I Can Decide For Myself

I don’t know what I would do without YouTube. It has everything that I need, when I want to know how to do something. YouTube taught me how to watercolor, how to refurbish furniture, and how to fix my computer. When I don’t know how to do something, instead of wondering about it, I head to YouTube. When it comes to understanding literature written in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, it helps to hear someone read it the way it is supposed to be read, so I can easily follow along in the text. Such is the case with a recent assignment to read and write about Rip Van Winkle, written by Irving Washington. Although I did read the story on my own first, I felt I would learn more if I read while someone else recited the story. So, I headed to good old YouTube and found just what I was looking for. I settled on a comfy chair on my back patio, and  sunk into the story.

An older gentleman with an English accent read the story as I followed along. (The Well Told Tale, Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving: full Audiobook 2020). His voice was so mesmerizing that I didn’t think anything could take me out of the Catskills where Rip roamed, other than a family member finding me and needing something. One listener in the comment section said, “Ahhh, the coziest narrator ever. As welcome as a faithful pair of billy boots and a well-thumbed pipe. Well done, sir”.(The Well Told Tale, Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving: full Audiobook 2020). Voice with script danced to it’s own rhythm, like a duet between narrator and the page, until suddenly it wasn’t my family that took me out of the story it was the narrator himself, by leaving out words, phrases, sentences, and in some cases, whole paragraphs. He just skipped right over them, and when I found my place again, he skipped words again.

I wondered if anyone else felt distracted by the left-out words, so  I checked further down in the comment section and found that other people felt yanked out of the story by it too. But  nobody had an answer as to why. The phrases he left out mostly had to do with Irving’s description of Dame Van Winkle. He skipped over the description of Rip Van Winkle being “hen-pecked,” due to “the discipline of shrews at home,” which was also left out. Also omitted were whole  sentences when referring to Dame Van Winkle. “Morning, noon and night, her tongue was incessantly going and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence” (Irving, Rip Van Winkle).

When the narrator chose to remove portions of the story, he also chose to diminish the intelligence of the reader. Although it was clear that these phrases would be terribly offensive if they were spoken in 2025, it’s not like present day authors eliminate scenes demeaning women. I didn’t understand what the purpose was in leaving out big and important parts of the story, just to create comfortability. Without the whole story, the reader cannot make decisions about its meaning.

When I read the parts that were left out of the audiobook, I concluded that Rip was the problem, and that Dame Van Winkle was extreme because of her husband’s lack of ambition when it came to his home and his marital relationship. Rip behaved like a lazy child, and the way Dame Van Winkle was described ignited me to argue on her defense. Words like Naggy or disturbed, to describe her, would not have evoked my passion to defend her in the same way.  I understood why Dame Van Winkle was angry and frustrated with her husband. He helped everyone else, except her. Her behavior in the story and the way Irving described her is needed for the reader to come to their own conclusion. I don’t read stories to be coddled, I read stories as an invitation to take deep dives and to be challenged, and the only people that have the right to change stories are the authors themselves.

Irving Washington passed from this earth 166 years ago. I should think that the language of his time would be different. I don’t want that to disappear. I want it to remain in the stories as a reminder of how far we have come, or how far we haven’t.

Irving, W. (n.d.). Rip Van Winkle. ibiblio.org. https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Irving/Winkle/Irving_Winkle.pdf

The Well Told Tale. (2020, April 8). Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving: full Audiobook. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aodKdUnmEqs