The portrayal of women in mythology, folklore, and literature as discordant palimpsests of universal realities canonizes patriarchal dicta, which the cherubim of politics, literature, and hermeneutics scrape clean and reinscribe as often as is necessary. In this book, Dr. Boşnak analyzes from a feminist perspective the origins of overt and covert misogyny in various works of nineteenth-century American literature: Washington Irving's “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Wife”, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The