The Art of Manliness - Jane Austen for Dudes

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast years ago i was

00:00:12.300 flipping through tv channels and came across hugh lorry of dr house fame decked out in 19th century

00:00:17.220 english gentleman garb because i was a house fan i was curious about what hugh lorry sounded like

00:00:21.900 with his native british accent so i paused my channel surfing to find out then i brought up

00:00:26.420 the title and saw that i was watching sense and sensibility ugh jane austen no way am i gonna

00:00:31.440 like this i thought i associated jane austen with foo fooie lady stuff so my plan was to flip the

00:00:36.600 channel as soon as i heard dr house talk british two hours later the end credits for sense and

00:00:41.280 sensibility scrolled down the screen i had watched the entire thing didn't even get up to go to the

00:00:46.180 bathroom not only did i watch the whole movie i remember thinking man that was really good thanks

00:00:52.200 to dr house my resistance to austen was broken and i found myself genuinely curious about her books

00:00:56.860 so i got the free version of her collected works and slowly started working my way through what

00:01:01.120 are arguably her three best sense and sensibility pride and prejudice and emma and i'll be darned if

00:01:06.920 i didn't truly enjoy them all if you're a dude who's written off jane austen's work as i once did

00:01:11.460 perhaps today's podcast will convince you there's something in it for women and men alike and encourage

00:01:16.260 you to give her novels a try my guest is john mullen professor of english and the author of what

00:01:21.020 matters in jane austen john and i discussed the literary innovation austen pioneered that

00:01:25.800 influenced the likes of larry mcmurtry's lonesome dove and will give your social agility a healthy

00:01:30.260 workout john then explains why soldiers and winston churchill turned to austen during the world wars

00:01:35.100 we also discussed the philosopher alistair mcintyre's argument that austen's work was the last great

00:01:40.620 representative of the classic tradition of virtues austen's idea of manliness and how a man's

00:01:45.660 choice of wife will shape his character and john shares his recommendation for which austen novel

00:01:50.360 men should read first after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash austin

00:01:55.640 john mullen welcome to the show ah it's good to be with you so you are a professor of english and you

00:02:14.320 specialize in one of my favorite writers jane austen you've written a lot about her research a lot

00:02:20.120 about her but i read an interview as i was prepping for this our conversation that when you were a

00:02:24.700 young man you blew her off as an author um so when did you discover austen and change your view of her

00:02:30.920 i think i remember i first read her because i had to read her in school and i was probably in my i was

00:02:37.300 probably 16 or 17 and i had to do a jane austen novel for a levels which are exams you do at the end

00:02:44.640 of high school and i realized now i was very fortunate i had a very good teacher who actually

00:02:50.140 used to get us to read books which weren't weren't on the syllabus you know and so i read persuasion

00:02:56.020 because i had to and emma as a kind of backup and i i think i thought two things i thought well these are

00:03:04.680 rather you know substanceless stories they're just stories about genteel young women trying to find a

00:03:11.680 husband you know how how important is that the implied answer being not very important because

00:03:16.920 i was 16 or 17 and i like stories about people i don't know hunting whales or going up the congo

00:03:25.240 river or you know committing suicide at the end of the play or you know real stuff right hamlet heart

00:03:32.240 of darkness moby dick that stuff but i would say in my defense but i had some literary sensibility i

00:03:41.300 think and i did even then recognize that they were really well written you know so i didn't blow her

00:03:48.960 off really and i didn't think this is valueless i just thought what she wrote about didn't matter

00:03:55.120 very much and to put it very succinctly i changed my mind because as the years went by mostly it was

00:04:04.860 because i had to teach it and what i noticed was a kind of simple thing but it's a really extraordinary

00:04:12.520 thing and it happens with other really wonderful complex rich literature and that was i got it from

00:04:21.940 my students that each time you went back to it the students on my behalf noticed stuff i hadn't noticed

00:04:30.640 before so it just kept rewarding more and more the more you often you read it the more you saw

00:04:36.880 and that's never disappeared for me even though there are jane austen novels i've read a dozen 15

00:04:44.240 times i still see things i hadn't seen before so before we get into austin's work let's talk a little

00:04:51.660 about her background sure when did she live what was her life like and how did that influence her

00:04:56.420 writing okay so so she was born in 1775 she was a vicar's daughter from hampshire which is kind of

00:05:05.380 rural area but i mean it's not the back of beyond it's it's it's you know even in her day in the late

00:05:12.040 18th early 19th century was perfectly feasible to go and travel to london if you had a little bit of

00:05:17.520 money to pay pay for the carriage and she came from it's difficult not to use rather anachronistic

00:05:24.800 words but you would sort of say in those days they would have said a genteel middling folk we might

00:05:31.520 say middle class and she was one of eight siblings so she had six brothers five of whom were older

00:05:39.320 than her one younger and she had one sister to whom she was with whom she was very very close

00:05:44.820 cassandra who was a couple of years older than her and she grew up in this family and her brothers

00:05:51.240 became things like vicars two of them became vicars and two of them became admirals in the navy

00:05:58.140 and the church and the navy both figure in her novels and i guess i'd say two things about her

00:06:05.640 growing up which i think are important first of all the more i sort of just sort of get into her

00:06:12.060 family life i mean the more admirable i think they are i think they were open-minded educated

00:06:19.740 tolerant lively optimistic people so they weren't rich enough so that they didn't have to do jobs

00:06:28.040 one of austin's brothers we might come to inherited get it came upon an inheritance which was very

00:06:34.620 important for her later on but the rest of them they had to get jobs which in the late 18th century

00:06:39.640 wasn't what all gentlemen have to do you know mr darcy doesn't need a job mr knightley doesn't need

00:06:46.100 a job but they needed jobs and i think that they were you know they were a good family for her to

00:06:52.320 grow up in i mean you know she loved her brothers she loved her father she loved her mother although

00:06:57.820 her mother was a very irritating hypochondriac but still it was a kind of happy and enlightened family but

00:07:04.400 it's very important that you know she hardly had hardly any formal schooling she went to school for

00:07:11.240 a year and a half didn't learn much there she learned it all from her brothers and especially

00:07:17.680 from her father who he was a university educated man he had a good book collection she was very close with

00:07:24.360 him and just the second thing i will just sort of say about her life is that i think it's really

00:07:30.580 important that although her novels were quite successful in her own lifetime they were all

00:07:36.900 published anonymously the ones two of them were only published after she died but four of them were

00:07:43.140 published in her lifetime and her name wasn't on them so even though they were relatively successful

00:07:50.040 actually and she earned a bit of money most people didn't know who she was she wasn't a name

00:07:56.880 and she published all her novels right near the end of her life and she died very sadly when she

00:08:04.100 was only 41 in 1817 she wrote some novels in the 1790s when she was in her 20s tried to get them

00:08:11.580 published without success and then she was kind of discouraged by that and then her father died when

00:08:19.280 she was 29 and for the next few years she and her mother and her sister had this a really difficult

00:08:26.900 existence because they depended on her father's pension basically and it disappeared when he died

00:08:34.500 and they traveled around so staying with various relations and various brothers and luckily i'll bring

00:08:41.500 this story to a halt quite soon but but luckily one of her brothers edward had been you might find this

00:08:50.580 weird brett but it not uncommon at the time he'd been given to childless rich relations and edward was

00:09:00.640 brought up by a very rich family in kent called the knights and he took their name and he became their heir

00:09:06.960 and after they died he inherited all sorts of land and property and that included a manor house

00:09:14.980 in a place called chawton in hampshire which anybody who visits england you can go and visit it

00:09:21.740 and even better you can visit the house that he sort of gave rent free to jane cassandra and her mother

00:09:31.760 to live in which was in the village where the manor house was and it was part of the estate and she

00:09:38.680 moved there in 1809 so she's 34 years old 33 34 years old and in the next eight years she produced her

00:09:50.380 six novels bang bang bang bang bang bang because suddenly she had you know she had somewhere secure

00:09:58.600 and her brothers clubbed together to give them enough to live on and she could go back to

00:10:07.060 some of the drafts she'd made in her early 20s and she could write these novels and so extraordinary in

00:10:14.820 this you know she basically wrote a novel a year until she died in 1817 and the family had a special

00:10:22.660 agreement that because they did have some sort of servants who came in to help but you know a lot

00:10:29.020 of the domestic economy was done by the women themselves and the deal was that jane austen had

00:10:36.260 to do breakfast okay so she had to get the breakfast ready and clear it and make the coffee make the tea do

00:10:43.000 all that stuff and clear it up afterwards and after that she was done for the day

00:10:48.040 and whilst her sister was making butter or bread or whatever jane austen could write her novels

00:10:56.420 because her family did sort of realize that that they got somebody quite talented on their hands or

00:11:02.540 in their house so that's a sort of sketch i hope yeah tells you something about her so austin we talk

00:11:09.200 about her today because her stories they're good like they're just really good stories lots of characters

00:11:13.820 but one of the reasons why we people are still talking about her is that she made a lot of

00:11:19.080 literary innovations that contributed to the novel and you still see novelists use the things that she

00:11:25.540 came up with when she's writing her stuff you're still seeing using today one of those innovations

00:11:30.200 you talk about is free indirect speech what is that can you give us an example of that so yeah i'll give

00:11:36.580 you a little example i mean what it is in general it's a technique whereby you know you probably know i mean

00:11:42.020 novels can be stories can be told in all sorts of ways but a lot of novels and the majority of them

00:11:49.260 actually can be divided up into either told in the third person you know he did this she did that

00:11:56.300 he thought this she thought that or the first person you know where the whole novel is the

00:12:02.740 protagonist owner can you know jane eyre great expectations what have you catch her in the rye

00:12:08.340 yeah and what jane austen i think more or less invented although rarely got the credit for it

00:12:16.100 because in the english novel it didn't exist before her was this technique which as you rightly say

00:12:21.960 brett's called free indirect speech or free indirect style and the actual name for it wasn't coined until

00:12:28.820 the 1920s but it existed before the name and what it is is narrating in the third person as all her novels

00:12:36.960 are but with the narration the storytelling sort of percolated through the consciousness of one of the

00:12:47.000 characters or a better metaphor maybe bent through the lens of a character's way of seeing the world

00:12:54.460 so sharing their prejudices their fears their preoccupations their delusions sometimes and in some novels

00:13:05.220 like pride and prejudice jane austen will do that mostly through the consciousness of the heroine elizabeth

00:13:13.900 bennett but not entirely so you get bits through where the narrative is affected by one of the other

00:13:20.860 characters and in one of her novels emma almost the whole novel bar two chapters very carefully placed

00:13:30.820 chapters is through the eyes through the consciousness of emma for those who aren't familiar with it

00:13:37.340 it's about a young woman who is handsome clever and rich we're told in the very first sentence of the

00:13:45.460 novel and she meddles in other people's lives with sort of good intentions she wants to make matches for

00:13:53.940 them marry them off and almost the whole novel is seen through her her eyes although it's narrated in

00:14:02.440 the third person and she has lots and lots of views about what other people are thinking and they're mostly

00:14:08.300 wrong but nobody ever tells you she's wrong you have to work it out so there are there are lots of great

00:14:16.440 novelists like dickens or george elliott who are there in their novels talking to you telling you guiding

00:14:23.100 you ruminating philosophizing and that's often if a novelist is good enough a wonderful experience

00:14:30.280 but virginia wolf once said who's a huge austin fan said the brilliant thing about jane austin is she's

00:14:36.260 not there at all and i think there's a lot of truth in that because of this technique she can leave you

00:14:42.740 following the story through the sort of track of the character and see how you what you make of it so

00:14:50.600 i was going to give you a little example so emma near the beginning of the novel she's got this

00:14:56.060 little protege called harriet smith who's three years younger than her and harriet smith is a nobody who's

00:15:04.060 being dumped at the local little school for ladies in the village because her father is some

00:15:10.960 well-to-do businessman and she's his illegitimate child and he's paying for her to be looked after

00:15:18.220 but she doesn't even harriet doesn't even know who he is and so she's called smith the most common

00:15:23.740 english name and she is very sweet natured very pretty and really quite stupid

00:15:33.480 and emma takes her on as a sort of pygmalion thing you know she's going to mold her

00:15:39.980 is she's going to be harriet's going to be her project if you like so it's this very very unequal

00:15:47.680 friendship between the two emma persuades harriet to turn down a proposal of marriage from a reasonably

00:15:56.020 well-off gentleman farmer who she thinks is not good enough for harriet but who the reader can see

00:16:05.580 is in love with her and what's more the reader can sort them into it that harriet loves him back

00:16:11.460 but emma thinks he's not good enough and persuades harriet to turn him down and instead encourages harriet

00:16:18.160 to think that the really smooth good looking genteel local vicar mr elton is keen on her and a

00:16:30.700 likely prospect okay so one day they're out in the lane and emma is thinking how can we get into mr

00:16:39.680 elton's house how can we get into the vicarage so that they can have a little tete-a-tete and she sees

00:16:47.060 mr elton coming down the lane she pretends to break her lace in her boot oh my lace is broken mr elton

00:16:53.120 invites them in the house and emma leaves mr elton and harriet alone together in the sitting room

00:17:01.000 very difficult in the jane austen world in these novels for a man and a woman to be alone together

00:17:06.900 and emma's off with the housekeeper talking very loudly so that mr elton can hear she's down

00:17:14.700 not in the room she's not coming about the lace and sorry you have such a long description but in

00:17:22.560 jane austen novels there's always so much going on and she comes back into the room and i'll just read

00:17:30.240 you a couple of sentences okay she says it it could be protracted no longer this business with the lace

00:17:35.520 she was then obliged to be finished and make her appearance

00:17:39.260 the lovers were standing together at one of the windows it had a most favorable aspect and for half

00:17:48.620 a minute emma felt the glory of having schemed successfully but it would not do he had not come

00:17:55.220 to the point he had been most agreeable most delightful he told harriet that he'd seen them go

00:18:00.440 by and had purposely followed them other little gallantries and illusions had been dropped but nothing

00:18:06.680 serious so what emma was actually hoping is that by leaving them alone he mr elton is actually going

00:18:14.560 to propose marriage you know this is his chance but if you think about that very first sentence in

00:18:21.020 that little bit that i've read out is terribly simple the words in it are terribly simple anybody

00:18:27.080 could have written it the lovers were standing together at one of the windows but they're not

00:18:33.200 lovers they're not lovers at all and in fact the reader already has been given plenty of evidence

00:18:40.120 to allow him or her to work out that of course mr elton's interested in emma not in harriet and

00:18:47.640 actually it turns out the own not only are they not lovers but you'll find out spoiler alert a few

00:18:55.300 chapters later from mr elton's own lips that he despises harriet he absolutely despises her as beneath him

00:19:04.880 and he only pretends to be nice to her because he's trying to get emma but it's all keyed on that

00:19:12.260 little sentence the lovers were standing together at one of the windows and the funny thing is it's such

00:19:18.020 a simple sentence and yet until jane austen came along nobody could have written it so yeah it's

00:19:24.600 the third it's still third person but it's third person with emma's filter yes right and what's

00:19:31.100 interesting what i totally yeah totally adopts her delusion right yeah it doesn't say you know those

00:19:36.960 whom emma felt were lovers or it doesn't say what you know another lombardist might say emma came in

00:19:44.820 and thought ah the lovers are standing together at one of the windows that's as it were direct

00:19:50.180 speech or direct thought just the lovers were standing together at one of the windows and what

00:19:55.520 it does it makes you feel more connected to the characters and what when i it's interesting you see

00:20:00.220 this free indirect style once you learn about it you see it everywhere yes my favorite novel of all

00:20:06.280 time is larry mcmurtry's lonesome dove oh i've never read it i've never read it i'm afraid i'm

00:20:12.980 going to send you a copy okay it's about about a bunch of cowboys who take a cattle drive from

00:20:18.280 south texas to montana yes now i've heard i've often heard of it and i love it and i did an

00:20:23.300 interview with american literary scholar stephen fry about lonesome dove and he one thing he said that

00:20:28.800 really blew me away and i find when i when he said it's like that's why of course this is why i like

00:20:33.640 jane austen too and i like lonesome dove he said larry mcmurtry was heavily influenced by the social

00:20:38.780 novel of the 19th century so like the particularly jane austen and what if you read lonesome dove he

00:20:44.160 does the free indirect style like he'll and he switches it's like you you hear the you're looking

00:20:49.920 at the character and then you're doing this third person thing but it's like the it's like the person

00:20:55.160 is thinking it's like almost first person but not and that's jane austen like she invented that

00:20:59.540 yes she did she did i mean it's obviously what's he called larry mcmurtry larry mcmurtry

00:21:04.980 mcmurtry i mean he obviously was kind of sounds like he was quite sort of conscious

00:21:10.460 yeah of literary technique i mean one of the weird things about the history of free indirect style

00:21:16.780 is actually and i've talked to novelists about it you know living practicing novelists and it entered the

00:21:25.100 bloodstream of the european novel so completely that novelists do it without even knowing they're

00:21:32.600 doing it you know i talked to a contemporary novelist called john lanchester who wrote a great

00:21:39.060 novel called mr phillips and i i was solemnly interviewing him my academic way and say oh

00:21:44.740 yeah this is one of the most interesting sort of exercises in free indirect style and he said what's

00:21:49.960 that and i told him and he said oh yes i suppose that's what i was doing i've never heard of it before

00:21:55.340 and the other thing about austin that makes her fun to read because as you're just doing that setup for

00:22:00.540 emma there's a lot of well he was thinking this and she was thinking that and actually he was actually

00:22:05.400 thinking this it's a workout for your social mind one thing i've read is that reading austin can help

00:22:11.580 you develop what psychologists call a theory of mind right it's ah yes yes yes right it's understanding

00:22:17.860 like you you make guesses of what other people are thinking based on body language or actions and

00:22:23.540 that's all jane austin's all theory of mind all the time i agree i think that's a really good way of

00:22:27.940 seeing it i mean jane austin didn't say very much about her novel writing most of her letters

00:22:34.520 were letters to her sister and they're all about the weather and getting colds and how difficult it

00:22:39.540 is to travel to guildford and things but she does say that the thing she expects from her reader

00:22:45.500 is ingenuity it's quite an interesting word so you know a novel like emma you have to be switched on

00:22:54.320 and the the theory of mind you mentioned i think the fascinating thing with jane austin is it's it

00:23:02.580 works in a sort of double way on the one hand you look at the characters saying and doing things

00:23:09.320 and you see their consciousness of each other so she's a wonderful wonderful writer of dialogue and

00:23:16.860 the thing about jane austin novels is that when people say things to other people that everything they

00:23:23.880 say and do is shaped by their assumptions about what the other person is thinking you know which

00:23:31.780 is the way life is but it's not the way that all dialogue in novels is not many novelists can do it

00:23:37.280 as well as her but also there's this second sort of theory of mind aspect which is the one in a way

00:23:44.240 we've just been talking about that as a reader you have to be she's not going to do it all for you

00:23:49.840 you have to work it out so you have to you know in that bit i've just read out you have to be up to

00:23:57.880 noticing that you're inhabiting a delusional state here in that simple little sentence the lovers

00:24:05.120 and the really clever thing about her novels is some of the time it's not so hard to pick out

00:24:15.420 what assumptions are shaping the character you know the sentences and sometimes you have to be

00:24:22.600 really clever yeah and that's one of the reasons it's back to where we started brett you know that's

00:24:27.680 one of the reasons they so much repay rereading because there are things you never you're never

00:24:33.780 clever enough to notice it all we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:24:37.900 and now back to the show so i imagine there's a lot of men listening to this podcast that might

00:24:45.520 have written off jane austen as you know a sentimental writer that's geared primarily

00:24:49.400 towards a female audience but what's interesting is i've been surprised to learn as you go back in

00:24:54.940 history it's men who often turn to austen during times of war and adversity so i know during world war

00:25:01.220 one a lot of the british soldiers they read austen when they were in the trenches and i know during

00:25:06.500 world war ii winston churchill like during the blitz he was reading jane austen so i mean what what is

00:25:12.240 it about austen's writing that caused these men to turn to her during times of war okay well i mean

00:25:19.280 that's a really interesting question but yeah there's a a really good your your listeners might want to

00:25:25.400 kind of chase it down there's a there's a really good um kipling short story called the jainites

00:25:32.220 he invented the word jainite i think which is exactly about it's set after the first world war

00:25:39.460 but it's about men meeting up again because they were united in the trenches by exactly what you've

00:25:45.660 just said their enthusiasm for jane austen i think it's two things coming together one is that it is a

00:25:54.380 sort of you know i'm i imagine if you're at the somme i mean obviously i'm just imagining but my

00:26:00.900 grandfather was there my grandfather was at the battle of the somme and was indeed badly injured

00:26:06.420 at it jane austen's world must seem a blessed relief you know it is this elegantly circumscribed

00:26:17.240 world of you know as she said three or four families in a village so you know nobody's going

00:26:25.180 to get shot in a jane austen novel but i think very often people just focus on that and assume that means

00:26:31.340 the pleasure for some of those male readers in difficult situations or dangerous situations

00:26:39.080 was one of escapism and i i just think you know judging from accounts people give as well as from her

00:26:44.880 novels that's not true because within these worlds you know lots of the people lots of the characters

00:26:53.500 are behaving in the most monstrous and selfish and absurd ways you know her novels here's a here's a

00:27:01.940 pitch for them they're terribly terribly funny yeah and you can enter them and become absorbed and find

00:27:10.660 them really really funny evidently from what people said as the shells are going overhead you know and

00:27:17.520 so it's a mixture you escape into her world but it's not an escape really because the people there are as

00:27:26.500 complicated and ridiculous and their feelings and desires are as ignoble or absurd as in any other

00:27:36.880 you know as as in life so i think you know it's that doubleness of them harold mcmillan when he was

00:27:44.740 prime minister he said the same thing as churchwell i think being prime minister was a bit different in

00:27:49.560 those days from what it is now but in the 1950s he said at least at least once a week on a weekday he would

00:27:58.580 make an hour or two after lunch to go into the garden of downing street and read jane austen and

00:28:04.540 then he would come back as it were set up for the work the rest of the working week so the philosopher

00:28:11.600 alistair mcintyre he called jane austen one of the last great representatives of the classical tradition

00:28:17.460 of the virtues i mean mcintyre thinks that austen was an aristotelian virtue ethicist what do you make of

00:28:23.380 that description oh gosh well i mean that's really you know i need the honest answer would be i need to

00:28:30.180 run away and think about it because i wonder for instance you know and there's it's probably possible

00:28:35.860 to find an answer to this whether she ever read any aristotle in translation but whether she did

00:28:41.280 because it's likely that her father you know might have had it in his library and but also the trouble

00:28:47.700 is the question is designed to to test my very thin knowledge of aristotle but as i understand it i

00:28:53.700 mean i think there are certain things which are as i understand it yes quite aristotelian about

00:29:00.500 her novels which i mean one thing i associate with aristotle is the notion that you know that ethics

00:29:08.780 are a practical business that you start with life you don't start with a theory right and that it's the

00:29:15.920 choices that human beings make practically in their lives which reveal their capacity for particular

00:29:24.540 virtues and jane austen you know people sometimes write about her and try to work out what her beliefs

00:29:34.600 were you know her father was a clergyman two of her brothers was she a very keen anglican was she very

00:29:41.100 devout was she very religious how much are her novels christian and and that's all a bit of a

00:29:48.180 fool's errand really because of this thing wolf mentioned that jane austen absents herself and lets

00:29:52.940 the characters take over i think mcintyre i don't know about aristotelian but i mean i do think he's got

00:29:58.900 a point in that you can it's one way to read them you can read them as characters constantly being

00:30:06.680 presented especially the heroines with sort of ethical choices and it's no bad schooling and

00:30:17.440 ethical choices and no bad schooling because these are very ordinary choices and you and i may not live

00:30:26.060 in you know the jane austen world of a hampshire village in the early 19th century but most of the

00:30:31.880 choices they're not much to do with the society of the times actually they're to do with things that

00:30:38.280 we would all recognize about you know selflessness and selfishness about envy and magnanimity i mean

00:30:49.080 magnanimity is a good one i think that is a an aristotelian virtue there's an amazing moment could i give

00:30:55.600 you an example yeah which aristotle would have recognized okay so again as i've done so much plot

00:31:03.340 summary of emma let's stick with that for a second harriet is schooled by emma to have ideas above her

00:31:13.600 station and to put it bluntly this comes back to bite emma because emma gets completely wrong who harriet

00:31:23.140 has her eyes on as a possible husband they quite soon find out the truth about mr elton's feelings

00:31:29.580 but a lot later on in the novel there's a character called mr knightley who's the male lead and who has

00:31:37.600 a certain tenderness for emma and whose judgment is quite important to emma but he's quite a lot older

00:31:45.420 than her emma is 20 he's 36 37 and she's used to having him as a friend and advisor and anyway there

00:31:57.800 comes a point late in the novel where emma has encouraged harriet to think about this man frank

00:32:08.380 churchill as a possible husband but she hasn't mentioned his name and essentially harriet's got

00:32:14.860 the wrong end of the stick and has assumed that emma was encouraging her to think about mr knightley

00:32:20.440 as a potential husband and there's a big scene when this is revealed it's one of the most brilliant

00:32:28.320 chapters in all fiction i think and you're in emma's mind really and emma has got this wonderful sentence

00:32:37.060 why was it so awful that harriet was in love with mr knightley rather than frank churchill and it says

00:32:45.180 something like instantly with the speed of an arrow it went through emma's mind that mr knightley must

00:32:53.400 marry no one but herself and it's comic but it's also potentially catastrophic because

00:33:01.680 then emma says to harriet you got to remember what she's like she's dull-witted but very sweet

00:33:09.520 natured and good-hearted harriet and so she cannot tell a lie yes you can really rely on what she says

00:33:15.920 however limited it precisely because she is so limited and emma says to harriet have you any idea

00:33:24.200 that mr knightley returns your affection and harriet says to her yes i rather think i do and it's the

00:33:34.320 most awful moment in the whole novel for emma because she knows that harriet wouldn't say that

00:33:39.480 if harriet didn't think it was true and she knows that harriet in her naivety must have sent something

00:33:47.300 real and then there's this great moment of magnanimity when harriet then immediately says

00:33:55.580 well emma's thinking oh no my whole life is falling to pieces where harriet says to emma

00:34:03.000 you know would you encourage me do you think i'm do you think i'm mad sort of thing she doesn't say

00:34:08.480 that but something like that and emma it's this great moment because emma knows that she has

00:34:14.940 she has a real sort of thought control over harriet and she knows that harriet's going to believe what

00:34:21.300 she tells her and she doesn't say oh i think you're fantasizing

00:34:28.420 and she doesn't say oh mr knightley is a wealthy landowner he's never going to marry a nobody like you

00:34:37.200 she says the truth or a truth she says harriet mr knightley is the last man in the world

00:34:49.320 who would ever give a woman the idea that he feels more for her than he does

00:34:54.840 and a that's completely true mr knightley is like that

00:35:01.940 b it tells you something about emma's relationship mr knightley even though he's not there because

00:35:09.040 emma can talk twaddle about anybody but she can't talk twaddle rubbish bunkum about mr knightley

00:35:17.160 because actually hardly only just acknowledged by herself she loves him

00:35:22.500 and so she has to speak the truth about him but also finally thirdly see it's a magnanimous moment

00:35:32.700 it's a really magnanimous moment and harriet is duly ecstatic at being told this and kisses her hand

00:35:41.520 and says oh thank you thank you thank you because emma has has sort of given her the green light

00:35:48.140 and even though it goes against all her interests all her feelings and you know i would say

00:35:56.500 that's aristotelian magnanimity is it not i think so and yeah the way i read it so aristotle he was

00:36:02.700 really concerned about people becoming becoming good people right and and you did that by doing good

00:36:09.220 things like you you became virtuous by doing virtuous things and like how you said aristotle was very

00:36:14.460 workaday like money played into that social status played into that love played into that how you spent

00:36:21.880 your free time played into that and jane austen talks about that you see characters starting to

00:36:27.700 make decisions with those sort of workaday things that would allow them to become a complete virtuous

00:36:32.920 person yes yes yes yeah and and it's certainly the case in jane austen in really i mean it's the case in

00:36:39.900 not some novels but it's the case in jane austen very subtle ways that there are plenty of people

00:36:44.900 characters in her novels including sometimes the heroines because they're not perfect at all

00:36:51.720 who are good at talking about being good you know talking about christian virtues and you know one of the

00:37:02.060 subtleties of her fiction is that what you and i might call the bad people in her novels think they're good

00:37:08.680 too they think they're good mrs norris in mansfield park who's one of the great sadists of world fiction

00:37:15.820 to my mind who gets her kicks really from tormenting the heroine fanny price whom she resents for being

00:37:24.520 a poor relation whom she resents for having been sent to live with the rich bertrams her own sister and

00:37:31.920 their family lady bertram and their family her family she's a torturer really she's a tormentor

00:37:38.900 of servants who's always pretending that she's helping them out but in fact is making their lives

00:37:44.980 awful but she quotes scripture more frequently than anybody in the novel and we find out that she thinks

00:37:56.140 of herself as a virtuous person you know and that's one of the complications of of a delightful

00:38:04.400 complication of austin's fiction that you don't get there's no cardboard villains no and what's

00:38:11.780 interesting too about that idea of some characters weren't even aware that they weren't virtuous i mean

00:38:16.160 that's one of the other things you see in her novels is you see the heroines specifically discover

00:38:20.860 discover i'm not as good as i thought i was right i'm i am like you know uh was it elizabeth bennett

00:38:27.280 like i am prejudiced like i got this i think this uh darcy guy's a prig but no actually i just i'm

00:38:33.140 really prejudiced against them yeah marianne in sense and sensibility where she finally realized

00:38:39.540 like willoughby yeah she they had a lot in common with book taste and things like that for this passion

00:38:45.080 for life but boy i was really i was kind of dumb he was a cad right so all the

00:38:50.840 heroines they had or even emma there's a moment of like i guess aristotle would call peripatia like

00:38:55.640 self-awareness sort of like i am not that great and i need to do better absolutely and i think also

00:39:01.440 properly aristotelian is the fact that say the first example you gave brett of elizabeth bennett

00:39:09.280 it's not just that she realizes she's been wrong about mr darcy but she's also been wrong about mr

00:39:14.860 wickham who she took rather a fancy to who's actually a bad guy and like a true practical

00:39:23.900 philosopher she then rehearses in her head the memories of the conversations she's had with mr wickham

00:39:33.420 where he's told her lots of lies basically about mr darcy and about himself and she realizes

00:39:40.740 that she should have known just like the reader who read those dialogues should know because mr wickham

00:39:48.520 for instance he tells her loads of stuff that he shouldn't tell her he over confides we might say

00:39:56.000 and so even if it were true there's something wrong about somebody who on a mere acquaintance

00:40:04.840 starts telling you yes it's like the person you meet for the first time and you find you have no

00:40:12.400 somebody in common and this person starts telling you kind of slagging that person off but telling you

00:40:20.300 you know maybe quite private things that they shouldn't be telling you about not on this mere

00:40:25.480 acquaintanceship and she realizes that if she'd been a proper as it were scrutineer

00:40:32.800 of what she was hearing she would have known already without further evidence that there was

00:40:38.540 something wrong about it i think aristotle would have approved of that i think so too so you mentioned

00:40:44.720 in an email that the characters the main characters they were heroines they were women but you make the

00:40:50.340 case that austin has a lot to say about manliness yes what did manliness mean to her and what was her

00:40:55.920 ideal of a good man well i think she had several ideals i mean i could list them as a list of

00:41:02.340 qualities but that might in a way be quite banal because they'd be unsurprising ones kindness

00:41:07.460 generosity magnanimity humor but reading her not i mean if you could you get ideas of manliness

00:41:16.260 from reading her novels but i think it's important to know that you get them in quite indirect ways

00:41:22.640 where they're exactly the sort of thing you only get on a kind of maybe you get more and more on a

00:41:28.820 second or third reading because apart from in mansfield park there are no scenes in jane austen's

00:41:37.720 novels where only men are present there are a couple of short two or three short scenes in mansfield park

00:41:43.940 where only men are present there are lots and lots of scenes where only women are present

00:41:48.760 so you don't find out what men are like together what men say to each other but there's lots of

00:41:56.440 evidence for it there's lots of sort of clues and what she does most of the time is allow you to find

00:42:07.720 out about sort of the good things about her male leads because they're the representatives of manliness i

00:42:17.600 suppose indirectly so in emma you find out you hear what mr knightley's like when he speaks

00:42:26.500 and he's humorous and he's wise and he's clever and he's particularly humorous wise and clever when it

00:42:38.120 comes to emma and he says he says great things you know but also you're seeing things mostly from emma's

00:42:46.840 point of view so you find out about mr knightley indirectly and i think that's the sort of you know

00:42:53.380 the exemplification of manly virtues that you get in jane austen's novels is all the more enjoyable

00:43:01.180 because you find out about it indirectly so often so you find out mr knightley is incredibly kind

00:43:08.680 kind but he's sort of secretly kind because he knows that he's surrounded by people who pretend to

00:43:17.360 be kind so you find out in the very plot of the novel that he's done little things which you know

00:43:25.120 first time around you hardly notice you know that he's arranged for people who can't for women these

00:43:31.520 women who haven't got enough money to travel anywhere because you have to have a carriage and

00:43:35.760 he's arranged for his carriage which he doesn't usually use because he hasn't got the horses for

00:43:42.320 it and he's hired horses and got a coachman and and you never get told that you have to work it out

00:43:48.360 from the events in the novel that he's doing all these sort of kind things and he you know each of the

00:43:59.040 men captain wentworth in persuasion mr darcy in pride and prejudice they're really different in their

00:44:07.200 aspects of masculinity but you find out about their virtues indirectly and i guess one thing they've got

00:44:15.920 in common is how they behave or in mr darcy's case how he has to learn to behave because he's on a

00:44:25.420 learning curve with elizabeth bennett towards women and i would say that you know in a way that is not

00:44:36.740 particularly political at all but is integral to the stories the men whom are worth admiring or liking

00:44:49.400 or marrying are ones who treat women as their equals and i don't mean that in a sort of rights of woman

00:45:00.700 where i mean because not because i've no idea what captain wentworth thought about the rights of woman

00:45:06.320 it's not part of what the novel's about but it's a really it's a rare kind of behavior in the novels and

00:45:14.860 one that these very different men all sort of share and mr darcy you know he's a tricky customer

00:45:23.620 and he's partly a tricky customer because he's handsome and very very rich and every young woman

00:45:32.960 he meets is having a go at trying to hook him and then he meets this woman elizabeth bennett

00:45:41.880 who is uh miles below him socially who has almost no money and who teases him and who doesn't try to

00:45:51.660 hook him and who amuses him and who sort of fences with him and and who brings out the better aspects

00:46:06.560 thereby of his manliness and that's a real sort of jane austen i guess it was something she believed

00:46:15.780 but it was also something she dramatizes in her novels you know they're about love and marriage

00:46:22.560 and it's true for all men in her novels that if they marry the right women they become better men

00:46:35.060 no and this is this is aristotelian so another reason i love jane austen is even though she never

00:46:41.840 got married i think she offers some of the best advice out there on romance and marriage and it's

00:46:48.620 precisely what you were talking about for austin you wanted to find someone that would make you

00:46:52.800 better make you more virtuous and that that's an aristotelian thing so aristotle has this idea about

00:46:57.340 different types of friends you could have there's like a friend you like to have a good time with

00:47:01.400 you know you talk about the things you have in common there's a friend that's useful right there's a

00:47:06.000 friend who you can go to them because they i don't know they got connections or whatever and help you

00:47:10.400 their job but he said that the best type of friend you want to look for is those friends of virtue the

00:47:15.100 friends that make you more virtuous and for austin that's what you want to look for in a spouse yes

00:47:22.340 yes i mean to exemplify what you were saying brett there's a wonderful moment a real jane austen moment

00:47:29.920 in persuasion where anne elliott okay she's been proposed to when she was 19 by this dashing but

00:47:38.940 impecunious young naval officer mere lieutenant called frederick wentworth and although she loves

00:47:46.160 him disastrously her mum's dead and is not there to advise her and she's persuaded by her sort of

00:47:52.700 substitute mother lady russell to turn him down and he's got no prospects you'll just ruin his career

00:48:01.280 anyway if he you encumber him with marriage and anne is very young and very unworldly and disastrously

00:48:12.180 she goes along with lady russell and turns him down and then the beginning of the novel he's come back

00:48:16.580 eight years later and he's now rich successful still attractive as hell and she still loves him

00:48:25.060 and we find out that in the meantime she did get another proposal three years later she got a

00:48:32.940 proposal from this local sort of squire squire son called charles musgrove and charles musgrove proposed

00:48:41.300 to her and of course she turned him down because she still loves the absent captain wentworth and charles

00:48:46.840 musgrove then goes and says oh you won't marry me and he he goes and proposes instead to anne's

00:48:53.440 gruesomely self selfish hypochondriac sister mary and she says yes and those those two become quite

00:49:01.040 big characters in the novel but anyway anne is a really good person jane austen famously said of anne

00:49:08.820 elliott the sixth of her heroines she's almost too good for me and anne is endlessly thoughtful and

00:49:18.880 unselfish and to the point sometimes almost of masochism but you inhabit the novel through her

00:49:25.860 mind through her consciousness and there's one bit where you catch her thinking an extraordinary thing

00:49:32.080 she thinks something which she would never say because she's too generous and kind a person

00:49:38.860 she's observing charles musgrove who's endlessly having

00:49:43.680 sort of slightly petulant little tiffs with his wife mary and you know they're they're married they've

00:49:52.800 got two kids they're going to be together forever but they have a slightly kind of low-level

00:49:58.700 rancorous relationship they're always disagreeing with each other criticizing each other when they're

00:50:04.480 apart they're always complaining about each other and she looks at charles and she thinks this thing

00:50:10.600 which a person might think but you know a self-respecting person wouldn't say she thinks

00:50:16.920 if i'd married him if i'd said yes five years ago he would have become a much better person

00:50:25.200 than he is now because she knows what mary's like and she knows that jane austen thing that marriage

00:50:36.100 shapes shapes men it's not just they make a choice and that's that the choice then ramifies down the

00:50:45.060 years and she's right charles is not essentially a bad guy and if he married anne he would be more

00:50:53.400 thoughtful he would read more books which not a bad thing he maybe would be a bit more involved with

00:51:02.160 his children he wouldn't spend his whole time escaping to do hunting and shooting or shooting

00:51:09.680 and fishing and he would be a better person because when men make those choices of partners

00:51:19.020 it shapes their characters well we've uncovered a lot i feel like in this conversation for those who

00:51:25.580 are interested in wanting to read austin is there a book you'd recommend men starting off with

00:51:29.520 yeah i mean i would definitely start with pride and prejudice i think it's just a perfect book i

00:51:37.680 don't think it's the most complicated of her books but i think it's the funniest of her books

00:51:41.320 and i think that also you know in terms of the i think it's got a heroine that um you know i remember

00:51:53.660 when i first got into pride and prejudice which i think i didn't read till i was in my 20s and i sort of

00:51:58.860 thought gosh i really hope i meet an elizabeth bennett and then i would pause in my thoughts and think

00:52:06.700 well i really hope i could sort of cope with her and so i think it's got a heroine who is

00:52:16.120 you know i i don't i don't know how to put this except to say really attractive to a male reader

00:52:22.640 you know and i think it's also got a male lead who is really interesting if you think if you're

00:52:34.880 thinking what are men like what should they be like what are typical what are the typical follies

00:52:42.540 of men even of kind of intelligent good-hearted you know reasonable men you know and mr darcy

00:52:53.080 jane austen does this really difficult thing with him which is to make him worth marrying he's worth

00:53:00.440 getting elizabeth but also she has to wean him off his sort of self-importance really and usually

00:53:10.060 self-important characters in novels are really unattractive and jane austen does this thing

00:53:16.000 of making his self-importance not disgusting and even sort of forgivable so yeah i definitely start

00:53:25.260 with pride and prejudice awesome well john this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:53:29.860 learn more about your book and your work oh well my book what matters in jane austen but i've read

00:53:37.060 that wrong because he's got a question mark what matters in jane austen to which i guess the one

00:53:41.800 word answer is everything everything every little detail so that's kind of widely available i mean i you

00:53:48.360 said at the beginning i'm a professor of english literature and so i am but you know if it doesn't

00:53:55.140 sound too self-vaunting i wrote this book for people who enjoy reading novels and people who enjoy reading

00:54:02.280 jane austen and i didn't write it for students or for let alone for other academics although i would

00:54:08.840 hope that they too might want to read it and might find out things about it but it's a book which is

00:54:15.120 very much about her novels i mean not so much about her or the times or the history or the background

00:54:20.920 although i hope you'd find out some things about those things but it's a book to read once you've read

00:54:26.120 a little bit of jane austen i think and i've also edited done editions of jane austen's novel i've

00:54:31.920 done an edition for oxford world's classics of sense and sensibility and emma well john mullen

00:54:37.840 thanks for time it's been a pleasure been great my guest today was john mullen he's the author of

00:54:42.900 the book what matters in jane austen it's available on amazon.com make sure to check out our show notes

00:54:47.240 at aom.is slash austin where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:54:51.620 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:55:03.000 artofmanly.com where you can find our podcast archives and while you're there make sure to sign

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00:55:34.840 continued support until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to not listen to a podcast but put what

00:55:39.280 you've heard into action

00:55:45.000 you

The Art of Manliness - February 13, 2023

Jane Austen for Dudes

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