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Article: Austen's 'Mansfield Park.' (novel by author Jane Austen)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In nineteenth-century British fiction, the primary role of the middle- to upper-class aunt with respect to her nephews and nieces is to oversee the development of proper manners and promote suitable marriages. The term breeding encompasses both these matters, both in its literal sense and figuratively, as Jane Austen uses it, to signify decorum. The aunt, then, assumes the position of a breeder - a bloodstock agent or horticulturist, both of which professions were just emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century. Stockbreeders were also known as "improvers."(1)
Although in Austen's day the voyage of the Beagle was still to come, interest ran high in ...