The Legend
Katrina Van Tassel
Katrina Van Tassel is the only child of a prosperous Dutch farmer, the girl Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones court in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Washington Irving gives her no line to speak and never tells what she said to Ichabod that night.
Who is Katrina Van Tassel?
Katrina Van Tassel is the only child of Baltus Van Tassel, a prosperous Dutch farmer in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. She is eighteen, a little of a coquette, and will inherit the farm. Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones both court her. She marries Brom after Ichabod vanishes; what she told Ichabod that night, Irving never says.
Who she is
Katrina Van Tassel sings in Ichabod Crane’s weekly psalm class. That is where Washington Irving introduces her, as “the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer.” She is eighteen, and famous for her looks and for what she will inherit. She dresses to be looked at: gold ornaments her great-great-grandmother brought over from Saardam, and a petticoat short enough to show her ankle. Irving calls her “a little of a coquette.” He gives her no line of her own to speak. Everything the story tells of her arrives through the men who want her.
Her father and the farm
Her father is Baltus Van Tassel, a contented farmer who seldom looks past his own fences. His farm sits on the banks of the Hudson in a green, sheltered nook, with a great elm over the spring and a barn big enough for a church. Balt loves his daughter better than his pipe and lets her have her way in everything. Her mother minds the poultry, holding that geese need watching and girls can look after themselves. The farm matters because Ichabod wants it as much as he wants her. One look at the place and his mind runs to selling it and setting out for Kentucky with Katrina on a wagon.
Two suitors
Brom Bones, the best rider in the hollow, has courted her for some time, and it is whispered that she does not altogether discourage him. When his horse is tied at the Van Tassel fence, the other young men go home. Ichabod makes his approach quietly, under cover of singing lessons, by the spring under the elm and on evening walks. Once he begins, Brom’s horse is no longer seen at the fence. At the autumn party at her father’s house she dances with Ichabod and smiles at him while Brom sits brooding in a corner. Brom answers with pranks on the schoolmaster. Irving gives none of it a verdict. He says only that he does not know how women’s hearts are won.
What the story says of her choice
After the party Ichabod stays behind to speak with her alone. Irving refuses to report it: “What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know.” Ichabod comes out looking desolate, and the narrator wonders whether her encouragement was ever real or a trick to secure Brom. That night Ichabod meets the Horseman and vanishes. Years later word comes that he is alive and left partly from shame at being suddenly dismissed by the heiress. Shortly after he vanished, Brom led Katrina to the altar.
So the story says she chose Brom. Whether she dismissed Ichabod before the ride, whether she knew of any prank, whether she wanted either man: Irving leaves all of it unsaid.
In Irving’s words
Irving, introducing Katrina.
Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1820. The voice reading Irving in the films was designed for Sleepy Hollow with ElevenLabs. It is not a recording of any person. The whole story is free to read.
Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.
On Roblox
In the game
Katrina does not appear in the game. The Sleepy Hollow Experience keeps to the part of the story that happens after her door closes: the road home, the dark, the bridge. By day you cover the bridge with planks from the sawpit. At nightfall the bell rings and the Headless Horseman rides, whether you play alone or with friends. Old Gunpowder, the horse Ichabod rode home from her father’s party, waits at the inn. The game is coming to Roblox.
Keep reading
The questions beside this one.
Asked
What people ask about Katrina Van Tassel
Brom. Irving writes that shortly after Ichabod’s disappearance Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar. The story never shows her choosing; it reports the wedding after the fact.
Eighteen. Irving gives her age in the sentence that introduces her, and adds that she is the only child of a farmer whose land everyone in the hollow knows she will inherit.
No. Irving gives her no dialogue. She sings in Ichabod’s class, dances with him at the party, and sees him alone afterward, but every word of that last talk is withheld by the narrator.
For her and for the farm. Irving shows Ichabod looking over the Van Tassel fields and barns and picturing them sold, the money put into wild land in Kentucky or Tennessee, and Katrina and a family of children on a wagon beside him.
The story does not say, and does not even say there was a prank. The narrator asks whether her encouragement of Ichabod was a sham to win Brom, then answers that only Heaven knows.
On Roblox
The bell rings at nightfall.
Free to play. Nothing to buy right now. Alone or with friends.
Maturity: Mild
Violence (Repeated/Mild). Shown as Roblox shows it.
Ages 16+ for now
Roblox opens a new experience to age-checked players first. The Parents page has the detail.
5 badges
Every night you survive is kept on your name.