Erica Hayes Phase I and II-- Dataset Description
Phase I
I have decided to focus my digital humanities project on Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’urbervilles. As an undergraduate, I wrote an essay on Tess that explored her dialogue and the limited amount of times she actually speaks in the novel. Paying particular attention to the number of times her facial features are eroticized by the male gaze in the novel, I argued that Tess’s voice is effectively silenced by Hardy to reinforce Tess’s objectification. Previously, I was doing close readings of Tess and counting the amount of times she spoke manually in the text. For my digital humanities project, I would like to use R Studio or AntConc to perform quantitative textual analysis of Tess's dialogue and physical descriptions.
In addition, all of Thomas Hardy’s novels are set in the south and southwest of England, which he named Wessex. Many of the places in his novels are based on real locations in England, but are given fictitious names. As part of my digital humanities project, I’d like to create an interactive literary map of these fictitious locations in his novels based on the real locations in England. Some of these locations in England will include:
1. Cerne Abbas, England
2. Abbotsbury, England
3. Reading, England
4. Wantage, England
5. Wareham, England
6. Lyndhurst, England
7. Weymouth, England
8. Dorchester, England
9. Maiden Newton, England
10. Cranborne, England
See Thomas Hardy's Wessex for more details regarding the geographic locations in his novels and in England. There are also many wonderful illustrations of Tess found on the Thomas Hardy Association website. My ten images will consist of illustrations from Tess. See my dataset sent via IU Canvas for more details.
Phase II
The data assembled for Phase II of my project includes plain text files of Thomas Hardy’s novels:Tess of the D’urbervilles, Return of the Native, and Far From the Maddening Crowd. Although much of my work in the past has been centered on Tess, I am interested in expanding my analysis to include other well-known Thomas Hardy novels. For those of you new to Thomas Hardy, he was a Victorian novelist and English poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Much of his writing criticizes Victorian society and conveys a sympathetic representation of the working class in England.
Here are some brief plot summaries of the novels I will be focusing on for my digital humanities project:
Far from the Maddening Crowd
Far From the Maddening Crowd is Hardy's fourth novel. The plot centers around the life and story of Bathsheba Everdene, who inherits a farm from her uncle and is determined to run it herself. She is courted by three different suitors-- Francis Troy; a solidier; William Boldwood, a middle-aged farmer; and Gabriel Oak, a shepherd of modest means. Throughout the novel, Bathsheba struggles with social convention in her attempt to run her own farm and follow marital conventions.
Return of the Native
Return of the Native is Hardy's sixth novel and centers around the story of three entangled couples. The novel opens with Diggory Venn riding into Egdon Heath with Thomasin Yeobright in the back of his wagon. Although Venn is very much in love with Thomasin, she is promised to marry Damon Wildeve. Venn knows Wildeve is not in love with Thomasin, but does not stand in the way of their expected wedding nuptials. Wildeve, on the other hand, has been delaying his wedding to Thomasin due to his infatuated with Eustacia Vye, an exotic recluse who has high ambitions to leave Egdon Heath one day. Although Eustacia has romantic relations with Wildeve, she does not consider him worthy to marry due to his social status. When Clym Yeobright, Thomasin’s cousin, comes to town, Eustacia pursues him because she sees him as a worthy suitor due to his previous profession as a diamond merchant from Paris. Eustacia breaks off her relationship with Wildeve to be with Clym, which ultimately leads to Wildeve finally marrying Thomasin and Clym proposing marriage to Eustacia. Although Mrs. Yeobright, Clym’s mother objects to Clym’s engagement to Eustacia, Clym marries her anyways, creating a wedge between him and his mother. Much to Mrs. Yeobright's warnings, Clym and Eustacia find out that they have different dreams after they are wedded. While Eustacia dreams of Clym taking her to Paris, Clym wants to start a school in Egdon Heath. After Clym tragically goes blind, Eustacia knows her dreams of going to Paris are shattered. In the meantime, Wildeve inherits a small fortune and begins to spend time with Eustacia once again. Eustacia and Wildeve are seen by Venn first at a country dance and then when Wildeve visits Eustacia at her home while Clym is asleep. During this visit, Clym's mother, Mrs. Yeobright, visits in hopes for a reconciliation with her son. Eustacia, however, does not answer the door, in fear of being discovered with Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright, hearbroken and rejected, dies from a snakebite on the way home. Clym blames himself for his mother's death and separates himself from Eustacia upon discovering her involvement in his mother's death. One stormy night, Eustacia makes a plan to leave for Paris to which Wildeve agrees to help her get there. Clym, upon discovery of their plans, decides to intercept their meeting, but the plot of the novel comes to a climax when Eustacia kills herself by jumping into a river.
Tess of the D'urbervilles
Tess of the D'urbervilles is Hardy's twelfth novel and is considered one of his most dramatic and poetic literary works. The novel revolves around the story of Tess, who is sent to claim her kinship with the wealthy D'urberville family, but is raped/seduced by Alec D'urberville, the son of Mrs. Stoke-D'urberville. Shameful after her encounter with Alec, Tess leaves the D'urberville family and is sent by her family to work at the Talbothay farm, where she meets Angel Clare, the son of a gentleman. Tess and Angel fall in love over time and are married. Although Tess attempts to tell Angel many times about her past with Alec, she does not reveal her story to Angel until their wedding night. Horrified by the fact that she is not a virgin, Angel leaves Tess, which ultimately leads to her demise.
Many of Thomas Hardy's novels err on the melodramatic side in order to critique Victorian cultural values. All three women in Hardy's novels, Eustacia, Bathsheba, and Tess come from working class families, but their perspectives are muted by much of the structure of Hardy's narrative. As Margaret R. Higgonet in The Sense of Sex: Feminist Perspectives on Hardy notes: Hardy's "female characters are seen almost exclusively from the outside, in terms of physical description, action and dialogue, a fact that has no doubt contributed to his reputation as a 'balladeer' among novelists. Most of the characters, like Tess, are physically present in an immediate and very sensual way, which tends to obscure the fact that their point view is explored only superficially" (1993, p. 180-181).
Using R Studio and AntConc, I would like to investigate and compare the dialogue and physical descriptions of the main three heroines (Tess, Eustacia, and Bathsheba) in Thomas Hardy's novels. The word corpus in my assembled dataset comes from Project Gutenberg, where all three of these novels are available within the public domain for download. So far, I have gathered resources from academic journals online that discuss the silence and physical objectification of the characters: Tess, Eustacia, and Bathsheba, which should help support my textual analysis of these novels. With regards to the geographic locations of Thomas Hardy’s fictitious Wessex, I have found more than 50 locations based on real locations in England. In addition to performing textual analysis on these three novels, I'd like to create a interactive digital literary map of Wessex that integrates quotations from these three novels.
See my data zip file uploaded to IU Canvas for more details.
Sources used:
Higonnet, M. R. (1993). The Sense of sex : feminist perspectives on Hardy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.