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

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Derek Greene

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

School of Computer Science University College Dublin

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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

• f association or counts.

1 3 5 3

SLIDE 5 Pen Harrington Pen Harrington General 1 General 1

• Mrs. Bennet
• Mrs. Bennet

Two Men Servants Two Men Servants

Jane Bennet Jane Bennet

The Coachman The Coachman Lady Lucas Lady Lucas Haggerston Haggerston Mary King's Uncle Mary King's Uncle Maria Lucas Maria Lucas Lady Anne Darcy Lady Anne Darcy The Little Gardiners The Little Gardiners One Of The Officers' Wives One Of The Officers' Wives

• Mrs. Reynolds
• Mrs. Reynolds
• Mr. Jones's Shop Boy
• Mr. Jones's Shop Boy

Mary Bennet Mary Bennet

• Mrs. Long's Nieces
• Mrs. Long's Nieces

The Younger Lucas Girls The Younger Lucas Girls Netherfield Servant Netherfield Servant Elder Mr. Bingley Elder Mr. Bingley Miss Watson Miss Watson Chamberlayne Chamberlayne A Gentleman At My Brother Gardiner's In Town A Gentleman At My Brother Gardiner's In Town Miss Darcy Miss Darcy Your Great Uncle The Judge Your Great Uncle The Judge The Miss Webbs The Miss Webbs

• Mr. Bingley
• Mr. Bingley

All The Servants All The Servants Servants With Cold Meat Servants With Cold Meat

Elizabeth Bennet Elizabeth Bennet

• Mrs. Jenkinson
• Mrs. Jenkinson

John The Collins Servant John The Collins Servant Wickham's Father Wickham's Father

• Mr. Hurst
• Mr. Hurst

Richard Richard Colonel Millar Colonel Millar Miss De Bourgh Miss De Bourgh Sally Sally The Chambermaid The Chambermaid Elder Mr. Collins Elder Mr. Collins A Young Lucas A Young Lucas

• Mrs. Forster
• Mrs. Forster

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

• Mrs. Bennet's Father
• Mrs. Bennet's Father

Pratt Pratt Wickham's Mother Wickham's Mother

• Mrs. Hill
• Mrs. Hill

Meryton Regiment Officer Meryton Regiment Officer Sir Lewis De Bourgh Sir Lewis De Bourgh Miss Bingley Miss Bingley Netherfield Housemaid Netherfield Housemaid Lucas Sister Lucas Sister

• Mr. Morris
• Mr. Morris

Miss Grantley Miss Grantley The Waiter The Waiter

• Mrs. Long
• Mrs. Long

The Archbishop The Archbishop William Goulding William Goulding Lady Metcalfe Lady Metcalfe

• Mr. Denny
• Mr. Denny

Charlotte Lucas Charlotte Lucas The Incumbent Of The Living The Incumbent Of The Living Rosings Housekeeper Rosings Housekeeper Colonel Forster Colonel Forster Rosings Servant Rosings Servant Longbourne Housemaids Longbourne Housemaids Sarah Sarah

• Mr. Darcy
• Mr. Darcy

Lady Catherine De Bourgh Lady Catherine De Bourgh Colonel Fitzwilliam Colonel Fitzwilliam

• Mr. Bennet
• Mr. Bennet

Some Of His Servants Some Of His Servants The Hackney Coachman The Hackney Coachman John The Gardiner Servant John The Gardiner Servant

• Mrs. Younge
• Mrs. Younge
• Mrs. Nicholls
• Mrs. Nicholls

Elder Mr. Darcy Elder Mr. Darcy Captain Carter Captain Carter The Gouldings The Gouldings

• Mrs. Gardiner
• Mrs. Gardiner
• Mrs. Annesley
• Mrs. Annesley

All Their Other Neighbours All Their Other Neighbours A Private Had Been Flogged A Private Had Been Flogged

• Mr. Wickham
• Mr. Wickham
• Mr. Philips
• Mr. Philips

The Officers The Officers The Two Harringtons The Two Harringtons Mary King Mary King

• Mrs. Philips
• Mrs. Philips

Miss Pope Miss Pope Dawson Dawson

• Mr. Stone
• Mr. Stone

Lydia Bennet Lydia Bennet

Hunsford Housemaid Hunsford Housemaid

• Mr. Webb
• Mr. Webb

Clarke Clarke Current Pemberley Steward Current Pemberley Steward The Lucas Boys The Lucas Boys Four Nieces Of Mrs. Jenkinson Four Nieces Of Mrs. Jenkinson The Two Elegant Ladies Who Waited On His Sisters The Two Elegant Ladies Who Waited On His Sisters

• Mr. Gardiner
• Mr. Gardiner

The Sentinel On Guard The Sentinel On Guard Pemberley Gardener Pemberley Gardener Kitty Bennet Kitty Bennet

• Mrs. Hurst
• Mrs. Hurst

Miss King's Grandfather Miss King's Grandfather The Other Officers The Other Officers Longbourne Butler Longbourne Butler

• Mr. Collins
• Mr. Collins
• Mr. Robinson
• Mr. Robinson

The Narrator The Narrator Longbourne Footman Longbourne Footman

• Mr. Jones
• Mr. Jones

Sir William Lucas Sir William Lucas Lord Fitzwilliam Lord Fitzwilliam Your Maid Your Maid

Social Network Analysis in Literature

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329 pages, 61 chapters ~124,000 words Character network Pride and Prejudice (1813)

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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."

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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

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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. Bennet
• mrs. 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)

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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

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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

• ne another.
• By recording the co-
• ccurrences in each chapter,

we can build a character network for the chapter.

Character Network 
 Chapter 1, Pride and Prejudice

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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

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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

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5.7%

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

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Sherlock Holmes

• Dr. Watson

The Hound Sir Henry Baskerville

OLIVER TWIST

Charles Dickens (1837)

Nancy Fagin Oliver Twist Mr. Brownlow Bill Sikes

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

James Joyce (1916)

Cranly Simon Dedalus Mary Dedalus Stephen Dedalus

DRACULA

Bram Stoker (1897)

Lucy Westenra Van Helsing Count Dracula Jonathan Harker Mina Harker

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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.

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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

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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)

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Macro-Level Analysis

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Comparison of percentages of gendered edges for individual novels

Top 10 novels, as ranked by proportion

• f Female-Female

character interactions. Bottom 10 novels, as ranked by proportion

• f Female-Female

character interactions.

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

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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

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Macro-Level Analysis

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

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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