Title: Dame Van Winkle Character Analysis in Rip Van Winkle | LitCharts
Headings: Dame Van Winkle
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Dame Van Winkle Character Analysis
Dame Van Winkle Quotes in Rip Van Winkle
Dame Van Winkle Character Timeline in Rip Van Winkle

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Rip Van Winkle
Dame Van Winkle Character Analysis
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Rip Van Winkle, Jr.
Rip Van Winkle’s wife is a sharp-tongued and nagging woman whose only role in the story is to antagonize and hound her lazy husband, who avoids all domestic duties. Though Dame Van Winkle’s unceasing harassment of her husband is mentioned frequently, she has no dialogue in the story and remains a kind of comical background force. She dies while Rip is asleep on the mountain, from “breaking a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England Peddler.” Dame Van Winkle Quotes in Rip Van Winkle
The Rip Van Winkle quotes below are all either spoken by Dame Van Winkle or refer to Dame Van Winkle. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Penguin Classics edition of Rip Van Winkle published in 1999. “Rip Van Winkle” Quotes
His wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit.