Wednesday, September 10, 2025
BY TRACY HOFFMAN
Over the weekend and into this week, I’ve continued thinking about Ichabod Crane as a teacher and ghost.
These ruminations have blended with concerns about A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens since the beautiful building, which comprises my 85-degree office, will soon be turned into a haunted-house-of-sorts for Scrooge’s ghosts. I will most certainly get around to writing about the impending mayhem in future blogs. Suffice it to say for today, my Ichabod thoughts have been tainted by a foreboding sense of Charles Dickens.
My mental image of Ichabod Crane coexists with pictures of the Dickens’ character Uriah Heep from David Copperfield. Physically, they look the same in my mind’s eye, even though I realize Ichabod is a much livelier character than Uriah. But let me stop myself from going further into the Dickens rabbit hole. (If you want to jump into Elizabeth Bradley’s article, “Dickens and Irving: A Tale of Two Christmas Tales,” you’ll be ready for my future conversations as we get closer to December.)
The big research questions I pose today are:
- Is Ichabod Crane the first Connecticut Yankee Pedagogue Ghost in American Literature?
- Is Ichabod Crane the first Connecticut Yankee Ghost in American Literature?
- Is Ichabod Crane the first Connecticut Yankee Teacher in American Literature?
I think we know the answers to all these questions. American Literature isn’t necessary. Where else would we see a Connecticut Yankee? Yes, of course, he would be the first in all three categories. The first two questions/descriptions are so bizarre and specific, I can’t imagine another character fulfilling them. But my last question has me thinking.
Yes, I believe Ichabod Crane is our first Connecticut Yankee who teaches. But why, in the development of the Connecticut Yankee, did Irving choose to make him a teacher?
Ichabod Crane balances between the Jonathan character of Royal Tyler’s The Contrast (1787) and Hank Morgan of Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). David Gamut of James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans (1826), appearing a short time after Irving’s character, keeps the role as a music teacher, but Hank Morgan has lost the teaching quality by 1889.
According to Gary Denis, in Sleepy Hollow: Birth of the Legend (2015), Irving transfers some of the stereotypical qualities of the Yankee onto Brom Bones and refines Ichabod’s role to make him an “educated city-slicker” instead of “the country dweller” (158). Denis points to Irving’s improvement: “Irving is thereby credited as having been the first to introduce a conflict between East and West, the refined and cultured Connecticut Yankee vs. the rough-hewn frontiersman” (158).
But I’m still left with—Why? Why did Irving choose a teacher for Ichabod’s profession? We know that the minister and Ichabod Crane are the two most educated fellows in Sleepy Hollow, so I understand the options were limited.
We can study Jesse Merwin, Irving’s teacher friend who inspired the character. And we can consider Ichabod B. Crane, the military officer and inspiration for Ichabod’s name. With more research to investigate, I’ll close the blog out for now. My quest to understand Ichabod Crane, the pedagogue, continues.
Today, my students are reading “The Devil and Tom Walker,” and I can see Dickens borrowing heavily from Irving’s story to benefit his own Christmas Carol, so my blog next Wednesday could easily collapse into my own Dickens’ nightmares.
Washington Irving Society 