RESULTS
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This page is meant to hold some of the results of running the code on a selection of novels. The intention of this page is for results to be continuously added to as the code is run on different novels. Below, you will find some basic bibliographical information on each text, information about the author, as well as network visualizations of the text according to the Bechdel Test. The network visualizations contain the female characters who pass the test and some examples of dialogue associated with these characters. The full results of the code (including associated dialogue) can be accessed on the site's Github page (alongside the code). These network visualizations were made using Gephi.
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bronte
1847. English.
Published in 1847, Wuthering Heights was the perfect test case for the code. This novel, which features a wide cast of characters with varied genders and social classes, is written by a nineteenth-century English woman. However, although the novel is told from the point of view of a female narrator, some of the more memorable points of the novel are some of the characters who are not the narrator and their focus on marriage. Contemporary representations of the novel in film also focus heavily on romance. Literary theorists have argued for decades over the signfiicance and power that the narrator, Nelly, has over the plot.
ANALYSIS
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As you can see, Wuthering Heights passes the Bechdel Test. Certainly, this visualization of the novel seems to support claims that Nelly (or Ellen) has a central power over the women of the novel (at least when men are not concerned). Nelly, who is a housekeeper, is often trusted with secrets and her most frequent interactions are between Catherine and her daughter Cathy. There are 26 instances of dialogue that pass the test in this novel.
The Blithedale Romance
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
1852. American.
The Blithedale Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the opposite and yet the same as Wuthering Heights in many ways. Similarly hosting a wide cast of characters with varied genders and similarly focused on romance, The Blithedale Romance is instead narrated by a male character who is, himself, invested in the romance of the novel. Literary scholars tend to agree that the novel's representation of women tends to focus heavily on their bodies and the passivity and suicide of the two primary female characters supports this claim.
ANALYSIS
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There are a total of 2 instances ini the entirety of The Blithedale Romance in which two women speak to each other off the topic of men, and both of these instances only involve the women calling out to each other (and they are sisters). Because of this, The Blithedale Romance does not pass the Bechdel Test.
Little Women
By Louisa May Alcott
1868 and 1869. American.
As an American foil to Wuthering Heights, I decided to test Little Women. In many ways, Little Women is a novel about sisterhood, though there is an element of romance and marriage. Because of the somewhat feminine name of the primary male character (Laurie) and the somewhat masculine name of the primary female character (Jo), this novel required a lot of proofreading of the results in order to ensure that the genders of the characters weren't being mixed up. While the code correctly guess that Jo was a woman, it has some issues identifying Laurie. All this to say, the code is flawed and some
ANALYSIS
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As one could probably guess, Little Women definitely passes the Bechdel Test. With Jo situated in the middle of the network and her sisters around her, the network in many ways looks like one would imagine. Interestingly, the characters Daisy and Clara do not touch any other character in the network, though they do exist in this representation. Daisy is the daughter of Meg while Clara is the elder sister to Annie and Belle.
Emma
By Jane Austen
1815.
English.
Emma was a novel that I selected because a huge theme of the novel is gossip. Because of this theme, I assumed that many of the conversations would be about women than necessarily between women. This novel required quite a bit of proofreading of the results because of this dynamic. However, even with this issue, there were still only 31 instances that were identified by the code, so proofreading was not a time expensive task. Additionally, because Emma is a novel focused on women and written by a woman, I wanted to see what female friendship looked like in the novel.
ANALYSIS
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Although, like anticipated, much of the results were instances of women being talked about rather than with, there were still only 12 instances of genuine dialogue between women. Emma, the titular character, is clearly the initiater of most of these conversations though Mrs. Weston, Emma's governess, also initiates quite a few conversations with Emma, perhaps revealing the centrality of their relationship.
Middlemarch
By George Eliot
1871 and 1872.
English.
I chose Middlemarch as a test case primarily because, like Wuthering Heights and The Blithedale Romance, the novel features a wide cast of characters and romance is definitely a theme of the novel. However, Middlemarch does not have a singular narrator like the other two novels. Additionally, George Eliot published Middlemarch under the alias of a male author. This key detail made me wonder whether or not Middlemarch would share more of the limitations that The Blithedale Romance does in its limited female interactions given that the writer was pretending to be male.
ANALYSIS
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Surprisingly, Middlemarch is on par with Little Women in terms of numbers of interactions, though this might be in part due to the length of the novel, which is substantial. The network of women in Middlemarch is fair disconnected, focusing on three separate sub-networks. An interesting observation is that the only characters who both initiate conversations are Dorothea and Celia (who are sisters) and Rosamond and Mary (who are sisters in law)
Looking Backward
By Edward Bellamy
1888.
American.
I chose Looking Backward primarily because the novel is a utopian novel. The general premsis is that a man from the nineteenth-century wakes up in the year 2000 to find that the United States is a socialist utopia. Because of this premsis, I wanted to see if the novel could imagine a social world for women in this utopia. The generally has a pretty conservative view of the role of women, though there are some female characters.
None.
ANALYSIS
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The code detected only one instance of a named woman in the novel (Edith Leete) and thus, there is no representation possible of the social world of women in the novel that would pass the Bechdel Test.