Description:
Jane Austen's Men is among the first full-length works to explore Austen's male protagonists as textual constructions of masculinity. This book illuminates in new ways Jane Austen's ambitions for the novel, and the political power of the courtship romance genre in the Romantic era.
Review Quotes:
"In Jane Austen's Men: Rewriting Masculinity for the Romantic Era, Sarah Ailwood demolishes once and for all the notion that Jane Austen did not understand men. In this engaging, deeply perceptive book, she argues that Austen undertook the inherently risky task of re-creating a psychologically complex masculinity to complement women's individual agency and subjectivity. Companionate marriage, in Austen's reworking of the romantic courtship novel, looks both attractive and startlingly modern."
--Jocelyn Harris, Professor Emerita, University of Otago.