Don't men like the Brontës?

It is our experience than more men like the Brontës than meets the eye. In fact, half of the BrontëBlog team is a man. However, The Guardian publishes a survey that points to men not being very fond of the Brontës, while last year women enthusiastically voted for Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heghts just behind (and then they will say they are more clever - ha!).

Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins, from the University of London's Queen Mary College, interviewed 500 men - many of whom had a professional connection with literature - about the novels that had changed their lives. The most frequently named book was Albert Camus's The Outsider, followed by J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

Actually, the bottom line of the results would be that women read more by women and men read more by men. However, women read more by men than men by women. Interesting.

Six male authors made it into the women's top 20. Only one woman has made it on to the men's: Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird). Is it churlish of us to suspect that some men did not realise that Harper was a woman?

If we follow Harper Lee's 'churlish' trend - would that mean that had Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë remained Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell they would still be more widely read today? Wouldn't that be incredibly sad, though? We wouldn't have moved a step ahead since their century.

From the face-to-face interviews as well as the raw data a real pattern emerges: men use fiction almost physically as a guide to negotiate a difficult journey (but would rarely admit to this downright being the case). They use fiction almost topographically, as a map. Many of our women respondents last year explained that they used novels metaphorically - the build-up to an emotional crisis and subsequent denouement in a novel such as Jane Eyre might have helped negotiate an emotional progress through a difficult divorce, or provided support during a difficult period at work, or provided solace when things seemed generally dull.

Apparently men are also more afraid of rereads than women. And as they enter adulthood they tend to lean towards non-fiction.

So, this is food for thought. We encourage men to either take the mask off their face and confess that they not only like 'manly' novels, or to read the Brontës if they haven't. Seriously, we are pretty sure you wouldn't regret it. Plus, think of all the women out there dreaming of their very own Mr Rochester ;)

For the results of the survey click here, and for the commentary and contrast with last year click here. On this last link you can also find a final face to face between the two rough contenders - the winners of both surveys: Jane Eyre (cheers, please) vs The Outsider (L'Étranger by Albert Camus) (behave at your own discretion :P)

In the end though - literature always wins. Read, read, read.

EDIT
More interesting comments on this topic can be found in The Guardian's CultureVultureBlog

Categories: In_the_News, Jane_Eyre, Books