Distribution of Gendered Pronouns Across Classic Novels
These plots look at the distribution of masculine vs. feminine first person pronouns across classic English language novels.
Stray Observations...
- The only three novels with a greater share of feminine than masculine pronouns are all by women authors.
- Noted momma's boy D.H. Lawrence stands out as the only male author on the list with a more balanced distribution than any female author.
- Despite having an overwhelmingly masculine pronoun distribution, Heart of Darkness is one of only two novels on this list that includes a feminine pronoun in its opening sentence — albeit in reference to a ship.
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
A Closer Look at Ulysses
I was somewhat surprised to see such a masculine balance for Ulysses, with the novel just a few percentage points behind Joyce's famously macho drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway. However, a closer look at each of the novel's 18 stylistically distinct episodes reveals that this balance is not evenly distributed.
The Nausicaa episode stands out as having by far the largest share of feminine pronouns out of any text I looked at. Written in the pulp style of a fashion magazine, this episode follows a young woman who performs for the gaze of the novel's protagonist Leopold Bloom, who watches her from the beach while masturbating. This suggests that a count of gendered pronouns is more about narrative attention (who the text is looking at), and not necessarily a measure of how much empathy the text affords to its female characters.