Exploring who has power in Young Adult Fiction

By Sarah Jane Mukherjee, Maria Leedham, Sally Hunt

In the real world, certain peoples, groups and organisations have power and others don’t.  But what about in fictional worlds where authors are able to reject historical, social or cultural inequalities and can instead disrupt, recast and reimagine discourses of power?

Our research into discourses of representation in YA fiction focuses on the 50 best-selling YA books in the UK (2017-2022), including such titles as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Fault in our Stars by John Green and The Cousins by Karen McManus. We use the methodology of corpus linguistics to identify and explore lexical patterns in this repertoire of reading aimed at young people aged 11-18.

This blog charts the starting points of one thread in our research: who has power in YA fiction? 

There are 917 mentions of the word power in the 50 books, and these show a wide range of meanings using the word.  An example of the range of meanings is illustrated here in a snapshot of 10 instances of the phrase ‘a power’ from the software AntConc (Table 1).  The concordance lines show the different contexts, from a power drill and power couple, to a power differential and a power a character is longing to use.

Table 1 Concordance lines for ‘a power’ [sort 1L, 1R, 2R by value] using AntConc software

 

File

Left Context

Hit

Right Context

1

45 Jane Eyre

such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has

 a power

beyond beauty.” Mr Rochester had sometimes read my

2

31 Northern Lights

made her feel close to coldness, danger, brutal power, but

 a power

controlled by intelligence; and not a human intelligence

3

32 You’ll be the Death of Me

Failed at anything. Samantha Sterling and James Shepard have been

 a power

couple ever since they met at Columbia Business

4

32 You’ll be the Death of Me

my own eighteenth birthday coming up next spring. “There’s

 a power

differential between teachers and students,” Wes pointed out.”

5

36 Gone

always known that Orc came from a tough home. But

 a power

drill was off the hook. He himself came

6

23 Children of Blood and Bone

rediscovered truth. He has the power now. And it’s

 a power

he’s hungry to use. “Zélie!” I scream.

7

36 Gone

saw him as she had been, like he’d grabbed

 a power

line. His body jerked like a marionette. The

8

30 The Cruel Prince

time, as though I have a power of my own,

 a power

Madoc cannot take from me. Even thinking of

9

03 The Secret Commonwealth

she said. He knew what she meant. Will Parry had

 a power

of becoming invisible that had astonished the witches

10

30 The Cruel Prince

me feel, for the first time, as though I have

 a power

of my own, a power

 

Ignoring meaning such as a power drill, and a power line, even this selected view into the use of ‘a power’ shows that some characters have power and others don’t.

The word cloud in Figure 1 shows the top 25 words associated with power, the size of the font indicates that it is more frequent within the corpus.  

An image showing a word cloud. The image shows combinations of two words each including the word power, for example, the power, his power, of power, my power, their power, black power. The two-word combinations are presented in black and different shades of grey, they are also presented in different size fonts. The power is in black and is the largest two-word combination, black power, have power, are shown in pale grey and the smallest font. His power is shown larger than her power and their power. Your power, their power, a power are the same size.
Figure 1 Word Cloud created using 25 words drawn from Cluster with ‘power’ AntConc.1

 

The Word Cloud suggests that power is attributed to different characters (my power, his power, her power, their power, your power etc.).  To explore further, we decided to focus on the top 10 books as a starting point for more detailed analysis and investigate the 114 instances of power (including all meanings associate with power) in the 1.1 million words in the top 10 books (Table 2). 

Table 2 Top 10 best selling books in DoRA_50 2
  Title, Author
1 One of us is lying, Karen McManus
2 They both die at the end, Adam Silvera
3 The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman
4 Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer
5 La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
6 A good girl’s guide to murder, Holly Jackson
7 The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
8 Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher
9 Two can keep a secret, Karen McManus
10 One of us is next, Karen McManus

 

We found that in the top 10 books, characters are more likely to be described as having power (n=64) than not (n=12).  However, power is not distributed across characters equally: male characters (including vampires) are mentioned in relation to power (n=30) more often than female characters (including witches and vampires) (n=18). 

For female characters, 13 of those instances have power (including the witches and the vampire), and four have no power (of whom three used to have power).

In examples where female characters have power, they:

  • are cautioned about using their power, e.g. ‘There’s a time to show your own power and a time to seem so insignificant…’ (The Secret Commonwealth)
  • are concerned about the abuse of power, e.g. ‘it would be dreadful to have that sort of power and not be able to turn it off’ (The Secret Commonwealth)
  • suffer a loss of power, e.g. ‘her words used to have power’ (The Hate U Give)

The findings also show that female characters do not always have innate power themselves but are awarded power through:

  • Money, e.g. ‘she only did it for the money.  Money and the power it gave her.’ (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder)
  • Others, e.g. ‘haughtily while enjoying the power they gave her’ (The Secret Commonwealth)

‘Power’ is found in relation to male characters more often than female characters.  For those male characters who are described as without or lacking power (n-4) three are vampires.  These instances are interesting as the vampires in Midnight Sun have innate power, yet they question additional powers: e.g. ‘was life even in my power?’.

Human male characters are positioned in relation to power differently to female characters.  They:

  • are more powerful than the powerful female characters (e.g. witches)
  • experience new powers, e.g. ‘He was discovering a new power’ (The Secret Commonwealth)
  • are awarded even more power by other male characters
  • have a form of power over female characters
  • abuse their power, e.g. ‘Delilah can’t believe Victor would abuse his power’ (They both die at the end)
  • have power relating to romantic relationships, e.g. ‘I still had the power to dazzle her’ (Midnight Sun)

We recognise that the way in which power, social equality and inequality is constructed through language goes far beyond the explicit use of the word ‘power’.  However, the findings drawn from the top ten books hint at discourses of power within YA fiction that deserve more attention: female and male characters appear to hold and experience power differently.  We intend now to extend the analysis of power to the full 50 book set, and we may consider including related words, for example, ‘powerful’, ‘powerless’.  However, this early foray into power has started to reveal potential lexical patterns revealing discourses of power in YA fiction.  We’re excited to start the next stage and to investigate whether the top 50 books are indeed showing discourses of ‘big, male, healthy power’ (The Secret Commonwealth).

 

1Grisha power (n-16) appears in Leigh Bardugo’s two books: Six of Crows and the sequel Crooked Kingdom, Grishas are indentures to Councilman Hoede

2Two books The Secret Commonwealth and La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman appear in the top 10 accounting for 28% of the total words. Over half the instances of power (52%) occur in his two books, and this is reflected in the number of examples that draw on his work here. One book in the top 10, Thirteen Reasons Why does not have any instances of power.