# Don't any men read Jane Austen's novels?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 6, 2006, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338 "2006-11-06T19:40:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/21 "2006-11-07T01:36:48Z")
I’ve read Sense and Sensibility, although I must admit that I read it mainily because I enjoyed the film so much. I did like the novel quite a bit.
---
### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/22 "2006-11-07T02:25:45Z")
Vladimir Nabokov devoted a chapter to _Mansfield Park_ in his [_Lectures on Literature_](http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0156027755):
> [@](#):
>
> _Mansfield Park_ is a fairy tale, but then, all novels are, in a sense, fairy tales. At first sight Jane Austen’s manner and matter may seem to be old-fashioned, stilted, unreal. But this is a delusion to which the bad reader succumbs. The good reader is aware that the quest for real life, real people, and so forth is a meaningless process when speaking of books. . . . The charm of _Mansfield Park_ can be fully enjoyed only when we adopt its conventions, its rules, its enchanting make-believe. Mansfield Park never existed, and its people never lived.
>
> Miss Austen’s is not a violently vivid masterpiece as some other novels in this series are. Novels like _Madame Bovary_ or _Anna Karenin_ are delightful explosions admirably controlled. _Mansfield Park_, on the other hand, is the work of a lady and the game of a child. But from that workbasket comes exquisite needlework art, and there is a streak of marvelous genius in that child.
---
### Author:  [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/23 "2006-11-07T02:48:34Z")
I didn’t read any until I was in my thirties, and I have to be in the right mood to get into her style, but I have greatly enjoyed her works.
Mark Twain didn’t, though. Something about it wasn’t a library if it had one of her books in it. (Harsh, Sam. Harsh.)
---
### Author:  [@LVBoPeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LVBoPeep)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/24 "2006-11-07T03:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=phouka]
I didn’t read any until I was in my thirties, and I have to be in the right mood to get into her style, but I have greatly enjoyed her works.
Mark Twain didn’t, though. Something about it wasn’t a library if it had one of her books in it. (Harsh, Sam. Harsh.)
[/QUOTE]
\>\>
I enjoy both Mark Twain and Jane Austen, and I always wondered about this quote of Mark Twain’s
“_Everytime_ I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Mark Twain
How many times do you all read books you hate?
And to compare Jane to Danielle Steele just blows…me…away…
---
### Author:  [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/25 "2006-11-07T03:09:17Z")
If he likes _Vanity Fair_, he’ll probably. Like some by Austen. But it’s as Nabokov said above. You have to know how to identify with somethign alien to most.
---
### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/26 "2006-11-07T03:29:13Z")
My impression of Austen was always that her command of language was exquisite and the stories utterly excruciating, every one a series of comedy-of-manners encounters leading up to the inevitable engagement and/or wedding.
So I can certainly understand why a lot of people dislike her books; unless that’s what turns your personal crank, not a whole hell of a lot HAPPENS. That doesn’t at all detract from her skill with language, but it makes it a boring go for a lot of people.
---
### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/27 "2006-11-07T06:06:48Z")
[QUOTE=teela brown]
So how about it? Don’t any of you guys read her masterpieces? Are all of her works considered “chick lit”?
[/QUOTE]
I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels. (My GF says I’m _“en rose,”_ but the last time I checked I had testicles and everything.)
It’s a bit silly, but I was compelled to after coming to really appreciate the fragment of the first line of _Sense and Sensibility_ that’s featured in _Harvey_, after several viewings. (As it happens I think that Mary Chase’s writing consciously reflects some of the sparkle of Jane Austen, albeit with an updated idiom.)
That’s only partly true, of course. I read her because she’s Important English Literature, like Huxley, Joyce, Poe, and all those other blokes, (and if I had literary pretensions I would insert some devastatingly clever parenthetical metaphor involving pens and inkwells here,) but I read all of it because it was rather entertaining.
---
### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/28 "2006-11-07T06:07:49Z")
_[opens zipper and looks in shorts]_ I’m a man, and I first read \* Emma\* in college. I thought it was the most trivial and tedious book I had ever read. A bunch of silly women worrying about how to get married.
Some ten years later, the Emma Thompson film of [_Sense and Sensibility_](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0114388/) came out. Because I had liked everything else Ms. Thompson had done, and because I was willing to give Jane Austen a second chance, I went to see it and found it charming and delightful. The next year the Gwyneth Paltrow [_Emma_](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0116191/) came out, and it was every bit as wonderful.
So I decided to give Austen another go. To my surprise, the book I had found tedious and boring ten years earlier had somehow transformed into a witty comedy of manners with brilliant use of language, sharply drawn characters, and delightfully dry humor. I immediately went on an Austen kick and read four of the remaining five novels in the space of a few weeks. (I intentionally left _Mansfield Park_ for later.) \* Pride and Prejudice\* is one of my favorite books of all time.
Austen was a perceptive observer of human nature, and her characters depict a wide range of personalities and emotions. While it’s true that all of the stories center around a young woman’s efforts to find a husband, it’s amazing the range of colors she can pull out of this apparently narrow palette.
Another wonderful aspect of Austen’s books is the window they give us into pre-industrial England. Life was very different for people back then, and the constraints of society which may seem ridiculous to us were very real to them. It’s important to understand this to really get the full impact of the stories.
But if you can put your mind into that era, enjoy the beautiful language, and look for the social satire and dry wit, you’ll find Austen’s novels to be among the most enjoyable books you’ve ever read.
I’d strongly urge anyone here who has said they hate Austen to give her another chance, as I did, especially if it’s been at least five or ten years. She’s easy to underestimate and misunderstand, but once you “get” her, she’s absolutely brilliant and delightful.
---
### Author:  [@Leviosaurus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leviosaurus)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/29 "2006-11-07T07:12:15Z")
Twain \*detested \* Austen
[QUOTE=Mark Twain]
To me his prose is unreadable–like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Mark Twain]
Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Mark Twain]
I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
[/QUOTE]
Me? Hell, I can’t even stand the movies. Bleag.
---
### Author:  [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/30 "2006-11-07T07:56:08Z")
I’m a man. Not a man in the Hemingway sense of the word, but definitely male.
I’ve watched the movies with delight. I’ve seen the recent Keira Knightly adaptation of Pride & Prejudice several times already.
It did make me buy a Penguin edition of P&P. Which I started to read. And I have to say, I thought the dialogue was _great_. I didn’t finish the book though, 'cause the flow of the story-telling didn’t quite pull me with it. But I intend to go back and finish it, it is one of the essential readings of the 19th century after all.
---
### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/31 "2006-11-07T10:05:24Z")
I love Jane Austen’s novels; I’ve read all of them except for _Northanger Abbey_. _Mansfield Park_ is probably my favorite.
My feeling is that any man with security in his own masculinity of any worth, and a modicum of decent literary taste, should find much rewarding reading in Austen’s novels.
Other posters before me have said much of what I also like in her novels, so I won’t repeat or paraphrase. Just say, yes. Right; _this_ is why Austen is so great.
> [@commonsense](#):
>
> …a witty comedy of manners with brilliant use of language, sharply drawn characters, and delightfully dry humor.
For those unable to bring themselves to appreciate or sympathize with the specific point of view in Austen’s novels (usually because it’s too far outside their own banal experience), and the broader insight into human nature which Austen illuminates from that point of view, I have only pity. You’re missing out.
---
### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/32 "2006-11-07T10:37:11Z")
I read Pride and Prejudice for school. Alas, I had read Wuthering Heights just beforehand, and the former paled into insignificance next to the Bronte work. Not been tempted to pursue any more Austen since.
---
### Author:  [@scareyfaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scareyfaerie)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/33 "2006-11-07T10:47:03Z")
I asked 'im indoors if he’d ever read any of Jane Austen’s work. His response was “Jane who?”
I think that means no.
---
### Author:  [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/34 "2006-11-07T14:22:36Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay]
So I can certainly understand why a lot of people dislike her books; unless that’s what turns your personal crank, not a whole hell of a lot HAPPENS.
[/QUOTE]
But that’s the thing! A glance takes on huge meaning in a world where not much happens. They way they can swoon over a moment and have all this time to analyze exactly what it meant. OK, that does sound boring but it gives an insight into this alien world of society types.
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/35 "2006-11-07T14:37:24Z")
I’ve read everything she wrote - most more than once. To the best of my recollection, none of them were required as coursework. My eldest daughter’s middle name is Jane, sort of a conflation of Austen and Eyre. I’m also a huge Thomas Hardy fan, so the period obviously appeals to me.
JA writes beautifully, and should be enjoyed by anyone who is a fan of the English language.
I also readily admit that the sap in me enjoys that you know things are pretty much going to work out well in the end.
In case you think my tastes in fiction are unidimensional, Harry Crews, Graham Greene, Jim Harrison, and Walker Percy are also at the top of my list.
---
### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/36 "2006-11-07T14:43:02Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Graham Greene
[hijack]
_The Human Factor_ is a great book.
[/hijack]
---
### Author:  [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/37 "2006-11-07T15:06:30Z")
[“Dear Margo”](http://news.yahoo.com/s/dear_margo/20060922/en_dm/margo_howard20060922) got a letter (if it’s not a hoax) from a man who takes his interest in Jane Austen just a tad too far, IMHO. :dubious:
---
### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/38 "2006-11-07T15:16:36Z")
I’m a man (heck, a self-described _Word_Man, even) - I’ve read 'em - well most of 'em - and really enjoyed them.
Regarding dismissing the language - well, they were written some time ago, when the language was different and writing was a formal affair - I just mentally take that into account. No different than reading Shakespeare or Chaucer or Milton with an eye towards their context.
Regarding dismissing her work as “chick lit” - well, sure, I suppose it is - but is is the _good kind_ - just like When Harry Met Sally is the good kind of chick flic, IMHO. Don’t you see this all the time - where there is an example of something that succeeds, but ends up influencing many other things that fail? As a guitar player, Eddie Van Halen is an incredibly talented guitarist, but spawned a whole host of dweedly-dweedly hair metal drivel - but that is not his fault, per se. (I gotta start a thread on that…)
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/39 "2006-11-07T15:25:15Z")
I don’t dismiss them because they’re “chick lit”, or because they’re written in a different style (heck, I’ve read wordy 19th century and much earlier styles). But there’s something I can’t stand about Austen. Her book was harder to work through than Henmry James’ _The Beast in the Jungle_, which combines James’ famous impenetrable style with a plot in which nothing hsppens.
---
### Author:  [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2006, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/40 "2006-11-07T16:05:36Z")
[QUOTE=Walloon]
Vladimir Nabokov devoted a chapter to _Mansfield Park_ in his [_Lectures on Literature_](http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0156027755):
[/QUOTE]
Wow! My current project is to read all of Nabokov–I thought for sure I could get here first on this one!
Nabokov originally thought Austen was a “lady author” (with bad implications) but was convinced by Edmund Wilson to try Mansfield Park for an English Lit survey course he had to teach at Cornell. There is a little sketch he did of the way the characters cross and recross paths in one of the outdoor scenes–very typical for Nabokov who wanted to “visualize” detail and loved structure.
Nabokov however continued to dislike Henry James, despite rereading him at Wilson’s behest.
Rudyard Kipling is another man who thought “England’s Jane” was as good as they get.
IMHO, Austen is second only to Shakespeare. It’s all about the characterization.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338.md?page=3)