I conducted some basic gender studies using Voyant in analyzing some possible data in my analysis.
I tried to analyze a theme that exists in some of George Eliot fiction. The program, Voyant, helped me to apply gender theory on Eliot’s fiction. I selected three novels, which are The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Daniel Deronda. I uploaded the three novels to Voyant after I saved them texts, using the Notebook program.
I noticed that Eliot deliberately feminizes the heroes in the novels and give masculine traits to the heroines. Then Eliot punishes the famished men and transgressive women because she thinks that they rebel against the traditions and norms during the Victorian age. As part of the punishment, as the word trends show us, Eliot expels feminized heroes out of their selves, out of the novel, out of Britain. Again the curved lines shows that Eliot punishes heroines with death, spinsterhood, hatred, and expulsion.
Voyant Project
Cirrus
Word Trend
Terminology Statistics
In terms on the terminology of gender theory that exists in the novel. The Words Trend helped me to give statistics on the way these words are employed. We can see how many times Eliot uses the words man, woman, meek, transgressive, death, spinsterhood, masculine, and feminine.
We can notice that, for instance, “man” is used much in Silas Marner because the idea in my suggested theme does not exist in this novel. Therefore, I can trust the program’s outputs because when I read the three novel, I actually found that this novel could be excluded from the discussion about this idea. While it does exist in the other two novels. On the other hand, we can notice the use of the word “woman” in the novels is about the same number in a moderate way.
The same thing is applicable to the other terms that are key terms in gender theory.