“Real Men Read Austen.” That’s the title of chapter 1 of Peter Leithart’s excellent book, Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen.
Leithart says if he could have dinner with a dozen of the greatest British and American writers, he’d want the seat next to Jane Austen because she would be the most intelligent and the funniest. (He notes that Dickens and Shakespeare would be too busy making toasts, and Faulkner and Joyce would be drunk.)
He insists that real men can read Austen “with interest and profit.”
All her great heroes—Darcy, Wentworth, Edmund Bertram, Knightley—are men who hold positions of authority and use those positions for good. Each of them is a Christlike lover who sacrifices, often at some cost to his reputation, to win his bride. They are servant-heroes, not macho-heroes.
Leithart also provides an excellent explanation of the value of Austen’s focus on the ethical challenges of daily life rather than extreme, sensational, extraordinary situations. After all, isn’t daily life where most of us live most of the time? Men and women alike can learn a lot from Austen.