William Deresiewicz, who began his career as an Austen scholar, has spent his adult life dealing with people’s surprise (if not more) at his choice of specialty. “Men, in particular, would get this look in their eyes, as if to say, ‘What’s wrong with you, dude?'”, while women often seemed to act as if he was intruding into a domain that was theirs (in a way that, say, George Eliot or Virginia Woolf or the Brontës are not). Here Deresiewicz considers what it is about Austen that would make women feel so possessive, what makes an Austen hero sexy, and how her novels taught him “how to be a better man.”