Better in their words…

William Deresiewicz: How Jane Austen Taught Me to Be a Man – WSJ.com.

A great perspective.  And the books/movies aren’t bad either.

By WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ

I was 26 when I read my first Jane Austen novel, “Emma,” the story of a spoiled young lady in Regency England who fancies herself a matchmaker. A graduate student at the time, I was as arrogant as they come and didn’t think there was much anyone could teach me about life—especially not Jane Austen, the godmother of chick-lit. Imagine my surprise when she taught me not just how to grow up, but how to be a man.

Like so many guys, I thought a good conversation meant holding forth about all the supposedly important things I knew: books, history, politics. But I wasn’t just aggressively sure of myself. I was also oblivious to the feelings of the people around me, a bulldozer stuck in overdrive.

In fact, I was a lot like Emma, the heroine of that first Austen novel I read—was forced to read, actually, because I thought her fiction sounded trivial and boring. Many of the characters in the book were indeed trivial and boring; their banal conversations droned on and on. Mr. Woodhouse, Miss Bates—the dull old man, the scatterbrained neighbor—these were the kinds of people I tuned out in real life.

The funny thing was, the heroine agreed with me. If I was bored with the world of the novel, so was she. But then everything shifted. Emma discovered how much she had to learn by paying attention to the people around her, and so, through her, did I. Once I really started seeing them, the people in my life acquired the depth and richness of literary characters; their stories, the fascination of a novel.

Above all, I started paying attention to what those people might be feeling in relation to me. Surprise, surprise, I really hurt them—a lot. If you’re oblivious to other people, chances are that’s just what’s going to happen. I knew now that if I was ever going to have any real friends—or I should say, any real friendships with my friends—I’d have to learn to stop being a defensive, reactive, self-enclosed jerk.

It took me reading “Pride and Prejudice,” a couple of years later, to find out how. Here was another Austen heroine who seemed a lot like me, except instead of being an arrogant snob, Elizabeth Bennet was brilliant and witty and fun. I eagerly identified with her and took her side in every argument. About halfway through the novel, I fell into Austen’s well-laid trap. Elizabeth, it turned out, was completely wrong about everything—which meant that I was, too. My education came, however, when I noticed how she dealt with it.

Like Elizabeth, I always had a response when someone called me out on something careless or callous I had done. I would scurry around like a beaver, shoring up the walls of my self-esteem: “Who, me?” “No, you must be wrong.” “That’s not what I meant.” “Problem? What problem?”

But Elizabeth did something different. She was strong. She was brave. She was just what men are meant to be. She acknowledged her flaws, and no matter how much it hurt, she owned up to them: “How despicably I have acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation!”

Humiliation, I realized, was exactly what I needed, too. Our egos, Austen was teaching me, prevent us from owning up to our many errors and shortcomings, and so our egos must be broken down. “Humiliation,” after all, comes from “humility.” It humbles us, makes us properly humble.

I had come to graduate school with a very different idea about what it means to get an education. Growing up, I had learned to equate being educated with knowing things, knowing facts. And the purpose of knowing things, in a strangely circular way, was simply to “be” educated, to be able to pride yourself on being a “man of culture” (and feel superior to those who weren’t).

Knowledge, culture, ego: That was pretty much the formula. But now I was learning a new idea—about education, but also about being a man. You didn’t have to be certain, Austen taught me, to be strong, and you didn’t have to dominate people to earn their respect. Real men were not afraid to admit that they still had things to learn—even from a woman.

Mr. Deresiewicz is the author of “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter,” just out from Penguin Press.