Let Us Join the Ladies

It is often said that Jane Austen didn't write any scenes with only men present. And the reason given is because men were outside of her sweet-little-country-spinster sphere of reference--how could she write about creatures she never knew? Who knows what the guys talk about when the ladies have excused themselves from the dinner table?

I suspect that a more compelling reason for Austen to limit her all-male scenes is that most of her readers are women, and women like stories with women in them. Don't we?  We don't want to see a war movie unless there is a romantic interest included, and women are on the covers of women's magazines, not men. Austen read a lot of novels and carefully analyzed them, making note of what she thought was ridiculous or implausible or preachy. She was a great innovator as a writer but she was a shrewd, self-aware writer as well, avoiding subjects and spheres of life that she felt didn't suit her authorial voice...

Actually, there are some brief all-male conversations or reported conversations in Jane Austen. There are several in Mansfield Park between Sir Thomas Bertram and his sons. The first comes when Sir Thomas confronts his son and heir Tom about Tom's extravagant spending--because of Tom, Sir Thomas must sell the living in Mansfield parish to another clergyman instead of saving it for his second son Edmund.

"I blush for you, Tom"

"I blush for you, Tom," said he, in his most dignified manner; "I blush for the expedient which I am driven on, and I trust I may pity your feelings as a brother on the occasion. You have robbed Edmund for ten, twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life, of more than half the income which ought to be his. It may hereafter be in my power, or in yours (I hope it will), to procure him better preferment; but it must not be forgotten that no benefit of that sort would have been beyond his natural claims on us, and that nothing can, in fact, be an equivalent for the certain advantage which he is now obliged to forego through the urgency of your debts."
​
Tom listened with some shame and some sorrow; but escaping as quickly as possible, could soon with cheerful selfishness reflect, firstly, that he had not been half so much in debt as some of his friends; secondly, that his father had made a most tiresome piece of work of it; and, thirdly, that the future incumbent, whoever he might be, would, in all probability, die very soon.

---

---

In the forthcoming short story anthology, Dangerous To Know: Jane Austen's Rakes & Gentlemen Rogues, my assigned rake is Tom Bertram, and I have included the confrontation excerpted above in my story. I was stretching my imagination to talk like a man,  speaking in the first person, at a drinking party!  These are the type of scenes that happen offstage in an Austen novel.

The title of my story is taken from something Mary Crawford says to her sister, Mrs. Grant, "you must have the address of a Frenchwoman," that is, you must have the charm, finesse, and persuasive abilities of a Frenchwoman. In Austen's time, "address" didn't mean "mailing address." They used the word, "direction."​  

​Tom Bertram in  "The Address of a Frenchwoman," is imagined differently than Tom Bertram as he appears in my novel, A Contrary Wind. 

---

Another brief all-male scene in Mansfield Park, that I think is amazingly cinematic or theatrical, is the moment when Sir Thomas comes back unexpectedly and catches the young people rehearsing an indelicate play. (Notice how Austen uses the barker's cliche: this, his first appearance on any stage). The young people try to hide the fact from their father, but of course, since Tom has ordered that a fully-fitted stage be built in the billiard room, and they were using their dad's study for the green room, they are caught red-handed.

Sir Thomas goes to his study and finds it all disarranged: The removal of the bookcase from before the billiard-room door struck him especially, but he had scarcely more than time to feel astonished at all this, before there were sounds from the billiard-room to astonish him still farther. Some one was talking there in a very loud accent; he did not know the voice--more than talking--almost hallooing. He stepped to the door, rejoicing at that moment in having the means of immediate communication, and, opening it, found himself on the stage of a theatre, and opposed to a ranting young man, who appeared likely to knock him down backwards. At the very moment of Yates perceiving Sir Thomas, and giving perhaps the very best start he had ever given in the whole course of his rehearsals,

Tom Bertram entered at the other end of the room; and never had he found greater difficulty in keeping his countenance. His father's looks of solemnity and amazement on this his first appearance on any stage, and the gradual metamorphosis of the impassioned Baron Wildenheim into the well-bred and easy Mr. Yates, making his bow and apology to Sir Thomas Bertram, was such an exhibition, such a piece of true acting, as he would not have lost upon any account. It would be the last--in all probability--the last scene on that stage; but he was sure there could not be a finer. The house would close with the greatest eclat.

---

John Dashwood

My favourite Austen moment between two men happens in Sense & Sensibility.  John Dashwood is trying to promote a match between his half-sister Elinor and Colonel Brandon. Meanwhile, Elinor's younger sister Marianne is absolutely distraught over a disappointment in love. John Dashwood doesn't know that the colonel is in love with Marianne, but the reader does. At an evening party, after Marianne has burst into tears, Dashwood quietly takes the colonel aside: "Poor Marianne!" said he to Colonel Brandon, in a low voice, as soon as he could secure his attention,— "She has not such good health as her sister,—she is very nervous,—she has not Elinor's constitution;—and one must allow that there is something very trying to a young woman who HAS BEEN a beauty in the loss of her personal attractions. You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne WAS remarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Elinor.— Now you see it is all gone."

---

Austen ends the dialogue, and in fact the chapter, right there. A lesser author would have continued with some narration to explain what is going through Colonel Brandon's mind at this moment. But Austen holds her readers in higher regard. We are not dull elves.  We know that Colonel Brandon still loves Marianne, even if her beauty is diminished, and that he is silently standing there, feeling for her most acutely.
​
In fact, because of Austen's brilliant restraint here, we momentarily become Colonel Brandon. John Dashwood is speaking to us.