Figure 3.4: E.L. James, the Fifty Shades Trilogy and Suspense written by female authors

Colour version of the graph on p. 72 of The Riddle of Literary Quality.

E.L. James, the Fifty Shades Trilogy and Suspense written by female authors, principal components analysis (1000 most frequent words). Novels translated from English are shown with an E_ before the author and abbreviated title, and originally Dutch-language novels are marked N_. The O_ for the Fifty Shades trilogy stands for Other. Measure: PCA, correlation version. Figure 3.4

Additional graphs: Fifty Shades Trilogy and Suspense written by female authors

These graphs have also been created using the Stylo Package for R. See Figure 3.1 for more information about the package and the measures.

In Figure 3.4, the Fifty Shades trilogy appears very close to two suspense novels by Saskia Noort. It is particularly striking that the trilogy is close to Dutch novels rather than English suspense books by women. The cluster analysis visualised in Figure 3.4.1 gives a slightly different view: Noort is still around, but so are a number of other female authors of Dutch thrillers, and the distance to that Dutch cluster is, as in Figure 3.3.1, the distance to books from the Romance category Delta score 2. In the series of cluster analyses visualised in Figure 3.4.2, that picture does not change. It is difficult to ascertain why in the principal components analysis Noort is closest to the trilogy.

Figure 3.4.1 Fifty Shades Trilogy and Suspense written by female author

Cluster analysis (1000 most frequent words). Measure: Classic Delta. Figure 3.4.1

Figure 3.4.2 Fifty Shades Trilogy and Suspense written by female author

Bootstrap consensus tree (100 - 1000 most frequent words, increment 100, consensus strength 0.5). Measure: Classic Delta. Figure 3.4.2

Conclusion

The additional measurements nuance the picture that the Fifty Shades trilogy partly overlaps with Suspense novels by female authors in terms of word frequencies. What remains fascinating is that the trilogy is considerably closer to Dutch than to translated novels. We do not know who the translators of the trilogy are - do some of them (we do know it was a team) perhaps also appear as authors themselves in the suspense novels analysed?