Margaret Fuller and Rip Van Winkle

Margaret Fuller talks about the four kinds of equality: the household partnership, the closer forms of intellectual companionship of mutual idolatry, and the religious, "which may be expressed as pilgrimage towards a common shrine" (743).

Rip Van Winkle's marriage was a sort of household patnership. He just did a horible job at holding up his end of the bargain, as "his patimonial estate had dwindled away under his management" (457). He seemingly provided his wife with the property, and she nagged him about his lack of ability to provide.

It seems that he had nothing to give his wife, maybe due to her lack of support, and also because he was attched to other people and things in the same way Fuller describes marriage commitments.

Rip provided fo anyone in the town other than his wife. ". . .those men ae most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home"(457). So, he had an partnership with the women and children in town. He fixed things for the women and played with the kids.

He had an intellectual companionship with some the men in town. "For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages in the village" (458).

His "higher grade of union", or religious union, was with the woods. The day he fell asleep, he "unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains" (459.) He could see everything below.He found peace from his hardships only in the woods- it came at the cost of his dwindling property and poor relationship.

Fuller said, ". . .for how sad would it be on such a journey to have a companion to whom you could not communicate thoughts and aspirations, as they sprang to life, who would have no feeling for the more and more glorious prospects that open as we advance, who would never see the flowers that may be gathered by the most industrious taveller. it must include all of these" (743). I think in general, Fuller might say that none of his "marriages" or relationships were really healthy, because they all were one sided.