Abstract
Distant readers have used predictive modelling to study the strength of the relationship between characterization and binary notions of gender. This essay builds on that research, shedding light on several historical trends concerning anatomical description and its relationship to gender. Some of the evidence suggests that bodily language has long played a larger role in configuring fictional women than it did for fictional men. Other evidence implies that bodily characteristics were increasingly bifurcated along a gender binary, reflecting how characters are more and more physically sorted along a feminine-masculine axis. Taken altogether, this essay unpacks a suggestive correlation: a growing aspect of characterization was increasingly imbricated in heteronormative discourses. By weighing the discrepancies between the evidence presented in this essay, and that of its predecessors, this essay will ultimately suggest that disaggregating statistical models can unfold patterns of literary change that would otherwise remain suppressed.
Highlights
Recent computational work has analyzed the significance of gender in characterization, investigating whether character descriptions are often sorted along a feminine-masculine axis
This essay has argued that gender divisions became increasingly central to a growing aspect of character
After the 1960s, the percentage of correct predictions drops back down to roughly 77% as we reach the 2000s
Summary
Recent computational work has analyzed the significance of gender in characterization, investigating whether character descriptions are often sorted along a feminine-masculine axis. Matthew Jockers and Gabi Kirilloff, for instance, tabulate pronoun-verb pairings, exploring the connection between characters’ actions and their gendered representation in nineteenth-century novels.[1] They show evidence of a stable relationship between gendered pronouns and the verbs they perform.[2] Ted Underwood, David Bamman, and Sabrina Lee explore a broader range of words used in characterization, measuring the difference between the words describing fictional men and those describing fictional women. How do we reconceive the body no longer as a passive medium?”6 By reframing the sexed body as a socially constructed object, Butler’s framework has been foundational to a wide range of feminist and queer critiques of heteronormative strategies This is all to say that scholarly work on gender has often centered on representations of the body, because anatomical description has historically reflected one of the most rigid applications of gender norms. On a formal register, this work adds to scholarship on the novel, providing new evidence of the practices used in characterization
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