Digital and Computational Studies Blog

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A manually interpreted graph of gossip in Volume 2, Chapter 3. Each edge begins with the character speaking and terminates at the character being spoken to. Female nodes are pink, and male ones are blue. The nodes are sized by out-degree, so characters who talk more appear as larger nodes.

Consider the above graph, which portrays dialogue from one character to another in Volume 2, Chapter 3.  In this graph, each edge connects the character speaking to his or her audience.  Notable in graphically representing this conversation is the notion of time.  In this representation, each paragraph of dialogue is considered as one unit of narrative time, regardless of the length of the paragraph.  However, there is one instance in which Mr. Knightley and Mr. Woodhouse both jump to contradict Emma’s self-deprecation “nearly at the same time” (134).  This moment is represented in the graph as a simultaneous occurrence, rather than two separate pieces of dialogue.  Of course, this method of representing conversation over time is inherently flawed, as it is dependent on textual units of time.  A paragraph is not in reality a unit of time, but instead a unit of textual organization.  However, for the purposes of representing an inherently textual interaction, this method does reveal the way a conversation moves between characters.

Another difficulty in representing conversations between people is the notion of generally addressing the room.  Emma does this quite a bit when Miss Bates appears.  For instance, the statement “Mr. Elton going to be married! He will have everybody’s wishes for his happiness” is not directed at any particular character, but rather the entire room (136).  This is particularly difficult to capture graphically, as here Emma is not really addressing Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Knightley, Miss Bates, and Jane individually, but rather addressing the group as a whole.  This type of speech includes everyone generally rather than each participant individually.  This social convention is perhaps what makes Miss Bates’s and Jane’s tangent about the physical qualities of Mr. Dixon so uncomfortable.  The two have what is almost a private interaction in the midst of a public conversation, which is a jarring contradiction.  Miss Bates briefly fails to include everyone by only talking to Jane, and this reads as a break in the normal flow of conversation, if only for a moment.

In contrast with the manually generated graph is the automatically generated one.  In order to create this graph, I assumed that when each character speaks, the next speaker is the first speaker’s addressee.  For instance, if Emma speaks and then Mr. Knightley speaks, this graph assumes that Emma is speaking to Mr. Knightley.  This method of visualization draws attention to the characters speaking in a way that dialogue imbedded in the narrative does not, and it portrays that dialogue in such a way that nodes are either “on” or “off.”  Although this makes a whole set of assumptions about the nature of conversation and its role in the book, the above two graphs are rather similar.  Both are sized by in-degree, meaning that larger nodes are addressed in conversation more frequently.  The manual version of the graph shows more nuance in differentiating the sizes of the nodes, and Emma, rather than Miss Bates, becomes the dominating presence.  Mr. Knightley and Mr. Woodhouse are both also allowed greater share of the conversation, due to the phenomenon of addressing the group rather than the individual.  We may take from these differences that, although Miss Bates speaks frequently, she is less often explicitly addressed.  Further, although Mr. Knightley and Mr. Woodhouse are less frequent speakers, they are a significant part of the audience.  This is perhaps indicative of a difference in class, as the most prominent speaker is the poor old maid while the most common listeners are the wealthiest characters.  Those in power merely listen while Miss Bates takes advantage of her information to momentarily take the spotlight.

Unsurprisingly, Emma lies at the center of the novel, and consequently, its graph.  Filtering Emma out of the above graph results in an edge visibility of 36.88 percent.  The vast majority of conversations in the novel involve Emma, and this is evident by such a collapse of the graph.  However, even without Emma, the other nodes on the graph are still connected to each other.  Highbury maintains its structural foundation without her, but the novel inherently takes her point of view.  The story cannot exist without Emma, but Highbury can.  Franco Moretti performs a similar test in his graphical study of Hamlet, in which he removes Hamlet and Claudius, followed by Hamlet and Horatio.  Moretti differentiates, “stability has clearly much to do with centrality, but is not identical to it” (Moretti, 5).  Emma is central to the graph, but even with the resulting 36 percent edge visibility, the graph remains stable without her.

The out-degree of a node indicates the number of edges originating at that node, or in this context, the number of times that character speaks in the novel.  Emma has by far the highest out-degree of any node at 360, while the second highest degree is Mr. Knightley at 151.  Below that are Frank Churchill with 103, Harriet Smith with 93, and Miss Bates with 83.  This ordering makes sense in the context of the novel, as Emma is our protagonist, and Mr. Knightley is her love interest and oldest friend.  It may seem surprising that Frank Churchill ranks above Harriet Smith because he only arrives partway through the novel.  Though Harriet is Emma’s constant companion, she is also rather quiet, while Frank is more social.  Miss Bates appears less frequently than Harriet but has far more to say, explaining her out-degree of 91.

Consider the difference between this general graph of the novel and a graph of gossip in Highbury.  Emma is certainly a prominent figure in Highbury society, but not to this extent.  Harriet, too, is far more prominent in this graph than she is as a figure in Highbury.  These graphs are, like the novel itself, inherently from Emma’s perspective.  They show us gossip in Highbury as Emma sees it, but not in its entirety.  This is a significant distinction in evaluating the data of Emma as well as understanding the novel.  The structure of Emma’s plot depends on us reading from Emma’s perspective, and this bias carries over into the data.  We only see what Emma sees, and consequently, our model can only show us social interactions as Emma witnesses them.

In order to generate this graph, every time one character says another character’s name, an edge appears between those two characters.  If Miss Bates says the name “Jane,” an edge appears from Miss Bates to Jane.  This method also takes into account name variations like “Miss Fairfax.”  Generating the graph automatically has the disadvantage of ignoring any pronouns, so it certainly misses instances of gossip.  In addition, addressing a character in the room then counts as talking “about” them.

Note that female characters dominate the graph sized by out-degree, indicating that female voices dominate in Emma.  However, the genders are more equally sized in the graph sized by in-degree, indicating that both men and women are the subject of gossip.  This trend confirms the view of Emma as a female-dominated novel, in which female voices take a prominent role.  It is also in line with the view of women as gossips, sharing information with one another in order to engage with the community.

The digital aspect of this project involves creating a visual network of communication using a combination of Gephi and R script.  The goal of this network is to visualize how information moves throughout the community.  I will visualize each character in the novel as an individual node and consider how they interact with one another.  Revealing this network will answer a number of important questions about the text.  Who has and shares knowledge, and who receives it?  How does that knowledge move between people?  Who is the object of the most gossip, and where does the gossip end?  Beyond the value of the model itself, the process of creating it raises a multitude of questions about the text.  We might consider how Austen structures the text around dialogue and narration and when the narrator interrupts sequences of dialogue.  Further, attempting to divide the text into units raises important questions about chapter divisions: Is there only one conversation per chapter? Do conversations ever last multiple chapters?  Why does Austen structure the text in this way, and what can we learn from it?  These are just a few of the questions that digitalizing Austen’s communities can raise.

My networks will track dialogue between characters.  However, digitalizing dialogue proved to be more complicated than it initially appears.  In considering creating a network of dialogue, one might expect to portray the characters as individual nodes with edges connecting them to show interactions.  However, how do we determine where the connection starts and where it ends?  Let us start with a basic example.  Character A is having a conversation with Character B.  We might digitize this with lines moving from A to B and back again for each piece of dialogue.  However, we might complicate this image by adding a third person, C, to the conversation.  When A speaks, is he speaking to B or C, or perhaps both?  How do we determine this?  One way may be to assume that the next person to speak is the one to whom the first character is speaking. Another would be to assume that each character is always speaking to all the characters in the group.  Both these methods pose problems in their accuracy.  Further, let us suppose that A, B, and C are gossiping about a fourth person, D.  How do we portray this connection?  Any automatic method of portraying gossip is inherently flawed, but considering these problems also helps us to consider how dialogue works in the text.

In my research, I discovered a project similar to my own entitled Austen Said: Patterns of Diction in Jane Austen’s Major Novels.  This project explores forms of discourse in Austen’s novels, most prominently free indirect discourse.  The researchers used XML markup to identify each passage in all of Austen’s major works by the speaker and the form of discourse (direct discourse, indirect discourse, or free indirect discourse).  The researchers have helpfully provided their marked up data on their website, and I will use this data in my own study of Austen’s novels.  Although Austen Said primarily focuses on free indirect discourse, their XML markup does provide information about who “says” each passage in the book, which I used in automatically generating my graphs.

I decided to digitally visualize the full novel as well as two individual chapters in greater detail.  I outlined the following steps for creating my graphs:

1. Automatically generate a graph of gossip in the entire novel in which each character speaks to the next character who speaks, using the XML markup from Austen Said to identify speakers and listeners.
2. Automatically generate a graph of each of the individual chapters of focus using the same method as in step 1.
3. Automatically generate a graph of gossip in the entire novel in which each character speaks about any character they name in their dialogue. For example, if Emma mentions Mrs. Weston in her dialogue, I draw an edge from Emma to Mrs. Weston.
4. Replicate step 3 for each individual chapter of focus.
5. Manually create the graphs generated in step 2.
6. Manually create the graphs generated in step 4.
7. Add gender.

The first step of the project was to perform an initial analysis of the data for the whole novel.  This initial phase identified the speaker of each passage using the “who” attribute of the markup.  The next passage’s “who” attribute became the recipient of each passage.  This step ignores the narrator and characters speaking as each other, and it excludes any additional information, such as gender or social class.  This version of the graph is inherently flawed, as it makes a whole set of assumptions about the text, like the idea that each character is addressing the next character who speaks.  However, it provides a basic starting point from which to proceed.  As this step was almost entirely automated, I performed it first on the novel as a whole, and then on the individual chapters.

In order to accomplish this, my advisor, Professor Crystal Hall, provided me with a piece of code in R that identifies the tagged speaker of each passage and uses the following speaker as the recipient of that passage.  I ran this code using XML markup of the text and uploaded the spreadsheet into Gephi.  Then, I identified the characters I did not want to include in the graph.  These included the narrator, the narrator speaking as a character (indicative of free indirect discourse), and characters speaking as each other.  I wanted to see gossip as it occurs between characters, so though we might consider the narrator as a gossip in this novel, I eliminated her from the graph.  Additionally, I didn’t want “Emma as Knightley” to appear as a separate character in the graph, so deleted these unnecessary nodes.  Then, I rearranged the nodes in order to see them all individually.

The next step was to create a graph that shows characters talking about one another.  Again, Professor Crystal Hall provided me with an R script that searches for a list of character names and creates edges from the character speaking to those they speak about.  This script also accounted for time, considering one chapter as a unit of time.  I then developed the list of character names, making sure to include variations like “Jane,” “Miss Fairfax,” and “Jane Fairfax.”  In Gephi, I then combined nodes that were different names for the same character.  I performed this analysis on both the whole novel and each individual chapter.  I then performed each of the steps above manually for the individual chapters, manually creating my own Excel spreadsheet of my interpretations of the chapters.  Finally, I retroactively added gender as an attribute to all of my graphs so that I could color the nodes accordingly.

Jane Austen’s novels take place in relatively insular country villages. Inevitably, these “three or four families” intermingle frequently and exchange gossip and letters.  In Austen’s novels, information is a vital currency, and its circulation is central to her plots.  Sometimes, information percolates rapidly throughout the community, as it does with Emma’s engagement to Mr. Knightley in Emma.  In other cases, information proves crucial to other characters, as is the case when Elizabeth hides the contents of Mr. Darcy’s letter in Pride and Prejudice.  In this study, I will examine the circulation of gossip in Emma and how information moves within the town.  I will use gephi to model the circulation of gossip in the entire novel, as well as in individual chapters.

To first define our terms, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “gossip” as, “To talk idly, mostly about other people’s affairs; to go about tattling” (“gossip, v.”).  Based on this definition, we might take gossip to mean the discussion of other people’s business.  Further, the OED defines the noun “gossip” as, “A person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, esp. one who delights in idle talk; a newsmonger, a tattler” (“gossip, n.”).  Using these two definitions, we might develop a more complete understanding of gossip.  Generally, we will take gossip to mean the act of sharing information about other people, but the term is loaded with connotations.  Firstly, although both men and women in Emma participate in gossip, it carries a feminine connotation, and we will further explore that later.  Additionally, we might expect that those participating in gossip have no personal investment in the object of gossip.  The news they are sharing is, by all accounts, none of their business, but, presumably because they are idle women, they have nothing else to engage them.[1]  The term “gossip,” then, carries with it highly gendered and patriarchal implications, even when applied to a variety of contexts.

Other scholars have already written extensively about gossip in Jane Austen’s works, and a few specific articles are foundational to my work.  In their article “The Tittle-Tattle of Highbury,” Casey Finch and Peter Bowen discuss the societal power of gossip in Emma and the alignment between public and private.  Gossip makes private affairs public and is “the very ground upon which the community is articulated, identified, and controlled,” (Finch, 2).  Also foundational to my work is the notion of gossip’s inherent femininity; it carries connotations of female idleness and triviality.  Scholars before me have argued that Austen uses gossip in a way that provides women with a degree of power and subverts preconceived notions of gossip as inherently useless.  In the article “Homespun Gossip: Jane West, Jane Austen, and the Task of Literary Criticism,” Erin Goss argues exactly that, and goes so far as to say that “one of the myriad of tasks that Austen sets for herself is the redemption of gossip, as so often in her novels, the reader – along with the characters – must come to accept and even condone gossip that is initially seen as suspect,” (Goss, 170).  Finally, scholars have drawn connections between gossip and Austen’s use of free indirect discourse, which I originally intended to explore in this project.  Finch and Bowen make this claim in their work, and “Jane Austen and the Impact of Form” by Frances Ferguson provides another foundational work for my understanding and critical analysis of free indirect discourse.

Gossip is generally considered a feminine pastime, bringing to mind vapid or silly women with nothing else to do but gossip about their neighbors.  However, Austen legitimizes gossip in her narrative, as it provides information to the characters and to the reader.  In her article “Homespun Gossip: Jane West, Jane Austen, and the Task of Literary Criticism,” Erin M. Goss locates the history of marginalization of the female gossip in the etymology of the word “gossip.”  The definitions of the word develop from a godparent, to a woman’s closest friends, to the modern definition of a woman who shares idle news.  Through these changing definitions, we see that the gossip has shifted from a vitally important member of a family’s circle to an insignificant, gossiping woman.  Goss writes, “Gossip then carries within itself the history of its own marginalization; once the name of an official and even sacramental addition to a family structure, it comes to be the marker of a denigrated and specifically feminine form of discourse that is, at best, useless,” (Goss, 167).

Although most if not all of the characters in Emma participate in gossip to some degree, we might consider Miss Bates the town gossip, and even the voice of gossip[2].  She is in many ways the negative stereotype of the gossip; she is a busybody, constantly prattling on about one insignificant thing or another.  However, we learn to empathize with Miss Bates, as does Emma.  Despite her sometimes annoying tendencies, Miss Bates is a devoted and kind friend and entirely harmless.  Further, as a relatively poor, unmarried woman, she finds herself in need of other characters’ company and empathy, as Mr. Knightley points out to Emma.[3]  In terms of causing harm to the other characters, Emma is far more to blame than Miss Bates.  Gossip “serves as a genuinely alternative mode of communication for women who have been historically excluded from dominant discourses; in one and the same movement, gossip is dismissed as feminine ‘tittle-tattle’ and put to use as a serious and privileged form of knowledge,” (Finch, 3).

Frank Churchill is a central figure in Highbury, but until the second volume of the novel, we only hear about him from other characters.[4]  He is continually absent, but his absence endears him to the residents of Highbury and ensures that a “lively curiosity prevails” in the town regarding his life (Emma, 14).  As the child of Mr. Weston, Frank Churchill holds a position of significance in the town and is often paired with Emma Woodhouse as a potential match.  The fact that Mr. Churchill has visited his father, even for his wedding to Miss Taylor, is indicative of his unreliability.  However, we as readers gladly overlook this fact in the face of the town’s active interest in his life.  He is thought to be wealthy, charming, and single, all traits that appear to be true when he arrives in the town.  Austen spends the entirety of the first volume building up Mr. Churchill’s character, so by the time he actually arrives, we (and Emma) have no choice but to view him as an attractive and eligible bachelor.  Of course, the implications of this impression are that when his engagement to Jane comes as a shock to Emma, we too are just as surprised.  In this way, Austen shapes our perceptions of a character through gossip before we actually meet him.

Just as notable as whose voices are the loudest is whose are silent.  Doctor Perry is a significant character in that other characters frequently refer to him, but he never actually appears.[5]  The residents of Highbury love to look to Doctor Perry for medical advice, and he seems to be an expert at telling them what they want to hear.  Mr. Woodhouse is the character to most frequently cite his advice.  In one notable scene, Doctor Perry reluctantly acknowledges “that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with many – perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately,” (Emma, 16).  However, a “strange rumour” later circulates about the Perry children eating cake, indicating that Doctor Perry has only told Mr. Woodhouse what he wants to hear.  In this way, he encourages Mr. Woodhouse’s fears, and he likewise confirms the preconceived notions of other characters in the book.  This is one of the only instances in which we receive Doctor Perry’s exact language, but of course we only hear from him through free indirect discourse.  The statement that cake can be unhealthy “unless taken moderately,” reveals that Doctor Perry is both pandering to what Mr. Woodhouse wants to hear while still giving medically sound advice.  This instance of free indirect discourse is the closest we get to Doctor Perry, as he does not directly appear anywhere in the novel.  Instead, we hear his medical advice from the residents of Highbury and, as seen above, occasionally through free indirect discourse.  Doctor Perry serves as a reflection of the thoughts and desires of the other characters without having a concrete presence in the book.

In this project, I will explore gossip in Emma through a digital lens.  These ideas will be fundamental to my work as I attempt to digitally examine the way information flows throughout Highbury.  I will focus first on the full novel, then on two specific chapters.  For more information about those chapters, please see this post.

[1] In constructing this definition, we already begin to see how Austen deconstructs the notion of gossip, namely regarding the idea that it is unimportant.  Even if two gossiping characters have no apparent relation to the object of their conversation, the social goings-on of Highbury are of great import to the woman of the story due to their reliance on marriage for a suitable future.

[2] Miss Bates’s role as the town gossip allows her to hold a good deal of information, and she contributes significantly to the network of communication we see in the book. In digitalizing this network (as discussed in the Methodology section), we might expect to find her at the center of the network, one of the most frequent contributors.  However, it also seems likely that she is one of the least gossiped about, as her social standing ensures that she is not a key player in Emma’s romantic endeavors outside of her ability to share news.

[3] “She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born into; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion,” (Emma, 295).

[4] In considering a network of gossip, we might expect to find that Mr. Churchill is a significant figure in terms of gossip about him, but his participation is a different story, at least in the first volume.  Until the second volume, Mr. Churchill only engages in the network through a few letters, and after that he becomes a much more vocal participant.

[5] As we never hear from Doctor Perry directly, we might expect to see him in the network as one gossiped about but not engaging directly in the network himself.

In Volume 2, Chapter 3 of Emma, we learn that Mr. Elton is engaged.  This chapter is useful in a study of gossip for several reasons.  The chapter begins with a conversation between Emma, Mr. Woodhouse, and Mr. Knightley.  The three discuss a recent party, but Emma and Mr. Knightley are mostly having their own conversation while Mr. Woodhouse interjects with only tangentially relevant comments.  Just as Mr. Knightley is telling Emma that he has some interesting news for her, Miss Bates rushes in and announces that Mr. Elton is engaged.  This news has arrived through a letter to the Coles; Mr. Cole shared it with Mr. Knightley while Mrs. Cole shared it with Miss Bates.  The path of gossip from Mr. Elton to the Coles and now throughout Highbury is significant in the study of this graph.  It is also notable that the information comes from outside and enters the town, where is percolates.  Additionally, we see characters react to the news and discuss it in a group.  This chapter, then, is rich in considering the flow of gossip.

Volume 2, Chapter 8 depicts a party at which we learn that Jane Fairfax has received a mysterious gift of a pianoforte.  We see news of the gift travel throughout the party, and we hear the gossip from several different characters.  This chapter reads almost like a mystery story as characters try to discern who the unseen donor could be.  It is an excellent example of gossip in Emma, as we see how the residents of Highbury gossip with one another.  The party becomes a microcosm of the town; likely all the major characters are there, and we witness how ideas circulate among people.  We hear from two notable characters about their opinions. Mrs. Weston, who often reflects Emma’s own matchmaking tendencies, suggests that the gift-giver could be Mr. Knightley, while Frank Churchill, the donor himself, allows Emma to take the lead in her theorizing.  This chapter allows us to see how gossip circulates in the community and is an ideal sample for study.