The claim that novels – and society – are now all about selfishness is a gross misreading
The word 'duty' is much more
common in the works of Jane Austen, and the word 'choose' much more frequent in
novels of the present day Photo:
Alamy
Patricia Greenfield, a psychologist at UCLA, has undertaken a systematic
analysis of 1.5 million books published over the past 200 years, to discover how
values have changed. Rather than read them, she fed the texts into the Google
program Ngram. It analysed the frequency of vocabulary, and in particular the
vocabulary of choice, compared with the vocabulary of obligation.
Professor Greenfield’s test asked how frequently the words “duty” and
“oblige” occurred, and how often “choose” and “get”. She discovered that the
word “duty” is much more common in Jane Austen, and the word “choose” much more
frequent in novels of the present day.
It is suggested that present-day novels are more reflective and internal, and
have less sense of unarguable duty.
Well, I hope Professor Greenfield’s analysis took account of the fact that
Jane Austen usually spells “choose” “chuse”. Examination of the collected works
on my Kindle shows that Austen uses the word “duty” 120 times and “chuse” 61.
These studies fill one with a sense of envy for the analysts, who apparently
feel no requirement to read a book before asking computer programs to come to
conclusions about it. The assumption, that duty and obligation in a novel are
only expressed by the use of the words “duty” or “obligation”, is staggeringly
naive. An age which speaks ceaselessly about duty may value it highly, or have a
nagging anxiety about it.
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