Persuasion
In Our Time: Culture
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The Navy and Mary, by Jane Austin
Austin is always, always looking for warmth and affectionateness. The Navy symbolizes a kind of brotherliness that she thinks is actually a blueprint for the English nation. So all through Austin's fiction, I think that familiar warmth, that bond between sisters, that openness to people from different backgrounds is a constant theme. It's embodied in what you might say is quite an un-crisical way in the Navy in this novel. There's one baddie who's very interesting, written, slightly underwritten by Austin,. but Mrs Clay, Penelope Clay, who eventually ends up with William Elliot.
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