Derek Greene

Constructing Social Networks of Irish and British Fiction, 1800-1922

School of Computer Science University College Dublin

Nation, Genre and Gender Project

• Research project funded by Irish Research Council in 2013. • Inter-disciplinary collaboration between UCD Humanities

Institute and SFI Insight Centre for Data Analytics. • Involves the creation an annotated electronic corpus of Irish

and English novels from the 19th and early 20th century. • Corpus includes key representative and influential texts, by

female and male authors, from both Ireland and England. • We use methods from social network analysis to explore and

visualise the texts from new perspectives. • Aim to apply intersectional (gender, class, ethnicity) analysis

to these networks, and engage in intensive critical analysis.

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Social Network Analysis

J. Moreno. "Who shall survive?: A new approach to the problem of human interrelations". Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1934

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Concepts in Network Analysis

• Network: a way of representing relations among a group of people.

• Consists of individuals, called nodes, where certain pairs of individuals are connected to one another by relations called edges.

• Two nodes are deemed to be neighbours if they are connected by an edge.

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• Weighted network: a numeric value is associated with each edge. Edge weights usually represent strength of association or counts.

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Pen HarringtonPen Harrington

General 1General 1

Mrs. BennetMrs. Bennet

Two Men ServantsTwo Men Servants

Jane BennetJane BennetThe CoachmanThe Coachman

Lady LucasLady Lucas

HaggerstonHaggerston

Mary King's UncleMary King's Uncle

Maria LucasMaria Lucas

Lady Anne DarcyLady Anne Darcy

The Little GardinersThe Little Gardiners

One Of The Officers' WivesOne Of The Officers' Wives

Mrs. ReynoldsMrs. Reynolds

Mr. Jones's Shop BoyMr. Jones's Shop Boy

Mary BennetMary Bennet

Mrs. Long's NiecesMrs. Long's Nieces

The Younger Lucas GirlsThe Younger Lucas Girls

Netherfield ServantNetherfield Servant

Elder Mr. BingleyElder Mr. Bingley

Miss WatsonMiss Watson

ChamberlayneChamberlayne

A Gentleman At My Brother Gardiner's In TownA Gentleman At My Brother Gardiner's In Town

Miss DarcyMiss Darcy

Your Great Uncle The JudgeYour Great Uncle The Judge

The Miss WebbsThe Miss Webbs

Mr. BingleyMr. Bingley

All The ServantsAll The Servants

Servants With Cold MeatServants With Cold Meat

Elizabeth BennetElizabeth Bennet

Mrs. JenkinsonMrs. Jenkinson

John The Collins ServantJohn The Collins Servant

Wickham's FatherWickham's Father

Mr. HurstMr. Hurst

RichardRichard

Colonel MillarColonel Millar

Miss De BourghMiss De Bourgh

SallySally

The ChambermaidThe Chambermaid

Elder Mr. CollinsElder Mr. Collins

A Young LucasA Young Lucas

Mrs. ForsterMrs. Forster

Two Or Three Other Gentlemen From The HouseTwo Or Three Other Gentlemen From The House

Mrs. Bennet's FatherMrs. Bennet's Father

PrattPratt

Wickham's MotherWickham's Mother

Mrs. HillMrs. Hill

Meryton Regiment OfficerMeryton Regiment Officer

Sir Lewis De BourghSir Lewis De Bourgh

Miss BingleyMiss Bingley

Netherfield HousemaidNetherfield Housemaid

Lucas SisterLucas Sister

Mr. MorrisMr. Morris

Miss GrantleyMiss Grantley

The WaiterThe Waiter

Mrs. LongMrs. Long

The ArchbishopThe Archbishop

William GouldingWilliam Goulding

Lady MetcalfeLady Metcalfe

Mr. DennyMr. Denny

Charlotte LucasCharlotte Lucas

The Incumbent Of The LivingThe Incumbent Of The Living

Rosings HousekeeperRosings Housekeeper

Colonel ForsterColonel Forster

Rosings ServantRosings Servant

Longbourne HousemaidsLongbourne HousemaidsSarahSarah

Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy

Lady Catherine De BourghLady Catherine De Bourgh

Colonel FitzwilliamColonel Fitzwilliam

Mr. BennetMr. Bennet

Some Of His ServantsSome Of His Servants

The Hackney CoachmanThe Hackney Coachman

John The Gardiner ServantJohn The Gardiner Servant

Mrs. YoungeMrs. Younge

Mrs. NichollsMrs. Nicholls

Elder Mr. DarcyElder Mr. Darcy

Captain CarterCaptain Carter

The GouldingsThe Gouldings

Mrs. GardinerMrs. Gardiner

Mrs. AnnesleyMrs. Annesley

All Their Other NeighboursAll Their Other Neighbours

A Private Had Been FloggedA Private Had Been Flogged

Mr. WickhamMr. Wickham

Mr. PhilipsMr. Philips

The OfficersThe Officers

The Two HarringtonsThe Two Harringtons

Mary KingMary King

Mrs. PhilipsMrs. Philips

Miss PopeMiss Pope

DawsonDawson

Mr. StoneMr. Stone

Lydia BennetLydia Bennet

Hunsford HousemaidHunsford Housemaid

Mr. WebbMr. Webb

ClarkeClarke

Current Pemberley StewardCurrent Pemberley Steward

The Lucas BoysThe Lucas Boys

Four Nieces Of Mrs. JenkinsonFour Nieces Of Mrs. Jenkinson

The Two Elegant Ladies Who Waited On His SistersThe Two Elegant Ladies Who Waited On His Sisters

Mr. GardinerMr. Gardiner

The Sentinel On GuardThe Sentinel On Guard

Pemberley GardenerPemberley Gardener

Kitty BennetKitty Bennet

Mrs. HurstMrs. Hurst

Miss King's GrandfatherMiss King's Grandfather

The Other OfficersThe Other Officers

Longbourne ButlerLongbourne Butler

Mr. CollinsMr. Collins

Mr. RobinsonMr. Robinson

The NarratorThe Narrator

Longbourne FootmanLongbourne Footman

Mr. JonesMr. Jones

Sir William LucasSir William Lucas

Lord FitzwilliamLord Fitzwilliam

Your MaidYour Maid

Social Network Analysis in Literature

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329 pages, 61 chapters ~124,000 words

Character network Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Why Social Network Analysis?

• Motivated by work in distant reading, the practice of understanding literature from a macro-level viewpoint.

• Novels do not offer empirical evidence of actual social relations, but they do offer us a rich insight into how society and community are imagined by writers and readers.

• The interactions between characters in novels can yield maps of textual social networks and imagined community.

• Analysing a corpus of fiction over an extended time period (1800-1925) and visualising the resulting networks allows us to trace these maps of imagined communities.

• Reflects the arguments and hypotheses that there are distinctive features in how social relations influence and are represented in fiction.

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Corpus Selection Process

• Human expertise: project management committee identified 200 potential texts, combining canonical and popular

• Balance of Irish and English, female and male authors, genre representation, across historical range. Prioritisation dictated by need to develop and test methodology, and also by availability of high-quality texts.

• Corpus currently consists of 51 annotated novels from 31 authors - 48% Female, 52% Male; 65% British, 35% Irish;

• Genres cover social criticism, romance, gothic horror, mystery, detective fiction…

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Novel Annotation

• For each novel, the text of each chapter of a novel is manually annotated to identify all characters and their aliases.

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Excerpt, Chapter 2 Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid, she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with,

"I hope Mr. Bingley will like it Lizzy."

"We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said her mother resentfully, "since we are not to visit."

"But you forget, mama," said Elizabeth, "that we shall meet him at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long has promised to introduce him."

"I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her."

Novel Annotation

• The next step involves creating a character dictionary, which maps all aliases for a character to their definitive name.

• We replace all aliases in the original text with definitive names.

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Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with, "I hope Mr. Bingley will like it Lizzy." "We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said her mother resentfully, "since we are not to visit."

Original Text

Observing Lizzy employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with, "I hope Mr. Bingley will like it Lizzy." "We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said Mrs. Bennet resentfully, "since we are not to visit."

Annotated Text

Character Attributes

• The annotator also assigns attributes to each of the characters in the character dictionary.

• These can denote gender, occupation, nationality, religion, status, role etc. There is no pre-defined taxonomy.

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Definitive Name Aliases Attributes

Mr. Bennet mr. bennet, her father Male, English, Father, Gentleman, Husband

Mr. Bingley mr. bingley Male, English, Father, Gentleman, Brother

Mrs. Bennetmrs. bennet, his wife, her mother, mama lizzy, elizabeth, his second daughter mrs. long, your friend

Female, English, Gentlewoman, Wife, Mother, Sister

Mrs. Long’s Nieces two nieces Collective, Female, English, Niece

Kitty Bennet kitty, one of her daughters Female, English, Cousin, Daughter, Sister

Excerpt, Character Dictionary Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Novel Annotation - Challenges

• Manual annotation by researchers familiar with a novel is required, as many subtle issues arise.

• Challenges include: - OCR issues; inconsistent formatting and punctuation - First person narration; multiple narrators - Mistaken identity - Deception, disguises, and hidden identity - Groups of characters; collectives - Speculative characters

- In addition, validating and standardising character attributes requires human judgement.

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Corpus of 51 novels contains 11,665 unique characters: 52.5% male, 22.5% female, 30% collective

Character Networks

• Character co-occurrence: The appearance of two character definitive names in the annotated text.

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Observing Lizzy employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with, "I hope Mr. Bingley will like it Lizzy." "We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said Mrs. Bennet resentfully, "since we are not to visit."

• Using the character dictionary, we identify all co-occurrences of character aliases within ~100 words of one another.

• By recording the co-occurrences in each chapter, we can build a character network for the chapter.

Character Network Chapter 1, Pride and Prejudice

Character Networks

• We can either study the individual chapter networks, or merge the character networks across all chapters to create an overall character network for a novel.

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Overall Character Network Pride and Prejudice

Character Network Chapter 1, Pride and

Prejudice

Network Visualisation

• To visualise our character networks, we use the open source cross-platform tool Gephi (http://gephi.org)

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Network Visualisation

155.7%

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLESArthur Conan Doyle (1902)

Networkdensity

Number ofcharacters 107

Sherlock Holmes

Dr. Watson

The Hound

Sir Henry Baskerville

OLIVER TWISTCharles Dickens (1837)

Nancy

Fagin

OliverTwist

Mr.Brownlow

Bill Sikes

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANJames Joyce (1916)

CranlySimon Dedalus

Mary Dedalus

Stephen Dedalus

DRACULABram Stoker (1897)

Lucy Westenra

Van Helsing

CountDraculaJonathan

Harker

MinaHarker

Character Centrality

• A wide range of established methods from social network analysis can also be applied to character networks.

• Centrality: Quantify how important or influential a node is within a social network. Various measures reflect different aspects of importance.

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Top 10 most central characters in Pride and Prejudice overall character network.

Nodes are scaled and coloured by weighted degree.

Ego Networks

• Rather than analysing the overall network for a novel, we can study the social network around a specific character, referred to as the character's ego network.

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Ego network for "Elder Mr. Darcy" Pride and Prejudice

Macro-Level Analysis

• In addition to studying individual novels, we can use annotated texts and character networks to make comparisons across multiple novels and authors.

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Visualisation of male and female character mentions across entire novel annotated texts

(Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice)Oliver Twist (1837) Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Macro-Level Analysis

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Comparison of percentages of gendered edges for individual novels

Top 10 novels, as ranked by proportion of Female-Female character interactions.

Bottom 10 novels, as ranked by proportion of Female-Female character interactions.

% Female-Female % Female-Male % Male-Male

Macro-Level Analysis

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Comparison of percentages of gendered edges in overall character networks across 51 novels

All Authors Female Authors Male Authors

Macro-Level Analysis

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Comparison of most frequent male and female character attributes (51 novels, 8745 characters)

Nation, Genre and Gender Project

Prof Gerardine Meaney (UCD Humanities Institute & School of English)

Dr Derek Greene (UCD School of Computer Science & Insight Centre)

Dr Karen Wade (UCD Humanities Institute)

Dr Maria Mulvany (UCD Humanities Institute)

Dr Jenny Rothwell (UCD Humanities Institute & School of Computer Science)

Siobhán Grayson (UCD School of Computer Science & Insight Centre)

http://www.nggprojectucd.ie