What Jane Austen taught me about male loneliness | Joseph Earp

What if men aren't lonely in defiance of their status as oppressors - what if they're lonely because of that status?

Last month I travelled to England, a country I had not visited for 13 years, to attend a funeral. When it came time to choose what to read on the long flight, I threw Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice into my bag, mostly on a whim. I'd read it and loved it many years before but why it came with me, I can't entirely say.

The trip was bleak. I sat in galleries by myself. I ate lunch by myself. And I attended the funeral by myself, where the men from my family assembled in awkward clusters, surrounded by each other, but, in an immediately recognisable way, standing alone.