The story of Inkle and Yarico starts out as a classic tale of romance: after being stranded in the West Indies, a man named Thomas Inkle is cared for by a young Native American woman named Yarico and the two fall in love. But, when they reach Barbados, Inkle remembers his love for wealth is greater than that which he feels for Yarico and decides to sell her into slavery, throwing away the grand chivalrous promises he made when he was infatuated. Given Inkle’s cruelty, perhaps it isn’t surprising to find out that many iterations of the story ended up being sympathetic toward Yarico in one way or another. One such retelling, a chapter of Mary Hopkins Pilkington’s 1799 book A Mirror for the Female Sex titled ‘Ingratitude,’ was the focus of my textual analysis assignment. The chapter begins with a description of ingratitude, which is called “amidst one of the most vicious vices to which human nature is prone,” (159) then moves into its version of Inkle and Yarico, where Inkle serves as the exact definition of ungrateful.

What I found to be particularly interesting about this version of the tale was that, despite being written by a woman for an almost exclusively female audience, this text does not specifically tie Inkle’s actions to his gender. Instead, he is used as an example of how no one should behave, regardless of their gender:

There is something so contrary to honour, so repugnant to humanity, and so devoid of principle, even in the bare forgetfulness of favours, that those who are capable of practising such a mode of conduct, are thought of with contempt, and treated with scorn. (160)

This observation is what brought me to the broad research question: How does word choice mark particular readings of Inkle’s actions? That is, what might the presence or absence of certain gender-specific words indicate about the author’s perspective on a particular trait present in a text (in this case, ingratitude)? To explore this question, I compared ‘Ingratitude’ to Richard Steele’s 1767 version of Inkle and Yarico.

Recognizing Bias

One of the first steps in tackling this question is to recognize whether or not a particular version of Inkle and Yarico’s story is sympathetic to Yarico. While texts sympathetic to Inkle may very well contribute to the research question, focusing on Yarico-biased stories functions as something of a control in this analytical experimentation.

Using Voyant Tools, I was able to visualize the most frequent words found in ‘Ingratitude,’ as well the context in which they are found. The chart below gives the top 10 words in the text.

Words	Frequency
inkle	8
ingratitude	7
yarico	6
mind	5
affection	4
love	4
nature	4
barbadoes	3
felt	3

This grouping of words is rather unsurprising seeing as they all deal with love, the two main characters, or ingratitude in general. It is important to note that, despite “inkle” being most present, the text is still sympathetic to Yarico, evidence for which can be seen in the contexts that “yarico” appears. Using Voyant Tool’s data on the term “yarico”‘s contexts, one can see how the author feels about her situation based on the adjectives put to use. In 4 of 6 instances of “yarico,” she is described as “unsuspecting,” “unfortunate” and “unsuspicious,” all speaking to the rather innocent, pure role that Yarico plays, and highlighting the way Inkle took advantage of her. Needless to say, Inkle is not painted in the same positive light. In one case, he is referred to as “the despicable Inkle” solidifying his role in this version of the story as an ungrateful villain.

Bias toward Yarico is also found in Steele’s version of the story. This is not necessarily evident in the most-frequent words of the text, but rather in the broader contexts in which they appear. Steele’s version of Inkle and Yarico is used to supplement an argument a character, Arietta, is making about how male writers portray women: with women often being the problematic characters of the story. The 10 most frequently used words of the text (shown below) indicate the gender-focused nature of this version of the story. These words shown in-context (“You men are writers, and can represent us women as unbecoming as you please in your works, while we are unable to return the injury,” for example) allow us to see that the text is sympathetic to Yarico because she is a woman victim to the evil-yet-somewhat-expected actions of Inkle.

Words	Frequency
man	7
women	6
inkle	4
lion	4
men	4
story	4
yarico	4
young	4
agreeable	3
arietta	3

Lexical Differences

Using the tool SameDiff, I compared the words used in Pilkington’s and Steele’s versions of Inkle and Yarico and which resulted in the data shown below.

Exclusive to Pilkington	Found in Both	Exclusive to Steele
ingratitude, nature, affection, conduct, humanity, vices, existence	inkle, yarico, man, mind, love, barbadoes, woman, shore, ship	women, men, sex, sexes, hair, dress, matron, lovers,

Given these data, it becomes rather clear which text is more focused on something like humanist thinking and which is more focused on the gender. Each text quite obviously has the same subject matter, but Pilkington and Steele take this is two different directions to supplement their arguments.

Conclusion

To answer my research question, I would come to the conclusion that word choice is rather telling when trying to decipher what use a version of Inkle and Yarico has. As seen in the above sections of this blog post, the most frequently used words in both analyzed versions of Inkle and Yarico point in two different directions: one toward understanding representations of Inkle’s actions as detrimental to women, and the other toward seeing those same actions as deplorable for humans in general. Words in the realm of “love,” “women,” and “men” point toward a very gendered reading, while those like “humanity,” “existence,” and “conduct” offer something of a humanist perspective on Inkle and Yarico.

Metadata

• Publication Year: 1799
• Publication Place: Hartford Connecticut
• Format: book chapter
• Intended Audience: female students at a Ladies’ School
• Author: Mary Hopkins Pilkington
• Author Gender: Female
• Bias/Sympathy: Yarico
• Perspective: Humanist
• Gendered Reading?: False