# 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:** 19
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/61 "2006-11-08T02:05:44Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Which kind of takes the edge off, no? I must concede, my memory of _S&S_ was foggy, and it appears the Dashwood ladies fell on hard times, but they began well-off, and in the end comfort is restored rather neatly. I find it hard to describe the Bennets as “penniless”, just in danger of harder times should they not marry well.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t need them edgy. Edgy does not equal well written.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/62 "2006-11-08T02:13:34Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Well jeez, true poverty and bastard children? I obviously missed the weightier Austen novels.
[/QUOTE]
No, you probably haven’t done a close enough read. These are the minor characters - the Miss Bates who don’t have enough to eat except through Emma’s (and the other gentlemen and ladies) charity. Eliza Williams in Sense and Sensibility - who we never meet and only hear of.
Her other big one is unhappy marriages.
These are supposed to be comedies (mostly, I don’t find Mansfield Park amusing), but they do have depth.
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### Author:  [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/63 "2006-11-08T02:20:56Z")
Well, it has been almost twenty years.
Maybe I should give them another chance, or read another Austen novel.
Howabout this: Is there an Austen novel that _doesn’t_ revolve almost completely around social climbing and end in florid, yet lustless romanticism?
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/64 "2006-11-08T02:53:16Z")
There are only five of them or so:
Pride and Prejudice - Elizabeth marries Darcy - perhaps the most advantageous marriage in Austen.
Sense and Sensibility - the heroine of Sense and Sensibility - Elinor - ends up worse off financially than in the beginning of the book - she ends up married to a relatively poor clergyman, but is happy.
Northanger Abbey - its been a while, I don’t remember liking Northanger Abbey.
Persuasion - Anne Eliot ends up worse off - her father was rather wealthy, but has spent all his wealth. She turns down her wealthy cousin for a sea captain.
Mansfield Park - the darkest. Fanny, its heroine, I find to be insipid (so did Jane Austen’s mother). She also turns down a wealthier suitor than the one she ends up with.
Emma - Emma is unusual. Unlike most of Austen’s other heroines, Emma is a heiress in her own right. This one isn’t directly about economics (although this one has Harriet Smith and the Miss Bates in it), its possibly the most direct comedy of manners.
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### Author:  [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/65 "2006-11-08T02:56:13Z")
Thanks for the review!
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### Author:  [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/66 "2006-11-08T03:33:35Z")
Mansfield Park is interesting. Fanny has quite the backbone under her insipidness, and while there’s a good bit of suffering in silence while growing ever paler and weaker etc., she has principles and sticks with them and deals with the consequences which definitely involve a strong possibility of poverty and sinking into a world lacking in genteelness. I’m a Fanny admirer, though, and I do understand why people don’t like her. I think arguments can be made in both directions.
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### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/67 "2006-11-08T15:18:43Z")
I’ll just mention, for the benefit of anyone thinking about getting into Austen by way of the films or miniseries that have been based on the novels, that the 1999 film of _Mansfield Park_ starring Frances O’Connor takes extreme liberties with the character of Fanny Price. It’s as though they pulled Elizabeth Bennet out of P&P and dropped her into MP. Fanny Price is not the firebrand and feminist Ms. O’Connor portrays under the direction and writing of Patricia Rozema.
That film has a lovely period charm to it, and is relatively true to the plot of the novel, but the personality of Fanny has been completely altered, and a few overt modern attitudes have been jarringly inserted. The [user comments](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0178737/usercomments) section at the IMDb entry on the film include some relevant critiques. So I would not recommend seeing that particular film before reading the book.
On the other hand, I can heartily recommend the Emma Thompson _Sense and Sensibility_ and the Gwyneth Paltrow _Emma_ to one and all, before or after reading the respective books. (Ms. Thompson won an Oscar for her adaptation of the novel.)
Finally, [it appears from IMDb](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000807/) that Britain’s ITV has commissioned new versions of at least three of the novels (_Persuasion. Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey_, and possibly _Sense and Sensibility_) for release in 2007.
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### Author:  [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/68 "2006-11-08T15:40:51Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Well, it has been almost twenty years.
Maybe I should give them another chance, or read another Austen novel.
Howabout this: Is there an Austen novel that _doesn’t_ revolve almost completely around social climbing and end in florid, yet lustless romanticism?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, they’re really not trying to climb - it’s about survival. And the romanticism is hardly lustless.
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### Author:  [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/69 "2006-11-08T15:54:05Z")
Hrm. Well maybe my views of it all are just too jaundiced by time, and I need to reconsider.
I still can’t sit through more than ten minutes of the _P&P_ miniseries, though (one of my wife’s absolute faves, which can still get her misty-eyed despite the fact she’s watched it about 13 gajillion times…Colin Firth never ceases to, uh, inspire…), and perhaps these adaptations take too many liberties.
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### Author:  [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/70 "2006-11-08T16:15:16Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
Hrm. Well maybe my views of it all are just too jaundiced by time, and I need to reconsider.
I still can’t sit through more than ten minutes of the _P&P_ miniseries, though (one of my wife’s absolute faves, which can still get her misty-eyed despite the fact she’s watched it about 13 gajillion times…Colin Firth never ceases to, uh, inspire…), and perhaps these adaptations take too many liberties.
[/QUOTE]
The P&P miniseries is really truthful to the book. If you don’t like that, you probably just won’t like it. That’s ok, not your thing. However P&P is the most “romantic” of the novels.
What you don’t get from the P&P miniseries is that as long as Mr. Bennett is alive, they have quite a comfortable life. The moment he dies, they are living almost destitute - you do get a flavor of that in the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility where they talk about not being able to afford meat, and the only reason they live in as nice a house as they do is that Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin owns it and basically lets her live there at a below market rent. You see these young women with fairly extravengant lifestyles, but unless they marry - and marry at least at their income - they can’t maintain them. They end up living in garrets as the governesses for more fortunate women’s children, or being “companions” to old ladies, or married economically below them, out of the gentry and into the working class - into farm families or tradesfamiles.
Edith Wharton wrote the same theme with edge 100 years later (and set in the U.S.) when she wrote House of Mirth. Not nearly as enjoyable.
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### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/71 "2006-11-08T16:54:22Z")
[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
The P&P miniseries is really truthful to the book. If you don’t like that, you probably just won’t like it. That’s ok, not your thing.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll take exception to this because, having seen most of the miniseries based on Austen books, I find that the slavish faithfulness of some of them makes them far more tedious than the books. At least, this is how I react to them.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s entirely possible – and perhaps preferable – to make a two-hour film that is faithful to the spirit of Austen’s books, even at the cost of cutting scenes and simplifying plots. Since there is relatively little dramatic action in Austen, spreading it out over six hours isn’t likely to be as interesting as compressing it into two. I find several such films (including, for example, _Clueless_) to be far more enjoyable than some five- or six-hour adaptations that may use large stretches of dialogue from the books verbatim, but that are lifeless and claustrophobic. This is especially true of some of the early 1970s BBC productions that were mostly studio-bound. If this was their first exposure to Austen, it’s no wonder some people thought she was dull.
The same story read from the page is a completely different experience, largely because we have the delightful language of our narrator to hold our interest and our mind’s eye to sketch the characters and paint the scenes. In a film (or miniseries), Austen’s words come only through dialogue (if then), and on their own can seem stilted and unnatural. When reading the books, we are immersed in her world and her language, and the characters’ speech is a natural part of that world.
Even in the case of the best long-form adaptations, sitting down to watch six hours of television can seem more daunting than spending a much longer period reading a novel. Most people today have higher expectations for visual entertainment and are more easily bored in that setting than when reading. In fact, this may be an area in which the male reaction is significantly different from the female. Being more visually oriented in general, men may find a miniseries less engrossing than a two-hour film or than reading the original text.
So I would _not_ say that if someone doesn’t enjoy one of the miniseries that he/she won’t enjoy the book. The two are completely different experiences.
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### Author:  [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/72 "2006-11-08T17:03:23Z")
[QUOTE=commasense]
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s entirely possible – and perhaps preferable – to make a two-hour film that is faithful to the spirit of Austen’s books, even at the cost of cutting scenes and simplifying plots.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, _word_. There’s one scene, I think it comes pretty early on, being the one that usually sends me screaming from the room, where Mrs. Bennet is holding court and generally behaving like an overbearing, hysterical imbecile. She prattles on while the girls sit in silence for what seems like an eternity, and my one overpowering instinct is to take a scone and gag her with it. Yes, this does wonders to give us a sense of what a tedious, maddening presence Mrs. Bennet can be, but I don’t find several minutes of her neurotic stream-of-consciousness (such as it is) prattling at all entertaining or edifying in any way. If this is truly faithful to the book, I’ll likely _really_ hate it now that I’m older and more set in my ways.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2006, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/73 "2006-11-08T21:26:11Z")
That makes a lot of sense, **commasense**. I’ve never seen the miniseries and have no particular desire to—I would rather re-read the book—and your post helps to explain why.
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### Author:  [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/74 "2006-11-09T01:40:04Z")
Another recommend for Persuasion over P&P. It has a tighter plot and to me it was Austen at her peak. P&P is a lovely romance and I love Elizabeth and Darcy dearly but I don’t think it’s her best novel in the grander scheme of things.
The one Austen novel I hated was Mansfield Park. Fanny was a tool and every time she opened her mouth I wanted to strangle her.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/75 "2006-11-09T15:10:26Z")
[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
The one Austen novel I hated was Mansfield Park. Fanny was a tool and every time she opened her mouth I wanted to strangle her.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. I actually liked the widely criticized movie version of Mansfield Park for that reason – Fanny was much more tolerable as a pastiche of Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Austen than she was as Fanny Price.
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### Author:  [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/76 "2006-11-09T18:02:15Z")
I am generally well-read, so when I started dating a research librarian whose favorite author was Jane Austen I took it as an opportunity to impress her by filling in what turned out to be a well-needed gap in my personal library. I can’t remember which volume I started with, but the second I took on was Mansfield Park. I have never enjoyed reading so little as when having to slog my way through that interminable novel. I just couldn’t take any more of Austen after that.
From what I recall Fanny spends the entire novel grating on me with her complete impotence until finally something happens in the end. Someone leaves someone or marries someone else or something that at least contained the potential of something interesting… but both Fanny and the reader only find out about it a few weeks after it happens via sedate letters. Arrrgghghh.
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### Author:  [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/77 "2006-11-09T19:16:15Z")
[QUOTE=flight]
I am generally well-read, so when I started dating a research librarian whose favorite author was Jane Austen I took it as an opportunity to impress her by filling in what turned out to be a well-needed gap in my personal library.
[/QUOTE]
For some reason this reminds me of **Groundhog Day** :
Rita: Believe it or not, I studied 19th century French poetry.
Phil: What a waste of time!
Rita: Believe it or not, I studied 19th century French poetry.
Phil: La fille que j’aimera, aura le coeur si sage…
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### Author:  [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/78 "2006-11-09T19:25:17Z")
Jacques Brel??
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### Author:  [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-any-men-read-jane-austens-novels/379338/79 "2006-11-09T19:50:36Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Jacques Brel??
Decked out like a Christmas tree.
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