[Submitted on 4 Nov 2026]
Title:Matriarchy Classics: A Computational Approach to Swap Only Gendered Words in Classic Novels
View a PDF of the paper titled Matriarchy Classics: A Computational Approach to Swap Only Gendered Words in Classic Novels, by Rachel Lea Draelos
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Abstract:This paper proposes a trustworthy computational method to gender-swap public domain novels, with programmatic guarantees that only gendered words are inverted and all other words are left unchanged. This may seem like a simple task, but both large language models and naive rule-based methods fail to complete it. The proposed method includes a custom whitespace-preserving tokenizer, gender-swap mappings across plural and possessive forms, pronoun handling, and a character renaming strategy. It shortens the time required to gender-swap a novel from weeks of manual labor to minutes. The method is demonstrated on two public-domain novels. Pride and Prejudice is transported to matriarchal Regency England, where inheritance flows through daughters, mothers rule the household, and a frantic Mr. Bennet is determined to secure advantageous marriages for his sons. The Great Gatsby pivots to a matriarchal Jazz Age where newly-rich Ms. Gatsbee throws lavish parties in the hopes of reuniting with her lost love, David, who is now married to the violent Thelma Buchanan. Gender-swapped novels could serve as useful tools to investigate the gender biases of readers, authors, societies, and AI systems.
Comments: 19 pages, 4 tables
Subjects:
Computation and Language (cs.CL)
Cite as: arXiv:2611.07134 [cs.CL]
(or arXiv:2611.07134v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2611.07134
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Rachel Draelos [view email] [v1] Wed, 4 Nov 2026 21:03:10 UTC (341 KB)
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