I begin by describing a typical situation which I have encountered many times throughout the course of my module. I am sitting in a seminar and the set text for that week is being discussed, in particular, its presentation of men. I am sat, feeling like a zoo animal or even an intruder, while the entirely female seminar group discusses men. The conversation is negative—men this, men that—lived masculinity is decidedly absent from the discussion, and thus the academic analysis feels removed from the object of its attention. Given how the scenario I have just described is quite common, it is not surprising that so few men choose to study literature at university. Besides discussions of the economic utility of the degree, the cultural factors that cause the absence of men from the discipline have interested me for a long time.

It could be argued that the almost nine to one split I have observed on my course has its roots at the beginning of education. Girls generally have a higher reading age than boys throughout primary school, and seem to develop a higher social intelligence necessary to create a relationship with fictional characters. Recalling my own interests between 4 and 11, while this led to some reading, the books I read were almost always nonfiction. Factual and concise—the history and engineering books I loved, allowed for easy discernment and the acquisition of facts at a rapid pace. I, like many, if not most boys, had no time for the monotonous narratives of novels with the gradual revelation of emotion. Through such initial preferences, the seeds of separation from literature are often sown at a young age, making it a challenging thing to overcome.

Secondary school, in my experience, far from trying to rectify this problem, perpetuates it. There are of course deep and intransigent biological and psychological reasons for the continued separation of men from fiction. The process of puberty makes boys energetic and frustrated, and hardly cultivates a mindset open to serious literature. There are, however, cultural reasons for the aforementioned separation, which seem to me to have developed in the last few years. In my experience, the GCSE English curriculum, the methods of teaching, and the set texts cater far more to girls than boys. I still remember the monotony of studying “Poppies” by Jane Weir, a poem that even now I find dreary, poorly composed, and dull. There were some aspects of the curriculum I might have enjoyed—for example, the poems of Wilfred Owen—but having only female teachers meant everything was mediated through a feminine perspective. Not only were there no role models for me or any of the other boys who might have engaged our imaginations, but I am still convinced that some of my teachers did not like boys, or at least did not understand them. Had the Greek epics or the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons been taught, I think far more boys would have taken an interest. Alas, my English schooling prioritised femininity and set up a game in which most boys will always find themselves in a defective second class. It is hardly surprising that of my 400-person (mixed-gender) year group, I know of only one other boy who went on to get an A-level in English.

It was therefore not surprising when I came to university to find very few other men on the English Literature side of my degree. By contrast, History seems to have achieved a near fifty-fifty split of men and women. Inside and out of university, my male friends, while not usually disliking literature, generally feel that reading fiction is just not for them. I suspect this is a legacy of British state schooling, as I outlined above. I also think that because when I was in school, reading (from an approved list of books) was compulsory, this may have nurtured contempt for books among some people.

I was discussing literature a few days ago with a friend. I pulled out copies of Chaucer, Beowulf, and some of my Arthurian texts. I explained how they were written and how they fitted into the development of our language. He told me afterwards that it was the first time he had been interested in English Literature. Perhaps this is evidence of the need for a new approach to engaging men in our discipline. There is no shortage of masculine themes in the corpus of English, but so long as they remain suppressed, so too will men avoid literature in favour of other interests. There will be people on my course who won’t care about gender balance—fair enough. But how can a subject which seeks to analyse the methods of discourse which shape human life truly achieve its aims, if it almost excludes half of our species?