representation of female characters in literature

GENDER STEREOTYPES AND REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IN CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS. This depiction put a lot of pressure on men and prohibited a wide range of emotional expression. Sex, gender, and sexuality shape narrative texts and readers understanding of them in many ways. Such things are called symbols, and this article by Have you ever asked yourself why some books are so compelling that you keep thinking about them even after you have finished reading? In an age when men were expected to be strong and decisive, and women passive and submissive, Shakespeare raises questions about the standard portrayal of genders. Literature is a powerful instrument that allows authors to either reinforce or subvert gender roles specific to one time and place. Role of educational institutions in teaching children appropriate. Portrayed as feeble and powerless females, characters such as, Caroline Beaufort, Margaret Saville and Elizabeth Lavenza played pathetic roles which only required them to undergo suffering eventually followed by death; only to reflect upon the dominant males in the story. Women have to remain passive, while men can earn money and have power and mobility. The representation of women in fictional discourse still remains an area of live interest in African literary criticism. PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, #C2354500, based in San Francisco, California, US. Proportion of male protagonists as a function of: (A) author gender and age of the target audience, (B) author gender and character type, (C) genre and character type, and (D) genre and age of the target audience. Gender roles serve as individual codes of behavior determined by societal expectations of different sexes. The way authors represent boy and girl characters in childrens literature can influence a childs identity. First, we tested whether each variable independently predicted the male-to-female ratio. Department of Psychology, Emory University, Druid Hills, Georgia, United States of America. Such male overrepresentation is especially pervasive in media, including primetime television programming and television commercials [7, 8], virtual platforms [9, 10], and sports news coverage [11]. Women smile and laugh, the authors write, but mid-century men, apparently, can only grin and chuckle. Similarly, in the 19th century, theres much more discussion of feelings, at first mostly in regards to women characters. equal opportunities in the film industry. In the following sections, we will discuss how the representation of female characters in literature has evolved throughout history. Despite the suppression, many literary works included women characters. This article explores the representation of homosociality between two marginalized female characters in "Xialihe" () (1978), a novella by Sinophone Malaysian writer Shang Wanyun () (1952-1995). The underrepresentation of female characters in childrens books, and media more generally, has been referred to as symbolic annihilation because it is believed to promote the marginalization of women and girls by suggesting that they play a less significant role in society. Even when female characters appear as protagonists, they are often portrayed as more emotional [19, 30], less active [64], and less associated with STEM [63, 65]. There was some improvement in the frequency of female characters across the twentieth century, but even the more recent books in their sample (i.e., 19901999) depicted male characters with greater frequency (male-to-female ratio 1.2:1). This, in turn, had a negative impact on how society raised boys. This huge piece of research backs that up., Mosse pointed to a sea change from the Enlightenment through to Victorian values, so women are freer in the time of Jane Austen or Mary Shelley or Ann Radcliffe, but then Victorian values the idea of the angel in the home take over. Importantly, we also found that particular combinations of author gender, target audience, character type, and genre impacted the male-to-female ratio throughout this 60-year period. In Panel A, they plot collection-by-decade averages of female representation in images (on the y axis) and female representation in text (on the x axis). In the following sections, we will discuss how the representation of female characters in literature has evolved throughout history. We compared fiction and non-fiction books when they involved human versus non-human characters (Fig 5C) and when the target audience was younger versus older children (Fig 5D). Liza of 'Poor Liza'. The shaded regions show standard errors of binomial logistic regression model fits. Many agree that American literature is so distinct from English literature because the concept of the American Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales is an outstanding piece of literature that consists of fascinating stories about Pilgrims adventures. But no one has been willing to advance the dismal suggestion that the whole story from 1800 to 1960 was a story of decline.. In Mary Ellmann's Thinking About Women , the author speaks of certain characteristics associated with women that help form the archetype of what role a female character may take in a literary . Studies since the 1970s have found that many female characters are stereotyped and underrepresented in children's picture books. Additional arbitration by a third party was only needed for three items. In the following sections, we will unravel some examples of traditional gender roles from famous literary works. Yet another potential reason for male overrepresentation is that it reflects linguistic properties. However, studies examining the content of childrens literature report stereotypical portrayals of male and female characters [17, 30]. Male authors depicted more male protagonists regardless of character type (male-to-female ratio: human = 2.95:1, 2 = 107.98, p < .001; non-human = 4.19:1, 2 = 66.87, p < .001). Women in fiction may have shrugged some of the strait jacketed representations but anytime a woman character chooses to live life on her terms, readers tend to get agitated. Analysing the 104,000 novels in the HathiTrust archive, and looking at vocabulary ascribed to characters, the researchers found that earlier volumes contained gendered language. Charlotte Gilmans gothic tale The Yellow Wallpaper was an early feminist indictment of Victorian Patriarchy. The 21st-century heroine may be scarred, imperfect or absurd. Since the birth of modern English-language novels in the 1700s, male and female characters from Paul Atreides to Elizabeth Bennet have laughed, grinned, felt and acted through their pages. We found that non-human characters are overrepresented as male, but only in fiction books, though overrepresentation has decreased across time. endobj In literature, gender refers to how authors and characters define themselves and how society evaluates them based on their gender. Older books may be adapted and reprinted, and in the current dataset, some of these books were coded according to their most recent publication date. Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Privacy Statement For a long time, history books only contained biographies of men and ignored stories of women. In the mid-19th century, novel-writing was not a high-status career, but as it increasingly became so, it became more desirable to male writers. So, the antidote must be balancing it out with a new emphasis on the female gaze, right? By contrast, there was gender parity in fiction when the characters were human (0.95:1, 2 = 0.51, p = .473) and in non-fiction when the characters were non-human (1:1, 2 = 0.00, p = 1.00). Our results clearly demonstrated that the male-to-female ratio was larger for books authored by men compared to women, B = 1.27, Z = 15.63, p < .001, OR = 3.57, 95% CI = [3.05, 4.20] (Fig 3A). Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals for proportion estimates. There has been a sustained focus in the flawed portraiture of women in male writing, yet more and more male creative writers are striving to draw images of women from an increasingly gender sensitive perspective. How is gender addressed in A Raisin in the Sun? Society of that time believed that men with traditionally feminine characteristics such as empathy and trust were weak. Scouts view of femininity changes when she learns that being a woman takes just as much courage as being a man. Usually, they did it to show the tragedy of women trapped in their gender roles. x=koG ?;q!\,9:Hr,(L$vy]UbpU/mjy=~zwj=-l~}wv? The rigid social divisions led to a man being falsely accused of rape because of the color of his skin. Such a perspective is consistent with other research showing that women (and other minorities) play a significant role in promoting diversity and may be integral in ensuring equity across genders [61]. Upon looking at the data and sectioning it by time, the researchers were able to see trends over certain periods: between about 1800 and the 1970s, for instance, a steady decline in the proportion of women authorsfrom about 50 percent to less than 25 percent. With such awareness, there may be a motivation to ensure parity in the gender of childrens book characters. In the narratives collection "Fra. A six-year-old girl stands up for herself while maintaining her optimism and innocence. However, male protagonists tended to be overrepresented in fiction books targeted to younger children, and overrepresentation decreased as the age of the target audience increased (B = -0.21, Z = -5.65, p < .001, OR = 0.81, 95% CI = [0.75, 0.87]). Altogether, these analyses revealed that the changes over time were largely consistent for male and female authors. With increasing accessibility of childrens books [39], questions related to trends in gender representation are of special importance, especially if we are to understand the early forces of gender bias and how best to overcome their cognitive and affective consequences. Discrepancies were resolved by discussion between the two coders. In early 19th-century novels, men were more likely to have houses and countries, while women had private chambers, apartments, or rooms. Tis destiny unshunnable, like death. After identifying each books protagonist (i.e., the character highlighted in the book description and/or featured in the book title), the central characters gender was categorized as male or female based on available information. Given other research suggesting that males are overrepresented when characters are non-human, at least in fiction, the prediction was that books targeted to young children might be less equitable in the representation of male and female characters than books targeted to older children, which could be particularly consequential for our understanding of the early roots of gender biases. Although literary historians have talked about womens departure from the novel at certain points before, says Underwood, nobodys done the kind of broad-scale work that would demonstrate continuous trends. His male characters have a habit of grinning in an uneasy, laconic way. Gender coding decisions were made based on normative understandings of gendered nouns (e.g., boy, girl) and pronouns (e.g., he, she). Oh, I have lost my reputation! }'yORuVTYS>tLfZfju&zZ'e~TH0-eCy4~);kLRxws[_mSOtdo&Wg'&gI&sf'n&dw\O'Y}//=)+RI1GO>rbi,@JNmUpRNEe(Vj e_|;v\~zDUOs=`dC~Z+@ f1X$bm^ 0?c)etC^NMresYo-'_34 qn![/V;rbDbZJhp#oEf8. Wouldnt it be great if people of all genders could enjoy equal rights? As an indicator of representativeness, there is substantial overlap between the current sample and existing childrens book corpora, including all titles from the Wisconsin Childrens Book Corpus [30] and the Montag corpus [40], as well as over 300 titles from the Infant Bookreading Database [41]. It is interesting to note that women were hardly ever shown as economic beings, whether as landlords, traders, farmers, or members of other professions. Proportion of male protagonists over time as a function of: (A) author gender (male vs. female) and age of the target audience (younger children: 08 years vs. older children: 9+ years), (B) author gender and character type (human vs. non-human), (C) genre (fiction vs. non-fiction) and character type, and (D) genre and target audience. We will create an Authors such as the Bronte sisters, Mary Shelley, and Ann Radcliffe played a central part in popularizing womens writing. Kylee Novick, This study was aimed at analyzing the way in which "Feminist Criticism" may be applied to young adult (YA) literature, as a lens to understand women's . If you have a task to write a paper on a gender-related matter, this list of topics will be helpful for you. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him. Overall, the researchers found that gender divisions between characters have become less sharply marked over the last two centuries, with very different language used for men and women in 19th-century novels compared to the present, when the actions and attributes of characters are less clearly sorted into gender categories. They also point out that while representation of women in fiction declined over the period, other categories of writing such as non-fiction saw an enormous expansion of female writers. This analysis will help you examine your understanding of masculinity and femininity from a different angle. Next, we further examined the effect of book genre. Yet, books by American authors can help us grasp it better. examine the representation of women in literary works; present the top 20 gender-related essay topics. In books by women, "the division is much closer to equal . % We report all measures collected, along with exclusion information below. Change in the proportion of male protagonists across the 60-year publication period. Because a critical contribution of the present study was the examination of gender representation in books published post 2000, we also ran this analysis on this most recent subset of books. This approach was used to gauge widespread trends in gender representation across the 60-year period of interest, and it is an approach that overcomes limitations of previous studies, which have typically restricted their analyses to award-winning titles or books available in a specific library or school setting. Books that deal with the theme of gender inspire us to keep fighting for equality. Chandlers grins are commonly followed by a cynical chaser about the characters appearance, to make clear that masculine humour is a thin veneer stretched over menace, the academics write. The academics expected to see an increase in the prominence of female characters in literature across the two centuries. In the mid-1800s, Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl became an early example of a black womans strength over oppression. The way the female gaze has been conceptualized still propagates the usual stereotypes about female identity. The overrepresentation of male protagonists in non-fiction increased as age of the target audience increased, though this effect did not reach statistical significance (B = 0.15, Z = 1.79, p = .074, OR = 1.16, 95% CI = [0.99, 1.36] except when books for teens were excluded from the analysis (B = 0.21, Z = 2.34, p = .019, OR = 1.23 [1.04, 1.47]). Individual points reflect proportion estimates for each year. Thus, the present study sought to provide an updated account of the gender representation in the literature targeted towards children within the last 60 years: 1960 to 2020, with a particular focus on books published post 2000 and on books featuring a single protagonist to allow for direct comparison of the rates of appearance of male versus female central characters. Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals for ratio estimates. Harper Lee explores the overcomplicated social hierarchy of the American South through differences in status. It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! Charlotte Gilman uses the analogy of entrapment to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage. That is, male overrepresentation decreased in fiction books for both younger (B = -0.02, Z = -4.21, p < .001, OR = 0.985, 95% CI = [0.98, 0.99]) and older children (B = -0.02, Z = -2.63, p = .008, OR = 0.98, 95% CI = [0.96, 0.99]) across the last 60 years, though the effect for younger children did not hold in the most recent subset of books (i.e., 20002020). We coded publication year as the original publication date. For example, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about female madness caused by patriarchal oppression. Gothic literature uses gender to discuss social norms and explore stereotypes while commenting on whether gender stereotypes should be upheld or disrupted in society. The differential frequency of male and female characters in media might be less consequential if the accompanying content counteracted the disproportionate numbers. I had rather be a toad And live upon the vapor of a dungeon Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others uses. The authors note that their study doesnt cover all novels written during this time period, and is missing representation from genre fiction such as romance novels and detective fiction, which became popular in the 20th century. We hope you enjoyed looking at the importance of gender equality through the prism of literature. In particular, explanations are needed for why there is greater parity for human characters when the books are fiction and for non-human characters when the books are non-fiction. Thus, it appears to be the combination of character type and genre that results in significant male overrepresentation, rather than character type or genre alone. When the characters were human, they depicted more female protagonists (0.75:1, 2 = 28.32, p < .001). Othello kills his wife Desdemona because of the false rumors about her unfaithfulness. According to the academics analysis, in books by men, women occupy on average just a quarter to a third of the character-space. The academics were so surprised by these findings, in the very period when we might expect to see the effects of first-wave feminism, that they initially suspected an error in their methods. Such findings are consistent with a broader literature suggesting that women are paramount in promoting diversity. It also focused on the journey of a girl named Scout who challenges gender stereotypes and wants to be a tomboy. How is gender portrayed in childrens literature? For books where the author was listed as a publishing company or an organization, or when the author used gender-neutral pronouns, books were excluded from further analysis (n = 40, or 0.61% of the dataset). Shaded regions show standard errors of binomial logistic regression model fits. A detailed description of the coding guidelines is available on OSF, and a breakdown of the characteristics of our sample by variable of interest is provided in Table 1. But the story has not been widely publicised, they write. In the same period, they saw a decline in the number of named women characters. Writing became a way to voice their rejection of slavery and racism, as well as their claim to freedom and equality. The narrators husband puts his hysteric wife in a nursery room with yellow wallpapers. <>/ExtGState<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 12 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 595.25 842] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> We found a larger male-to-female ratio for non-fiction compared to fiction books, B = 0.29, Z = 3.46, p < .001, OR = 1.33, 95% CI = [1.13, 1.57] (Fig 3C). He depicts two people who are unwilling to accommodate themselves to societys expectations. It contains plenty of useful materials for everyone. In another study, Hamilton et al. Although the autobiographical aspect of The Yellow Wallpaper is compelling, it is the symbolism that adds a lot of meaning to the story. The Representation Of Women In The Novels Of Juan Valera Book PDFs/Epub. These trends declined over time, until by the 1900s, other words were more prominently associated with men and women. Finally, although previous findings have suggested that female authors represent male and female characters at equitable rates [23, 34], no study to date has discussed the interaction between author gender and other important variables, namely character type and target audience. Thats where machine learning comes in. What was meant to act as a liberation from the male gaze turns out to be a different limiting view of women. As a reflection of prominent cultural norms, childrens literature plays an integral role in the acquisition and development of societal attitudes. broad scope, and wide readership a perfect fit for your research every time. Shakespeare merged femininity and masculinity in his characters to show that people of each gender could possess both sets of traits. And machine learning is letting us work with concepts that are fuzzy.. The list includes popular titles like Pride and Prejudice, Dune and some of the novels of Raymond Chandler. A binomial logistic regression analysis revealed that the ratio of male to female central characters changed significantly over the sampled time frame, such that the proportion of male protagonists decreased between 1960 and 2020, reflecting a trend towards parity, B = -0.02, Z = -4.63, p < .001, OR = 0.99, 95% CI = [0.98, 0.99] (Fig 2). We suggest that although there are historical, linguistic, and economic forces working in favor of male overrepresentation, there is also cultural awareness of gender bias. Analysis finds proportion of female authors and characters fell after 19th century, with male authors remaining remarkably resistant to writing women. Within the first passage of chapter two, there is uproar after another clan has "murder[ed] a daughter of Umoufia. Our data point to two such contexts: with human characters in fiction and with non-human characters in non-fiction. The shaded region shows the standard error of the binomial logistic regression model fit. Although the aforementioned explanations do well to account for general male overrepresentation in childrens books, what is needed is an account that illuminates the variation across the different combinations of variables. Moreover, we found that the male-to-female ratio was larger for books targeted to younger children than older children, B = -0.13, Z = -3.86, p < .001, OR = 0.88, 95% CI = [0.83, 0.94] (Fig 3D). endobj The reported effects hold for the most recent decades unless otherwise indicated. The novels were selected primarily from the HathiTrust Digital Library and represented a selection of bestsellers from the years 1703 to 2009. But is it really the only way for them to find peace? The theme of Shakespeares play stems from mens misunderstanding of women and womens inability to protect themselves from societys judgment. As in previous studies, we also found that the male-to-female ratio was larger when the central character was non-human compared to human, B = 0.96, Z = 10.01, p < .001, OR = 2.60, 95% CI = [2.16, 3.15] (Fig 3B). Lorraine Hansberry explores the controversial side of abortion, marriage, and limiting gender roles for women and men. The female characters are not just suffixes to men in this story. Studies have found that female characters in Children's books are ignored most of the times or always under represented thus creating a negative image about women. The 1946 film of Chandlers The Big Sleep. Consistent with this possibility is the observation that males are considered more prototypical than females when categorizing humans [49]. He grinned. But Underwood, and other scholars in the field of digital humanities, see great potential. They had todevote their energy to their husbands. A notable caveat of the present study is that our analyses do not reflect actual reading rates. e0260566. Although the current approach does not guarantee a direct link to reading rates, it nevertheless addresses a critical question about publicationnamely, whether books featuring male versus female protagonists are more likely to be published. Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox. Even if explicit gender discrimination occurs less frequently today than in the past, implicit attitudes about females being submissive and less worthy than males remain pervasive [47, 48]. [22], currently the largest study on gender representation of central characters in childrens books. The dotted line at 0.5 denotes parity. Knowledge of these effects may allow publishers and authors to increase their awareness of the susceptibility to gender bias and strive to achieve gender equity in childrens books. Additionally, we only included books for which the gender of the book author was identifiable and matched for all authors if there was more than one (see below for details). Citation: Casey K, Novick K, Lourenco SF (2021) Sixty years of gender representation in childrens books: Conditions associated with overrepresentation of male versus female protagonists. In terms of contemporary feminist literature, Angrboda's character is a prime example of a strong and complex female protagonist. Despite ample evidence of gender bias in childrens books prior to 2000, there is a dearth of evidence post 2000. Second, there was a significant two-way interaction between author gender and character type, B = 0.52, Z = 2.35, p = .019, OR = 1.68, 95% CI = [1.09, 2.59] (Fig 4B). This article was developed by the editorial team of Custom-Writing.org, a professional writing service with 3-hour delivery. The roles of a mother and a father throughout history. Elizabeth takes pride in herself and calls men out for their rude behavior. <>/Metadata 119 0 R/ViewerPreferences 120 0 R>> Advertising Notice By contrast, overrepresentation of male characters in non-fiction books, both human and non-human, did not decrease significantly across the entire 60-year period, though there was a significant decrease in male overrepresentation in non-fiction books featuring human characters when only considering the last two decades (B = -0.03, Z = -2.35, p = 0.019, OR = 0.97, 95% CI = [0.94, 0.99]). Often referred to as symbolic annihilation, disproportionate gender representation negatively impacts women (and men alike) by sustaining explicit and implicit biases against the female gender and diminishing womens sense of self-worth and belonging [12]. Men were often portrayed as dominant, authoritative, competitive, and aggressive. Gothic authors allowed female characters to break free of stereotypical constraints. We found a similar effect of book genre in relation to age of the target audience, where only changes for fiction books reached statistical significance for the entire 60-year period. Literature authors underrepresented women in their literary texts. An analysis of more than 100,000 novels spanning more than 200 years shows how gendered even seemingly innocuous words can be as well as revealing an unexpected decline in the proportion of female novelists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. These analyses revealed four significant two-way interactions, described in detail below. 191 likes, 10 comments - @cristinalizzul on Instagram: "Huge congrats to these wonderful filmmakers @denheroin @pedrocorrea.mov and the whole cast and cr." In order to obtain a representative sample of the books available to children, we analyzed books accessible online for hard copy purchase or digital reading. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. In this case, that interrupts scholarly assumptions about how the history of literature should track with the history of womens social progress. The protagonist has no choice but to retreat into her obsessive fantasythe only place she can control. She subverts societys ideals by protecting her son, who is a foe of humankind. Addressing this question is a crucial first step in increasing our understanding of gender bias and the potential impact on cognitive and emotional development. 1. Thus, it is not only necessary to strive for equitable representation in the numbers of male and female characters, but also for non-stereotypical depictions of these characters. I would have expected to see some progress, just in terms of equality of representation in women in fiction, Underwood says. Check out the following list and find a topic that will interest you the most: Thank you for reading our guide! In the past, certain books negatively affected individuals perception of themselves in several ways: Due to these factors, literature served as a backdrop for the emerging of gender criticism. However, most of the time, it is the theme that compels you. Oil painting reproduction of 'Poor Lisa' by Orest . The aforementioned effects did not indicate any interactions with publication year, suggesting stability of these effects across time. (modern). The books above are just three of the many that have either catalogue the journey of female writers or greatly affected/changed literature in some way. We suggest that this comprehensive account of the factors influencing the rates of appearance of male and female protagonists can be leveraged to develop specific recommendations for promoting more equitable gender representation in childrens literature, with important consequences for child development and society. As female authors were rare, most books that featured women put them in stereotypical roles. If this trend is real, it is an important fact about literary history that ought to be foregrounded even, say, in anthology introductions.
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