It might be argued that when two intelligent women are engaged in a subtle and nuanced reading, in a debate entitled Austen V Woolf, a man might be disqualified, sui generis, (or perhaps sui genderis,) from taking part. My argument is that on the contrary, this is just where a man ought to be paying attention.

By definition men can never know what women say or think about them in their absence, but these novels, in their very different ways, give men that chance. One of the gifts imaginative literature has to offer us is that it enlarges our empathy and our vision. It not only gives us the chance to empathise with and imaginatively inhabit the lives of others on their own terms, it also allows us to see how we in turn have been understood and imaginatively inhabited. For some men, perhaps most men, this can be a salutary shock. This is I think especially true for men who read the novels of Jane Austen. Time and again we see the men in these novels assuming that they are center stage, dictating the action, expecting from others a passive, or perhaps passionate response to their action. But of course with Austen we see all these men through the eyes of women and most often through the eyes of a woman who has more powers of observation than the men whom they observe. Austen so often juxtaposes the scenes in which men are actors with scenes in which women are active commentators re-reading the men and their actions in terms which the men have never even considered.