New York societies were formed by the
old families, the St. Nicholas and Knickerbocker Societies, to feed their pride and to offset
the New England Societies. Washington Irving was member of the Knickerbocker Society
and began his writing career under the name Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., bringing to mind
the Jonathan of country bumpkin fame. In 1809, Irving used Diedrich Knickerbocker as
his guise and published the first American book to receive favorable acclaim in Europe and
England, His/OlY ~fNew York, making comic observations about the Dutch of New York
and other stereotypes including the Yankee from New England. Ten years later, Irving
published another coHection of stories entitled The Sketch Book ofGeoffrey Crayon,
Gent. (1819-1820), out of which grew two American legends--"Rip Van Winkle" and
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In "Rip Van Winkle," the swindling Yankee c1ock-
peddler is mentioned briefly as the cause of Dame Van Winkle's death --"she broke a
blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedlar" (Irving 39). Irving's other
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legendary short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," depicts the Yankee detested by
Yorkers in the character of Ichabod Crane. "In the stories ofthe usually gracious
Washington Irving there is only one character on which he pours a really contemptuous
satire, the Yankee schoolmaster lchabod Crane" (Fox 205) The influence of this regional
conflict on Irving's characterization of the Yankee comic character propels this national
figure in a different direction from that previously seen in American literature, thereby
adding to the complexity of the Yankee comic character.
In Tyler's The Contrast and Federalists' mock pastorals, the developmental thrust
of the Yankee character had been towards a naive, honest, innocent rustic out of his
element in the city or some place of relative civilization such as the general store in
Madam Knight's Journal. Washington Irving employs the resentment of New Yorkers to
depict the Yankee comic character as an ambitious, greedy, Connecticut "intellectual"
whose sole aim is to invade the peaceful Dutch community by shrewd and calculating
means. In physical description and level of superstition, Irving's character echoes the
Yankee of previous description, but the circumstances in Irving's story in which the
Yankee thrives are different from anything created before in American literature. Instead
of developing the rustic Yankee, Irving's treatment infuses the Yankee character with the
traits seen in later depictions of the shrewd and ambitious Yankee peddler.
Beginning with an idyllic description of the picturesque New York countryside,
Irving slowly but deliberately sets the scene as a peaceful nook of extraordinary natural
beauty--a retreat from the incessant changes taking place in other parts of this restless
country. The Dutch inhabitants of this dream land are depicted as good, indulgent farmers
69
who live with aU abundance and tranquillity, never bothering to worry about situations
outside their own farms. Emp~oying words that evoke images of fertility and happiness
such as "blooming," "fresh," "ripe," "plump," "melting," "contented," "snug," "bursting
forth," "treasures," "swelling," "cooing," Irving consistently allows the Dutch and their
cove of Sleepy Hollow to appear in a dreamy, pastoral state almost too good for anyone
to imagine.
Into this tranquil countryside drops a Yankee schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane.
And so begins the characterization of the Connecticut intruder. Described as a traditional
Yankee comic character, in physical appearance Ichabod resembles his namesake, a crane:
He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow sholders, long arms and
legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleaves, feet that might have
served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His
head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and
a long snipe neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding
along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and
fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine
descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cowfield.
(274)
Compared to a crane and a scarecrow when he first appears in Sleepy Hollow, Crane
clearly appears foolish in outward characteristics, similar to the rustic Yankee out of place
in more sophisticated circumstances. Irving uses Crane's awkward, almost painful
70
physical appearance to demonstrate immediately that the schoolmaster has invaded an
otherwise perfect community where he is the only character that does not fit.
Coupled with his ridiculous physical appearance, Ichabod Crane carries with him
into this Dutch community his Puritan superstitions. As Blair and Hill explain "Ichabod, a
son of Puritan New England, believes in a supernatural world that is decidedly theological
... Stuped in his Cotton Mather's 'direful tales,' Ichabod sees such spooky events as the
'devel and his works,' and has himself 'been more than once beset by Satan in divers
shapes.' He really believes in and fears things that go bump in the night ..." (167).
Irving inflates this trait of the traditional Yankee character in order to have it serve a major
function in the story, but superstitious Yankees have been seen before this in American
literature. Jonathan in The Contract suspects the working of the devil, with his cloven
hoofin his pocket, at the play he inadvertently attends. "Why, I vow, now I come to think
on 't, the candles seemed to burn blue, and I am sure where I sat it smelt tarnally of
brimstone" (Tyler 772). Ichabod and Jonathan share the influence of Puritan superstitions,
but Irving lifts Ichabod out of the simple satire of Tyler's drama into a ridicule that more
subdy yet ferociously bites in its disdain of Ichabod' s educated facade. Education clearly
fails to rid Crane of his superstitions. Irving uses gentle descriptions and pastoral,
peaceful phrases with an undertone of disdain and scorn for this interloping Yankee from
Connecticut.
Beyond a ridiculous physical appearance and superstitiousness imbedded in
Puritanism, Ichabod Crane bears little resemblance to the characterization of the rustic
Yankee. Ichabod Crane maintains a respected position in society as the schoolmaster,
7l
never truly integrating into the Dutch society. Ruling his literary domain, he carries the
enormous responsibility of infusing his students with knowledge. "The schoolmaster is
generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being
considered a kind of idle gentleman like personage, ofvastly superior taste and
accomplishments to the rough country swains, and indeed inferior in learning only to the
parson" (Irving 276). Although favored with special meals occasionally, Crane is
characterized as an outsider or invader in this peaceful community. Perhaps more formally
educated than most of the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow, he s611 does not become an
integral segment of the community. It was the custom in Sleepy Hollow to board the
schoolmaster at various farmhouses in the community, so Ichabod Crane moves to a
different location each week. Irving uses this transience, this movement from house to
house week after week, to underline the fact that Ichabod is indeed a Yankee--he has no
roots and no material possessions to tie him into the community. Irving also shows
numerous times that Ichabod has no friends his own age, and no male friend at all; instead,
he wiles away long evenings with Dutch farm wives exchanging ghost stories in front of
the fire. Brom Bones, native of the area and rugged frontiersman, has a whole bevy of
admiring companions and admiring country folk who indulgently smile at his incorrigible
behavior. In sharp contrast, Ichabod exists in a world of his own, always striving to
impress various members of the community of Sleepy Hollow in order to gain something
for himself, whether that is a sumptuous meal or a well-endowed farmer's daughter. The
circumstances ofIchabod Crane's demise and flight from Sleepy Holloware the final
rejection of tills Yankee by the Dutch New Yorkers. Crane's own superior knowledge of
72
witchcraft and superstitions is used against him to frighten him away. Especially
vulnerable to ghosts and goblins, Ichabod reacts differently than an "insider" of the
Hollow, who would have laughed indulgently at the specter he sees. Crane, with his
Puritan perception of specters as tools of the devil, hits the high road out of town, never
to be seen again in Sleepy Hollow.
Irving characterizes Ichabod Crane as ambitious and greedy as wen as being an
invader ofNew York territory. Described as "exceedingly lank," Crane possesses an
insatiable appetite. "... [F]or he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating
powers ofan Anaconda" (275). Images of food abound in this short story, in which
Crane's appetite symbolizes his ambition and greed. His desire to court and marry Katrina
Van Tassel, "so tempting a morsel," rests solely on the assumption that he would inherit
her father's prosperous acres and turn them into cash. He has no desire to farm in the
area, only to use the Van Tassel resources to invest money in tracts ofland out west.
"Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented him the blooming Katrina,
with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a waggon loaded with household
trumpery, with pots and kettles dangled beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing
mare, with a colt at her heals, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows
where!" (280). Irving supplies vivid detail and description to accomplish a dual purpose:
to illustrate the abundance and wealth of the Dutch farmers and to emphasize Ichabod's
numerous designs on the Van Tassel fortune.
Irving's satiric characterization of Ichabod's greedy ambition would appear mildly
indulgent if the Yankee schoolmaster had been more transparent about this desire for
73
wealth and riches. But Irving shows no mercy in his characterization of the schoolmaster
as shrewd and calculating. Interlaced throughout the story are images ofIchabod Crane
pretending to be something he is not in order to work his way into the heart of a local girl
who is heir to a prosperous farm and fortune. The conniving schoolmaster walks home
from school with small children "who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives
for mothers" in the hopes of a chance to devour a homebaked goody or the older sister's
heart. "He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway, with which he
lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating.
He found favor in the eyes of the mothers, by petting the children, particularly the
youngest, and like the lion bold, which whilome so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he
would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot, for whole hours
together" (275-76). Irving's choice of the lion and lamb metaphor reinforces the imagery
ofIchabod as a calculating impostor-- a wolfin sheep's clothing. At church, he would
gather grapes for the country damsels, recite poetry and, in general, attempt to please their
fancy. Irving blatantly calls him "an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple
credulity" (277). Desiring to obtain Katrina's hand in marriage, Ichabod persistently
pursues her affections. But was it love at first sight? For Ichabod it was love of her
father's ample wealth and the visions he has of their potential to buy tracts of land out
west, not love for the Dutch damsel, Katrina. "From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes
upon these regions ofdelight, the peace ofhis mind was at an end, and his only study was
how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter ofYan Tassel" (280).
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Irving's ironic twist in incorporating the game Katrina plays with lcbabod lends
comedy to what could easily have become a dark characterization ofa shrewd and
calculating Yankee. Icbabod blindly believes that Katrina is slowly caving in to his
romantic overtures, whil'e she only endur'es his amorous advances in order to coyly play
with Brom's affections. Ignorant of this game until the last moment, Ichabod continues to
plan and devise more opportunities to win Katrina over. "lchabod, therefore, made his
advanoes in a quiet and gently insinuating manner" (282). Using his instruction in
psalmody as cover, he visits Katrina several times. On Ichabod's final visit to the
farmhouse, Irving describes his careful attention to his toilet and appearance but implies
that no amount of brushing and combing will make a difference in the over-all impression
he makes. Crane's appearance on his horse, Gunsmoke, is a comic picture, with Quixotic
overtones, of a ridiculously thin man with knees and elbows protruding into the air,
alternately described as a grasshopper and some sort ofdistorted bird. Ichabod's
confidence is running high as he journeys to the Van Tassels' farm, confident in the
success that his shrewd, calculating behavior has won Katrina's heart and, more
importantly, her fortune. By describing Crane's painstaking preparations in equally
excruciating detail, Irving emphasizes the Yankee's dedication to his purpose of invading
this idyllic community and the futility of his efforts while setting the stage for Ichabod's
demise.
In his description ofthe final scene of"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving
ushers out the Connecticut invader of this pastoral New York Dutch society, with his
ambitious greed and sly plans, by preying upon his own ridiculous superstitions. Nursing
75
his wounded pride after Katrina rejects his romantic overtures and dreading awkward
explanations of his encounter with the "Headless Horseman," Ichabod heads west and
succeeds without a wealthy wife, but far removed from the fertile valleys of the Hudson.
The qualities of greed and ambition that Irving emphasizes in the character of
Ichabod Crane appear in other American stories and legends embodied by the Yankee
peddler, himself an invader of a community, ambitious to make a profit, and willing to do
just about anything to get it. James K. Paulding also characterizes the Yankee
schoolmaster in "Yankee Pedagogues and Dutch Damsels" as shrewd and calculating.
Another New York writer, James Fenimore Cooper, uses the Yankee for comic reliefin
his fiction, contrasting the idyllic nature of the New York forests with invaders from the
east such as David Gamut in The Last ofthe Mohicans. whose habit of singing psalms acts
as both a sharp comment on the Yankee's naivete and on his inappropriate, and thus
comic, response to tens,e and difficult situations amid the chaos of war and death in the
forests of New York. II Many additional characterizations of the shrewd, ambitious
Yankee interloper would appear, such as Halliburton's Sam Slick and Twain's Hank
Morgan, but Washington Irving's vivid portrayal ofIchabod Crane ushered in the final
phase of the characterization of the comic Yankee character. John Seelye argues for
Irving's contribution in his article "Root and Branch: Washington Irving and American
Humor:"
First of all, by identifying the conflict of"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"
not with the division between City and Country but with the tension
between the inhabitants of the Hudson vaUey (with their Dutch
76
antecedents) and the invaders from the Connecticut Valley (descendants of
the Puritans). Irving not only looks far back into American history to the
struggles between the Dutch ofNew Netherlands and the Pilgrims of New
Plymouth, but to the more recent border wars between New England and
New York, and on into the future, as it were, anticipating the much more
typical struggle soon to characterize the emerging nativist tradition in
American humor, the conflict between the swindling Yankee peddler and
much of America lying to the south and west. (421)
Incorporating the physical awkwardness and superstition of the Yankee rustic with the
voracious greed, ambition and shrewdness of the Yankee peddler, Irving creates a Yankee
character destined to live on in American legend, the voice of Ichabod Crane echoing in
the volumes of American literary humor.
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CHAPTER IV
DECLINE AND DEMISE OF THE YANKEE COMIC CHARACTER
By 1830, American humor had exploded into comic characters and was on its way
to become a national phenomenon. Blair and Hill catalogue the wide range of characters
and authors who would appear over the next several decades: Mike Fink (1821), Davy
Crockett (1830), Jack Downing (1830), Hosea Biglow, Birdofredum Sawin, Major Joseph
Jones, Mrs. Partington, Widow Bedott, and Sut Lovingood (1840s). Leading authors
who produced humor frequently and consistently during these years included Augustus
Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper, Sol Smitl1, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, William
Tappan Thompson, George Washington Harris, John S. Robb, Seba Smith, James Russell
Lowell, Charles A. Davis, Thomas Chandler Haliburton and Benjamin Shillaber. These
authors and more published humorous sketches in newspapers, then collected them in
best-selling books. Comic periodicals cropped up for short periods, and the publishing
company of Dick & Fitzgerald focused on the field of humor almost exclusively.
Famous stage Yankees such as Hill, Matthews, Hackett and Neal reenacted the
role of Jonathan to full houses in both America and Br6tain. John Neal in ]835 calculated
that British playgoers had paid half a million dollars to hear the story of Jonathan W.
Doubikin, who tells an amusing tale about a hunting trip with Uncle Ben. After shooting a
squirrel in a tree, the squirrel does not fall down and Uncle Ben promises Jonathan a
quarter ifhe will climb up to get. The rest of the story focuses on Jonathan's repeated
attempts to get that quarter from Uncle Ben, who comes up with excuses not to pay time
and time again. Theater audiences seemed to find the repetition of the gag ofJonathan's
requests and Uncle Ben's excuses hysterical. Only one of many Yankee stage actors, Josh
Silsbee (1813-1855) reenacted numerous roles first played by other actors, but his death
signa~s the close of the era ofYankee theater.
Due to several changes in American society by the end ofthe Civil War, the era of
the Yankee comic character had ended. Puritanism ministers had lost much oftheir
control over social and political institutions. An 1860 census in United States shows that
there were as many as 360,000 New England Yankees in the Old South. Yankees were
mobile by nature, always moving toward that vast tract ofland on which they could make
their fortune. Even by 1828, John Neal, editor of the Yankee periodical, wrote that "the
word Yankee is no longer a term of reproach. It is getting to be a title of distinction,
[and] our hope is to make it yet more respectable" (Green 1). As more Americans gained
exposure to real-life Yankees, their mmage began to change, so that after the Civil War, the
figure of the "rustic Yankee purveying good sense form his stronghold in the provinces
became almost anachronistic. The center of political gravity had shifted to the cities and
the day of the independent yeoman farmer was over" (Rubin 83).
In American literature, the Yankee comic character made his first appearances in
briefdescriptions by condescending aristocratic Puritan writers who described the country
yokels they saw in their travels. Sarah Kemble Knight developed this country yokel into a
character with a specific physical presence naming him Bumpkin Simpers, interlacing her
journal with glimpses of other rustic characters who embody Yankee characteristics that
will appear in later writings. Knight's final contribution allows her reader to laugh with
79
her at her own reactions and fears, humanizing the otherwise condescending tone of her
characterizations.
Benjamin Franklin utilized the anti-intellectual trend in society to develop the
Yankee character as a common man who spouts maxims of homespun wisdom he bas
surmised from practical experience and common sense. Influenced by the economic
opportunity, Franklin, in his Autobiography, also introduced the Yankee characteristics of
ambition and shrewdness that would eventually figure in the depiction of the Yankee
peddler.
By the late-1700s, political divisions existed in the new nation of the United States.
Little did he know it at the time, but Royall Tyler's characterization of the rustic Yankee
figure he called Jonathan would serve as both a positive and negative image of the
common man. The rustic Jonathan lived past the popularity of Tyler's play to reappear in
numerous stage versions of the country bumpkin, making him one of the flfst national
comic character types that can truly be called uniquely American.
Having found popularity on the stage as country yokel, Jonathan underwent
another change through the skilled pen of Washington Irving. Ichabod Crane is satirized
as a shrewd,cakulating, ambitious and greedy schoolmaster who invades a Dutch
community only to be driven out by the local backwoods hero. Irving clearly disdains this
Connecticut Yankee intruder as most New Yorkers did in the early 1800s.
Venturing into the city as a country bumpkin with his own crude dialect, or into
the country as a sly and tricky peddler, the Yankee cornie character developed over almost
three centuries of American history. This Yankee figure, in all his various forms, stands as
80
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a symbol ofnumerous social influences present in American society and proves as never
before that in spite of and possibly as a result of the conflicts in philosophy, politics and
religion, Americans learned to laugh, not only at other cultures and people, but at
themselves and their own unique qualities and characteristics.
81
Notes
1. Dixon Ryan Fox details the ongoing border disputes between New York and
Connecticut. Connecticut received a charter from England delineating its state
border. Problems arose when the designated land happened to be settled and
claimed by the Dutch. With no one to act as the final authority, each side took it
upon themselves to maintain its rightful border. This resulted in bloodshed and
bitterness for both states. Existing for more than two centuries, the border dispute
influenced the perception of each state's view of the other and the literature of the
early nineteenth century.
2. For a complete overview of the influence of Connecticut people on American history,
see W. Storrs Lee.
3. See Fletcher M. Green for theories on the origins of the Yankee character, such as the
view that "John Cheese" was a pejorative term used by the Dutch to describe the
people ofConnecticut, or the view that the Dutch caned New Engtanders
"Jankin," which eventually became "Yankee co.
4. Consult Arner's essay, "Sarah Kemble Knight," for a biographical and critical
overview; see also Stanford for general biographical details.
5. See Magotie for a thorough study ofthe publication of the Jaurnal.
6. See Stephens, pp. 247-55, who argues that "[a] reading ofthe journal in this
light shows that she saw numerous parallels between her wanderings and
those of Homer's Odysseus and that she chose to treat those similarities in a
mock epic manner" (248). Derounian-Stodola (122-31) structures an excellent
argument for placing the Journal in the picaresque tradition; see also Thorpe, pp.
114-21; and Seelye, pp. 303-04.
7. See Spengemann, p. 42; and Vowell, pp. 44-52.
82
8. See Blair's assertion, p. 9, that Knight's "vividly pictured Jonathon and Joan,
the backgrounds of their lives, their peculiarities of gesture, ofmanner, and
particularly of speech, fore-shadowed what was to be the stuffof
America's favorite comedy a century after they were created... Such
passages look forward to the myriad picturings in detail of the Jonathans
and the Lubbers of their country which were to be a leading source of
humour in the coming century" (9). See Bush's comment (80) that Knight's
humor predicts what would grow and flower into American humor.
9. Pagel and Somers (1-34) quote consistently from Blair in their recent study
of literary American humor.
10. See Dresner (137-61) for more extensive details about the status of women's
humor. Martha Bensley Bruere and Mary Ritter Beard wrote a critical book on
the state of women's humor in 1934.
11. Consult Fox (200-05) for a discussion of Cooper's disdain for Connecticut
Yankees and how this attitude affects his writing.
83
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1
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VITA
Alecia A. Cramer
Candidate for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Thesis: THE YANKEE COMlC CHARACTER: ITS ORIGINS
AND DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
THROUGH 1830
Major Fidd: English
Biographical:
Personal Data: Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 6, 1969, the daughter of
1. Carthal and Violet Cobb. Married to Mark Cramer on November 16, 1991.
Education: Graduated from Tulsa Christian Schools, Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May
1987; attended Tulsa Junior College and McPherson College; received
Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Oklahoma State
University, Stillwater, Oklahoma in May 1991. Completed the requirements
for the Master of Arts degree with a major in English and an emphasis in
Literature at Oklahoma State University in July 1995.
Experience: Employed as a teaching assistant by Oklahoma State University,
Department ofEnglish, from August 1991 through May 1993.