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Austen Chat: Episode 25

July 2, 2025

Jane Austen & Gentlemen: A Visit with Brett McKay

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is his duty." —Mr. Knightley

H.M. Brock illustration of Mr. Darcy handing Elizabeth his letter. We believe Jane Austen is for everyone, but it’s no secret that her modern fanbase is mostly female. But why is that, and what might men be missing? Brett McKay joins us in this episode to share how he first discovered Austen’s work and why more men should read her books. Along the way, we touch on Austen's Aristotelian ideas of virtue, the qualities that make a good man, the importance of choosing the right spouse, and how reading her works can help everyone become the best version of themselves.

Brett McKay is the founder of The Art of Manliness, a website and podcast dedicated to helping men “grow up well, reach their potential, and become better friends, mentors, husbands, fathers, and citizens.” Since 2008 he has interviewed hundreds of authors and scholars on a wide range of subjects, from philosophy to weight-lifting, dinner-party planning to hostage negotiation. In 2023, he interviewed Austen scholar John Mullan in an episode entitled “Jane Austen for Dudes.”

Show Notes and Links

Many thanks to Brett for joining us on Austen Chat!

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

[Theme music]

Breckyn Wood: Hello, Janeites, and welcome to Austen Chat, a podcast brought to you by the Jane Austen Society of North America. I'm your host, Breckyn Wood from the Georgia Region of JASNA. Listeners, 2025 has been all about celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday and focusing on her enduring legacy and relevance. We at JASNA believe that Austen is for everyone. Her works are timeless, and they transcend her small corner of Regency England to speak to people across time and culture. But it's no secret that in modern times the majority of Austen fans are female. To paraphrase Elizabeth Bennet, at most Austen-themed events, gentlemen are scarce, and more than one young lady is sitting down in want of a partner. That is why I'm thrilled to welcome Brett McKay as my guest today, because he is here to chat with me about what Austen has to say to the modern man.

Brett is the founder of The Art of Manliness, a website and podcast dedicated to helping men grow up well, reach their potential, and become better friends, mentors, husbands, fathers, and citizens. Since 2008, he has interviewed hundreds of authors and scholars on a wide range of subjects, from philosophy to weight lifting, dinner party planning to hostage negotiation. In 2023, he interviewed Austen scholar John Mullan in a delightful episode entitled Jane Austen for Dudes. Welcome to the show, Brett.

Brett McKay: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really excited about this.

Breckyn: Okay, to start off, can you tell us a bit about The Art of Manliness? Why did you start it? What were your goals? And how did you think—or how do you think—that Austen aligns with those goals?

Brett: Oh, great question. So, I started the website in 2008 when I was a second-year law student, and it was really just supposed to be a fun hobby. This is when blogging was kind of a big thing. And I remember I was in a Borders bookstore—you guys remember those?—and taking a break from law school finals, and I was looking at the men's magazines, which is what I typically do. I never bought anything. It's probably why Borders went out of business.

Breckyn: It's your fault.

Brett: Yeah. But I was looking at the men's magazines and I was like, “You know what? This stuff does not resonate with me. It's all about six-pack abs. It's promoting a lifestyle that I couldn't afford as a broke, newly married law student." And I was like, "You know what? How about I just start the men's magazine that I'd want to read?" And so right there, in the Borders, I pulled up my pocket Moleskine notebook, and I started just jotting down ideas of like, what would a men's magazine be that I would read? Article ideas, categories I would cover—and then I started coming up with title names. What would be a cool name for this? And I remember when I was in college, I read this book called The Manly Arts [sic], which is about nineteenth-century bare-knuckle boxing. It's like, "Oh, The Manly Arts, that sounds kind of cool.” But, I think, “no, that's not—no, that doesn't sound good—The Art of Manliness—that’s it—that sounds cool." And that's how it started. And I started a blog, and I did all the web design myself. It was awful . . . but it worked, and the first article I published was in January 2008.

It was about how to shave with a safety razor. It was called How To Shave Like Your Grandpa. And again, I was just doing this for fun, but, for some reason, it just took off and went viral. A lot of other guys resonated with what I was doing because they were like, "Yeah, I hate other men's magazines. I love what you're doing." But, yeah, by the time I graduated from law school in 2009, I was earning enough money from it where I could eke out a living and didn't have to take the bar exam, which was great because it saved me from a career in law because I discovered from interning that I didn't enjoy it.

And so, yeah, since then, I've been doing it full-time with my wife here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so to your question of what we're trying to do—I'm just trying to bring back—the original idea was bring back this classical idea of manliness. Today, I think we have these very stereotypical, distorted views of what it means to be a man. If you go back to the Greeks and Romans, and even through, I mean, you could say the early 20th century, when someone talked about manliness, it wasn't your stereotypical brawn and bravado. There was that, but it was also being manly. People described George Washington as having a manly character, and it meant having a disposition that was geared towards virtue and excellence. It was about being the best you can be and being of service to the wider world. And I wanted to bring back that idea, because I look at—my grandfather is a big inspiration for The Art of Manliness, and for my life as a man. A World War II veteran, he worked for the Forest Service. He was . . . just a manly guy. He could go out into the woods with just a horse and some supplies and live there for two weeks, just living off the land. But he was also incredibly—just service-oriented, always thinking about others, how he could be useful. He was also intellectually curious. He was just an incredible family man. Family was so important to him.

And that was the kind of man I wanted to be, and that's what I'm trying to do on Art of Manliness, and to your question about how does this tie into Jane Austen?

Well, we'll talk—we may be getting into this in more detail—but Jane Austen—her work, that's what it’s all about. It's not—you know not from the man's perspective but just generally it's about how to be a good human being, and particularly in the social realm of life. And by that, it's not just romance. There's that, of course, but it's also just, how do you interact with others in a virtuous—or with propriety, with respect—way, when human beings are these complex, frustrating figures? How do we get better at that? And I think Jane Austen—that's what she does so well in her books, is she shows that in this really just engrossing detail. Like you can see it. And by seeing it, you're like, "Ah, I want to be better after seeing it."

Breckyn: Absolutely. You can see—her characters are so realistic, and you can see little bits of yourself or your family or people that you know in all of her characters. Nobody—there aren't any true villains, except Mrs. Norris from Mansfield Park. I think she's just pure evil. But for the most part, like I said, the people are complicated. They're a little bit good. They're a little bit bad. Everybody's flawed. But they're also—her heroes and heroines, at least, are all trying to work on that. They're trying to get better.

Brett: Right. It's all about character development. It's all about developing virtue and growing.

Breckyn: Okay, so I mentioned at the beginning that most modern Austen fans are women, but that hasn't always been the case. Austen's father and brothers were champions of her work, and she was read pretty widely by both men and women in the early days of her popularity. And over the years, she's counted a lot of illustrious men as her fans: men that you've had episodes about, like—I mean, Sir Walter Scott, Rudyard Kipling—I think you've talked about in the podcast—C. S. Lewis, Charles Darwin. These guys loved Jane Austen. They thought she was amazing. And so, I've always had this theory that it's because of the movie adaptations that Austen's fan base has shifted to mostly female, because they do really emphasize the romance. There are the balls, and the dresses, and the frilly bonnets, and—which I love; I am not denigrating that at all. I think it's great, but I do think, you know, it draws—it speaks more to women than to men in general. And so, I was really surprised to learn that you, Brett, first got into Austen because of one of the movies. Can you tell us your Austen origin story?

Brett: Yeah. So, to be clear, I knew about Jane Austen for a long—she's one of the great writers of English literature. And I knew that she was important, and that people thought a lot of her, but, like you said, the other thing I knew about Jane Austen was that pretty much only girls liked Jane Austen in high school. There was this group of girls when I was in high school—they were just were obsessed with Jane Austen.

Breckyn: That was me. I was in that group of girls in high school who loved Jane Austen.

Brett: Yeah. And I said, "You know, Jane Austen's great. Maybe she's great. Maybe I'll have to read her in college one day, but that's just not my thing." I just blew her off that way. But then when I was in law—again as I was in law school, I was taking a break from studying; I was just flipping through the channels on TV, and I came across Dr. House, Hugh Laurie. But he wasn't talking in an American accent. He was using his native English accent, and he was dressed in this Regency attire. And I was a big House fan at the time. I was like, "Oh, this is interesting. I want to watch Dr. House talk with a British accent." And I didn't know what I was watching. So, I was like, "Let me just watch this for a bit." And then I realized, "Oh, wait, this is Sense and Sensibility. This is Jane Austen." And so, I watched a little bit more. And, a couple of hours later, I'd finished the movie—I kept watching it.

And I think I was drawn—the reason I kept watching was the dialog was incredible. It's sharp, it's witty. The characters were complex. There's all this nuance in the relationships between the characters. You see this psychology being developed. And so, I kept watching it, and I was, like, "This is great. I'm going to read Sense and Sensibility." And so that was my introduction. I read Sense and Sensibility. After that, I just went on a tear, because Jane Austen novels are free because they're in the public domain. And I just—I binged them. So, you know, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma—I think I read those within just a few weeks. Yeah, that's how I got into Jane Austen. Doctor House.

Breckyn: And so that totally blows my theory out of the water, and I don't know, maybe that's how we can get more men. House fans, you can come watch him in Sense and Sensibility. So, when you did finally read them, what surprised you about her novels? Did you have any preconceptions about her that changed once you actually read the books?

Brett: Yeah, I thought it was going to be primarily about balls, and romance, and women just trying to get husbands, but when you start reading the novels, you start realizing how complex they are, like how many characters—like how do you keep track of all the characters was, I found, intellectually challenging. The dialog: just sharp. She has this kind of an acerbic wit—

Breckyn: She's mean. Jane Austen is mean in a really funny way.

Brett: She's mean. She can be cynical. But she does it because—what she does is—it brings realism to her characters. She's going to show you these characters: their best traits but also their warts. And that was really refreshing. Just the writing style is interesting because, I didn't learn about this until later on, but she uses that indirect free—

Breckyn: Free indirect discourse.

Brett: Free indirect discourse, right. Where you get inside the character's head but it's the narrator still. It's weird, but by doing that it gives you more insights into the character.

Breckyn: It blurs those lines.

Brett: Blurs those lines, yeah. So, I picked up on that, and I found that really admirable. And just the lessons. I was like, this lady . . . she was a keen observer of human nature, and she had a goal that she had—she was telling a good story. That was, I think, first and foremost—she's a great storyteller, but along the way she's teaching you how to be a good person. That's what I found, what I loved about her stories and her novels.

Breckyn: We're going to talk a little bit about this because I want to get to Aristotle with you, but her novels are incredibly moral- and virtue-based. She really cares a lot about what is right, what is wrong, but also without ever being preachy, without ever giving you a sermon about it. But that's a really hard line to walk, I think, and that's something that Jane Austen does incredibly well. I would say, for me, something that surprises me every time and it—first of all, the fact that I can still be surprised by a Jane Austen novel, even though I have read them all multiple times, is delightful because I keep coming back to them and seeing things that I hadn't seen before. But I think what surprises me the most is just how funny she is. She's, like, laugh out loud—I have read these books. I know the stories, and I'll just come across a line, and it'll be a little bit mean but really insightful, and I just crack up. I laugh out loud, still, reading Jane Austen novels because her wit is that good.

Brett: It is. I agree.

Breckyn: I wish that more men knew that, because I think if they're afraid like, "Oh, it's going to be sappy or saccharin"—Jane Austen does not have a saccharin bone in her body. Her stuff is very acerbic. So, you've talked a lot on Art of Manliness about Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics. Am I saying that right? I'm not good with Greek.

Brett: I think it's fine. I say Nicomachean. You say Nicomachean, tomato, tomahto.

Breckyn: Okay, that one. And in your interview with John Mullan, you guys discussed how Austen's ideas of virtue and self-development align with Aristotle's. So, for those of us who haven't taken a philosophy class in a while, can you give us a little overview of Aristotle's ethics, and then we can talk about how Jane Austen aligns with that?

Brett: Yeah. So, Aristotle—he had virtue ethics. So, his morality wasn't like, "Here are these rules. You must follow these rules. The end." His was more like, "In order to be a good person, you have to develop virtue, and virtue basically means excellence, and there are lots of virtues you can develop. There's temperance, there's prudence, there's courage." And for Aristotle, these virtues were typically the mean between two extremes. So, courage is the mean between recklessness and cowardice. You want to find that. But what's interesting about virtue ethics, and Aristotle's idea of virtue ethics, is it's squidgy. What can be courageous in one situation might not be courageous in another situation. And so, for Aristotle, the virtuous thing is doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time with the right emotions, just depending on the context. It's very situational. And Aristotle believed that you develop these virtues not by thinking about them—he thought contemplation was a part of that, but, really, it was through action.

He makes this great analogy about how you develop virtues to being a carpenter or a musician. He says, "Well, how do you become a good carpenter?" Well, it's not from studying carpentry books. You have to do carpenter things. You have to actually work with wood and try the different tools. That's how you become a good carpenter. How do you become a good musician? Well, it's not just watching YouTube videos about how to play a guitar or reading books on music theory. That can play a role but, really, when it gets down to it, you have to actually play the instrument, and practice it, and figure out its nuances and subtleties. So that is virtue ethics in a nutshell. It's a lot more complex than that, but I think that's the Reader's Digest version of it. And I mean, maybe you want to go into Jane Austen?

Breckyn: Yeah, sure. So, I—that's a great overview, and a couple of things immediately came to mind. One was Mr. Darcy. He has his famous quote—so, at the end, when he proposes the second time, Elizabeth says yes, and he's talking about how he was really shocked by Elizabeth's opinion of him. And he says that he had been taught good principles all of his life, but sort of left to his own devices. He wasn't—he was taught the right things, and in theory he knew what was right, but he didn't really ever have to practice it because he was rich and privileged, and you know, he's got servants who will do whatever he says. And so, there weren't really any consequences for his action. And so, that's immediately what I thought of that's very Aristotelian is that you can know what's right the whole time but, if you don't ever put it into practice, are you actually virtuous?

Brett: Or do you actually know it? For Aristotle, knowing is embodied in a lot of ways.

Breckyn: And then the other quote that I thought of is this from Mansfield Park, which I don't know if you're as familiar with that, but it's fine. So, the main family is the Bertram family. They live at the estate Mansfield Park, and they've got these two daughters, Julia and Maria. And they're pretty, and they're accomplished, and they've had a really good education but—kind of like Darcy—they're selfish and they haven't really ever had to act virtuously. And so this is the quote. It says, "It is not very wonderful that with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity, and humility,"—which is just devastating. A devastating line from Jane Austen. It's like, "Yeah, they're pretty and smart, but they're terrible people." In that conversation that you had with John Mullan, you pointed out that a lot of Austen's heroines have a moment of what Aristotle would call—and here comes another Greek word—peripeteia.

Brett: Yeah, peripeteia, peripeteia. It's basically a recognition. Like, you have this moment like, "Oh, my gosh, I am an awful person." It's a sudden realization about something. And I think—you mentioned Mr. Darcy, and he's a perfect example of that. Starts off lots of pride, kind of socially awkward, and just trying to rely on his status to navigate the world. And then Elizabeth's like, "No, you're being a jerk. You're not actually a good person." And he, instead of being defensive about it—I'm sure initially he was defensive about it—he took it to heart, and he's like, "Yeah, I need to be better." And he changes. He has this sort of reversal. Same thing happens in Emma. She thought she was this great person helping people out, and she's like, "Oh, my gosh. Actually, I'm a jerk. I'm making things—"

Breckyn: I'm a monster. I am the villain of the story.

Brett: I'm a monster. Right. Yeah. So that's a great example of sudden self-realization, but then taking that realization and actually changing for the good.

Breckyn: And actually acting on it. Yeah, just to go back to Darcy, because I think a lot of his appeal, of course, is that he is rich and handsome and brooding, but I've heard a lot of talk lately in Janeite circles that his real appeal is that a woman he admired criticized him, and, instead of getting defensive and prideful, he actually listened to her, and he took steps to change himself for the better. And to a lot of women that is very attractive. That's the most attractive thing about Darcy—is that he listened, and he was willing to change. But it's also true of Elizabeth. It wasn't just that Darcy had to change and Elizabeth was perfect. She has her moment of realization. She's been prideful, too, and she has made a lot of assumptions, and she has behaved badly. And so, I just love that that happens in every Austen novel: the characters realizing that they need to change, and they need to do better, and they actually do. They actually take those steps to improve themselves.

Brett: Yeah, I agree. That's one of the, I think, the great appeals of Austen. And again, what we talked about earlier—Austen models what moral development can look like, and we definitely need more models.

Breckyn: She gives you practical application. Okay. I'm excited about this topic. Even though Austen's books are about so much more than romance, they do all center around marriage because getting married was such a huge economic and social necessity during Austen's time. But marriage is also a topic that comes up a lot on your podcast. So, what is some of the advice that you've given about marriage over the years on your show, and how do you think Austen aligns with that?

Brett: Yeah. So, marriage—a successful marriage, a happy marriage—is an Aristotelian blend of romance, passion—the things we typically think of when we think of a romantic marriage—but also, it's about character formation. It's about how can this person make me a better person? How can I make this person—the other person—a better person? It's about shared values. It's about respect. It's about mutual self-improvement. That's kind of the crux of what we've been preaching at Art of Manliness, of what marriage can be. And you see this in Jane Austen's novels—this tension between romance and passion but also the tension between just character and how marriage can be a school for character.

Breckyn: I love that. That's a great phrase.

Brett: Yeah, so you see some characters who are just too much on the passion/romance side. That doesn't work out for them. Then you have some people who are just like—they're thinking too much about the practicalities of marriage. Like, "Oh, will this let me get ahead in life and rise up in the social circle? Am I going to be taken care of financially?" That's important— that can be an important thing—but it's not the most important thing. So, you got to try to find that happy medium where you're like, "Oh, I respect this person. I think being married to this person will help me become a better person. But I also love them. I think they're attractive, and I just—I like them. I enjoy being around them. We share the same interests." That's another important part of marriage. So, it's just trying to figure out that happy medium.

Breckyn: Yeah. It's kind of a sad but funny truth that, besides the main love interests in the Austen novels, all the other marriages are terrible. It's all examples of what not to do in a marriage or how not to be, right? I think off the top of my head one of the only truly happy married couples that I can think of is the Crofts in Persuasion. He's an admiral, and she has traveled all over the world with him, and she goes on the ships with him, and stuff like that. And they just like each other. They're good for each other, and they've supported each other in their endeavors. But also, they just like spending time together, and they're just friends, and they've got their own little jokes. So, they're a fun, cute marriage, but most of the rest of them are pretty depressing, I would say.

Brett: Yeah, one that comes to mind that's depressing: Mr. Bennet, his marriage. Awful. And that's a perfect example. This is a guy who—he got married just for—okay, his wife was pretty, and she was funny, etc., which, okay, great, that can be the basis of her initial attraction but then beauty fades as you get older, and she just started being annoying.

Breckyn: And I've got that quote. Can I read it? I think this is a perfect example of what we're talking about. "Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humor which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her." It's funny, but also deeply tragic. "Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished forever. And all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown." And so, it's so sad, but then the quote goes on to talk about how he's not one to dwell on it. He just takes it on the shoulder and keeps going. Takes it on the chin. That's the right expression. He takes it on the chin, and finds happiness in his books and in his library and stuff.

But there are real consequences for this poor choice that he has made. And the consequences are that he turns into a not very good father. He's a pretty emotionally absent father. He lets his girls run wild. He doesn't really educate them, and he's not respectful towards his wife in front of them, which makes them—kind of gives them a bad reputation in the town. Everybody knows that Mr. Bennet doesn't respect his wife, and so, even though he just brushes it off and it's not this huge tragedy, there are real consequences to picking a poor spouse.

Brett: For sure. But I think—I think he tries to redeem himself with Elizabeth. Maybe I read this wrong, but there's that moment where he's talking to Elizabeth, and I think Mr. Darcy had asked for her hand in marriage, and he was like, "You know what? I said yes, but do you really like this guy? Are you just doing this because he's rich?"

Breckyn: Yeah. He says, "Let me not see you unable to respect your partner in life." [sic] Or he says something like that, and it's a real moment in the book.

Brett: Yeah, and I can imagine having the same sort of conversation with my kids. My wife's great; I love her. But, as a parent, one of my—I talk with other parents who've got teenagers that are a few years out from getting married. It's like, man, I really don't—the hardest thing would be to see my kid get married to someone who's just a complete idiot. So, yeah, I really related to Mr. Bennet in that way.

Breckyn: Well, because, obviously, there are huge consequences—like you said, there's economic and social consequences for who you choose as a spouse. And everybody in the books really cares about that, and it's what they're centered around, but Jane Austen clearly cares about the moral ramifications and the character ramifications of who you choose as a spouse. Because those are the things that have really long-lasting impact. Okay, let's go back to Sense and Sensibility, because you've mentioned that it's your favorite; it was the first Austen novel that you read. I think that Colonel Brandon is one of Austen's best men and most underrated men, so it's a great choice. What are some things that you really like about Sense and Sensibility?

Brett: Yeah, Colonel Brandon, the guy's awesome. I just loved his quiet dignity, I guess, as we call it that. He had a tough past, a tough history. But he had this idea of masculinity that we're trying to promote on The Art of Manliness, which is being service-oriented. It's about being constant, being duty bound, and that's a big theme for that guy. And by duty, I think Jane Austen, she's going back here. She doesn't mean—it's not just social expectations. "You got to do these things because it's your duty." I think her idea of duty is more Aristotelian. It's like, "Are you doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time in the right situation, and living up to that, even in the smallest decisions? Do you have a moral code, basically? And are you sticking to it?" And I think Colonel Brandon—that's him to the T.

Breckyn: Absolutely. A quiet dignity, I think, is a perfect description for him. So, Colonel Brandon is great, and, of course, Mr. Darcy is a lot of people's favorite Austen hero. But the man that I admire most in all of Austen is Mr. Knightley from Emma. And this is one of my all-time favorite Austen quotes, and it immediately makes me think of Art of Manliness. "There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by maneuvering and finessing, but by vigor and resolution."

Brett: That's a great one. Yes.

Breckyn: You've kind of already touched on that, but what are your thoughts on that? What do you think Austen meant by a man's duty? You can talk about her time period or what do you think of duty now in modern day.

Brett: Yeah. I think it's the same thing I was just talking about. It's not necessarily like, "Here's this rule, you follow it," because maybe the rule's stupid, right? And you don't want to be duty bound to a dumb rule. It's duty bound to a good life, right? And a flourishing life. Yeah, I think Mr. Knightley, he does that. I mean—so I've read Emma, but I got to say, one of the things about Jane Austen—getting into her you start realizing, "Oh, my gosh, she's had this big influence." I had no clue that Clueless, the movie that I watched in high school, was based off of Emma until after I read Emma. And I'm like, "Oh, wait, Paul Rudd, that's Mr. Knightley." And that was one of my favorite characters. Just this cool dude. He's this good all-around guy.

Breckyn: He's a law student.

Brett: He's a law student. But I loved how he was genuinely concerned about helping Cher or Emma become a better person. And I wish I had—I think everyone wishes they had a Mr. Knightley in their life. Kind of gently nudge them. Sometimes he would get harsh a little bit, but mostly it was just gentle prodding in the right direction.

Breckyn: Oh, yeah. The most harsh he gets is the "Badly done, Emma" scene, which everybody loves. I mean, that's his best line. And he does it not for selfish reasons, right? You're talking about the right thing for the right reasons. Even though he's in love with her, he really resists that, and he just wants her to be a good person. He just wants her to be happy and he—because he is a lot older than her—can see from a mile away these enormous mistakes that she's making. But he's just always doing it out of duty and out of love, and not romantic love, but just because he cares about her and wants her to be happy.

Brett: Yeah, he wasn't trying to change her to suit his needs.

Breckyn: Yeah.

Brett: A lot of times people go into a relationship like, "Oh, I can fix that person." But really what we mean by that is, "I can make them so that I like them and they suit me better." Mr. Knightley wasn't interested in that. He was like, "I care about this person. I want them to have a great life. How can I help?"

Breckyn: That's a good point. I think what he's always doing is he's trying to make Emma live up to her own ideals. Because, again, Emma knows what's right. She's been educated. She is very privileged. What's great about the book is that you get to see behind the scenes, sort of that free indirect discourse, and you get to see when her conscience is pricking her. It's always about Miss Bates, the lady who talks constantly too much. She knows that she should do better by Miss Bates, or she should do better by Jane Fairfax. And so, Mr. Knightley is this external conscience who is there to remind her, like, "Emma, I'm saying this, but you actually know. You don't need me here. You know what's right, but you just need to actually act on it." That's something I really enjoy about the book, is seeing Emma—she knows what's right, but she needs that nudge from Mr. Knightley because she's so young. I think we forget how young these heroines are. Emma's like 20, 21. The oldest one is Anne, and she's only 27, so—just ancient for Jane Austen's time, but in our modern—I mean, Elinor, who—I'm going through Sense and Sensibility right now again, and she is so wise and so mature and so restrained. She's 19. It's crazy. I was not like that at 19.

Brett: I wasn't either.

Breckyn: Okay, so Brett, to end, let's just do a little recap. Why do you think men should read Austen? What does Jane Austen have to offer the modern man?

Brett: Sure. First off, they're just good stories. Like I said, the dialog is amazing. I love how they're character-driven. I will say this, I'm going to make a connection here. If you're a guy and you—my favorite novel of all time is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

Breckyn: Larry McMurtry likes Jane Austen.

Brett: Yes, yes. But I think one of the reasons why I enjoy Jane Austen is because Larry McMurtry is pretty much following Jane Austen's footsteps in how to write a novel. His novel, Lonesome Dove, it's—yes, there's action; there's the cattle drive and there's shootouts—but it's primarily character-driven, and it's all about people trying to deal with love, unrequited love, regret, pride, friendship, jealousy. So, if you read Lonesome Dove and you liked it, you're going to like Jane Austen novels for the exact same reason. Just the setting is different. It's Regency England and not 1870s Wild West America. You're just going to see these characters in Jane Austen novels grappling with these all too human issues. So, the story is great, but also, I just think there's a lot of moral lessons that Jane Austen can impart to you as you read them. You're going to see models of what it means or what it looks like to develop yourself as a person—develop your character, living up to ideals, struggling with it, having setbacks, but then continually trying again. And I think that's why guys, and I think everyone, everyone should read Jane Austen for those reasons.

Breckyn: Yeah. And that idea of self-knowledge, self-discipline, and taking responsibility for your actions, which I think is something that everybody needs to learn.

Brett: I agree.

Breckyn: Okay. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Brett. Where can our listeners find you online?

Brett: So, of course, there's The Art of Manliness. Just Google it; you'll find all sorts of things. I'd also like to recommend checking out—my wife and I started a new newsletter on Substack called Dying Breed. You can find it at dyingbreed.net. It's for men and women alike, and we're going deep on topics that my wife and I talk about around the kitchen table, just together. So, go check it out. We’re having a lot of fun with it.

Breckyn: Thank you so much, Brett. This has been great.

Brett: No, thank you.Breckyn: Dear listeners, I just wanted to end today's episode by saying thank you. Austen Chat now has over 100 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. We are thrilled and so grateful for everyone who has left a review. If you haven't left a review yet, please consider giving the show five stars on Apple Podcasts. The more reviews we get, the easier it is for new Janeites to find us. Join us again next month for another episode. In the meantime, I remain yours affectionately, Breckyn Wood.

[Theme music]

Austen Chat: Episode 25

July 2, 2025

Jane Austen & Gentlemen: A Visit with Brett McKay

Show Notes and Links

Transcript

Austen Chat Podcast

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”

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