Project 1: Chapter 11 - Northanger Abbey Recording
Project 1 - Chapter 11 of Northanger Abbey
Hopefully this works!
Oh goodness.. Where to start.. When we were first introduced to this assignment and told what it would entail and the points to focus on, how was reading aloud different than reading to yourself, why did you make the interpretive choices you did, and how did your choices and perspective differ from Elizabeth Klett’s version, I was immediately excited because I remember loving to read aloud during class in elementary school and then it hit me: I haven’t read aloud since then. To be honest, the only other time I have ever talked non-stop in a similar manner for 30 minutes was when I was practicing and presenting my senior presentation speech in high school, and I had no idea how my ability to read aloud, or speak for that length of time, had changed. So for this assignment I created a supportive environment to my reading of Chapter 11 of Northanger Abbey.
The first thing I did was pull up Elizabeth Klett’s version again and listen to her read Chapter 11 with all her different voices and vocal nuances. I also paid special attention to the fact that she enunciated extremely well and recorded the whole thing in a very professional manner. Her voices for Catherine, Mrs. Allen, Isabella, John Thorpe, and James Morland, were pretty creative, atleast compared to my attempts at distinguishing between the women’s voices and the men’s voices and between each woman and man. While she used slight British accents for her characters interpretations, and I aspired to do the same during the first few recordings, I eventually gave up and just resorted to lowering and raising the pitch of my voices and the emotion of my voices for the different genders. Between Catherine and Isabella and Mrs. Allen I had a very difficult time deciding how to portray them. Catherine seemed to be the slightly quiet type with loud outbursts, the type that would try to be comforting and convey understanding but would just come off as naive and a bit pitiful. For Isabella I wanted to give her a slightly more distinguished sound because of her obsession with wealth and high society which would influence the way she talked. Because Mrs. Allen is an older woman I had the though to give her sort of that warbly, glamorous caricature of a voice but I just ended up sounding a little drunk or like I had completely lost control of my voice. After hearing myself maim what little dialogue Mrs. Allen had, I decided to stick to the basics and give her a slightly lower voice, to distinguish her age from Catherine’s more childlike voice, and slightly draw out her words. For the men, John Thorpe seemed desperate, pushy, and troublesome (and a little bit of a cry baby) and James Morland seemed mild-mannered but able to assert his opinion when he really needed too. Therefore, I decided to use an exaggeratedly “high-class” but dramatic voice for Thorpe and a pretty calm voice for Morland. In the end, my voices didn’t sound as well out loud as I thought they would in my head, but I’m happy with the overall outcome. I had a similar problem to Elizabeth Stringer with hearing my voice played back to me, it did seriously sound like a child reading Northanger Abbey, especially with all the mistakes I made in pronouncing words and after hearing Elizabeth Klett and her majorly professional, adult sounding version. However, it gave me and my friends great amusement to make my sound effects of frustration into a mashup.
For my next step, I focused on my enunciation and the feeling I put into the dialogue after reading and listening to the chapter. In my opinion the overall theme was that of melancholy and self-pity, so it was important to put that emotion into my narration and the dialogue of the characters. Chapter 11 starts out as Catherine watches the sky, hoping the rain turns to sunshine so she can have a walk with Mrs. Tilney and Henry. It eventually does, but Isabella, James Morland, and John Thorpe show up and invite Catherine to go to Blaize Castle with them, which Catherine reluctantly accepts after hearing that Thorpe saw Mrs. Tilney and Henry were doing something else. As the group leaves Bath, Catherine discovers Thorpe lied and Mrs. Tilney and Henry were actually heading to see her. This causes Catherine much distress, as is evident by the passage “Blaize Castle remained her only comfort; towards that, she still looked at intervals with pleasure; though rather than be disappointed of the promised walk, and especially rather than be thought ill of by the Tilneys, she would willingly have given up all the happiness which its walls could supply—the happiness of a progress through a long suite of lofty rooms, exhibiting the remains of magnificent furniture, though now for many years deserted—the happiness of being stopped in their way along narrow, winding vaults, by a low, grated door; or even of having their lamp, their only lamp, extinguished by a sudden gust of wind, and of being left in total darkness.” (Ch. 11, Northanger Abbey) However, after traveling for quite some time and still having eight miles to go until they reach the castle, Morland suggests they all turn back, Thorpe more angrily complying and making fun of the fact that Morland can’t afford his own horse. As the group heads back to Thorpe’s for the evening, Isabella remains in good spirits as she flirts away with Morland and offers little consolation to Catherine, further worsening Catherine’s already self-pitiful mood. Jane Austen ends the chapter with the comment that Catherine is in fact going to be so distraught over this evening’s events that she may not sleep well for the next three months from all her crying. (Did this remind anyone else of the Twilight series when Edward leaves Bella and she spends half the book either curled up in the fetal position, in a majorly depressed state of silence, or a seriously suicidal state? Maybe it’s just me, but I think both Bella and Catherine overreact to their “boy problems”. That was just the ongoing impression I got from the way Catherine reacted to all the “disappointing” events that happened to her).
So, after analyzing the chapter by reading it too myself, hearing Klett’s version out loud, and then reading it out loud myself many, many times, I finally recorded myself. The process of actually recording myself and editing the audio afterwards was quite frustrating at times, and a little hard on my voice because I would record myself until I read a passage aloud to my satisfaction. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who had to take water breaks for a sore throat. I then had to piece the clips back together and add music, which I’ll talk about later. To psych myself up for what I knew would be an arduous process, and surprisingly exhausting, I ate a big dinner, had some chocolate, wrapped myself up in a cozy blanket, and used the built-in mike in my Mac to record myself. This turned out to be a smart idea, although I didn’t realize it until later, because I didn’t have to move an external mike around and worry about volume changes or random, interruptive noises from bumping the mike. When I finally finished editing my recording, I wanted to incorporate music, too. It took me a good hour to think about what kind of feel I wanted the music to bring and how it was going to compliment the emotion of my reading without overpowering it. I also wanted a song reminiscent of the time period of Northanger Abbey, so I googled “Northanger Abbey soundtrack”. Original, I know, but what better place to start than a successfully filmed version of the book? This eventually led me to the iTunes album “The Music of Jane Austen”, and if anyone hasn’t heard of this yet, you should check it out. It’s a collection of songs from all of the movies successfully adapted from Jane Austen’s novels. My personal favorite was “Liz On Top of the World (From Pride and Prejudice 2005 Film)”, but it wasn’t long enough to use in my recording so I turned to “My Father’s Favourite (From Sense and Sensibility 1995 Film)”, copied it three times, and it fit perfectly with the feeling I was hoping to give off about the dashed hopes of Catherine seeing Henry and exploring Blaize Castle. I am actually extremely happy with using music for my project. I think it’s much easier to become involved in the story when music is included because of the sense of comfort it gives, no matter the tone of the song. We all listen to music, we hear music in every movie we watch, when we drive in the car, when we’re out with friends, we probably all wish we could have our own little soundtrack to our lives sometimes. Who says reading aloud doesn’t have to be accompanied by music? I think it’s an important part of the telling of any story. I’m just happy I found a song that I think matches Catherine’s reactions, a little bit of ditziness and woe.
As for how my take on Chapter 11 compared to Elizabeth Klett’s, my strategy of recording myself and all the steps I took to get myself pumped up for this project actually made me wonder if Elizabeth Klett does anything similar when she records herself. Of course, she reads aloud much more professionally, so I’m assuming she does. She probably also practiced much more extensively than I did and really deliberated about how to portray the characters and the overall tone of each chapter she read. But did she ever consider what sort of different experience a listener would have if she added music to her own recordings? I also wonder how Elizabeth Klett felt the first time she read aloud for a similar reason, whether it was for Librivox, one of her dramatic reading performances, or for her daughter. Personally, I felt silly at first. I was alone in my own room and I was reading a Jane Austen novel out loud, with silly attempts at obviously feminine voices and even sillier attempts at masculine ones. I think the part that made me feel the weirdest, though, was that I wasn’t reading aloud to someone else, I was reading aloud to thin air. I used to work at a daycare so I read aloud to the kids all the time, granted they were simple enough books that all the other caretakers and I had memorized them soon enough, but the point is we had an audience. And even if I was reading them Jane Austen novels, at least the kids would be attentive and fascinated by the language they were hearing and all the different voices. I would be able to experience other reactions to my reading than just my own, and as we all know we’re our own worst critic, so reading aloud this beautifully written novel without anyone else to hear it was odd for me. I think the whole point of reading aloud, when we do do it, is to share what we’re reading and the experiences we’re having with someone else at the same time. I was able to share my first attempts at reading aloud with some friends and we had a good laugh at them, but I wasn’t seriously reading to them. They were hearing a recording of me. I also hadn’t added the music yet, so they lacked that part of the experience.
All in all, I really liked this project. It reinforced my love for reading, to myself or aloud, and reminded me of how much I used to appreciate reading out loud and being read to. I might just take this project to a whole nother level and record myself reading aloud again. I think it’s a great way to practice speaking more clearly and after a while I didn’t feel so silly, I was having fun getting into the characters and the story. And after sharing it with my friends and adding a little humor to this process, I have a finished recording of Chapter 11 of Northanger Abbey that I can say I’m proud of.