1: Manual Network Analysis

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I apologize for the poor photo quality. For my manual network analysis I decided to make a chart of the first act of Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde. The gender of each respective node is represented by color on the chart (Orange is for dudes and silver is for dudettes) as well as by numbers on the table. In case you can’t tell from the fuzzy image, I also included the respective weight of each node within their respective circles. My first thought when doing this was to note how close to symmetrical the first act of the play is with all of the action centered on Lady Windermere. I also noticed how a large portion of the dialogue between characters on stage is spent discussing the characters that are off stage. I wonder if we could decipher a new way of determining centrality based on the subject of the dialogue provided. Though Lady Windermere is obviously the center of the act, it can be noted that Lord Darlington is discussed by others nearly as often as he talks about himself (nearly), and Lady Erlynne’s presence is central to the conversations of this act though she doesn’t appear until much later in the play. I wonder if this is a trend in other Victorian/decadence social comedies and, if so, how that can change or enrich our understandings of the comedy and critique that these plays offer. I defer further investigation to our resident aspiring victorianist, Matt.

2: Network Analysis with Gephi