‘Lady Susan’ by Jane Austen Is a Spiteful Piece of Work

 

Author Sophia Alexander with 'Lady Susan' by Jane Austen

Mrs. Vernon waited on Lady Susan, shortly after her arrival in town; and she was met with such an easy and cheerful affection as made her almost turn from her with horror.  No remembrance of Reginald, no consciousness of guilt, gave one look of embarrassment. She was in excellent spirits, and seemed eager to show at once, by every possible attention to her brother and sister, her sense of their kindness, and her pleasure in their society.  –a quote from Lady Susan summing up Jane’s attitude

Oh, the amazing Jane Austen has shown her petty side again!  Or rather, Lady Susan was her first book, actually (written perhaps 228 years ago in 1794)—but it remained unpublished until 1871, 'just' 151 years ago.  It’s more a… novella, I suppose.  An epistolary novella. But gosh, I do love Jane Austen’s incisive writing, and I also adore novels in the form of letters. So I still can’t help but recommend it as an interesting read.

But what sort of spite caused her to create the character of Lady Susan?  I have the notion that Jane Austen knew someone just like her—nearly perfect in her bearing and looks so far as Jane could see, but who did, perhaps, have rumors following her about numerous men falling in love with her.  She was a beautiful, charming woman!  But Jane conjures her a deceitful, underhanded character, and you only really know that it’s so from Lady Susan’s own private letters to an equally lecherous female friend (according to Jane’s imaginings). Otherwise, Lady Susan really is fairly lovely.

I envision Jane sitting there, hating on this beloved woman who is so ‘old’—in her 30s, I do believe—with men continuing to fall in love with her while Jane remains unattached. Jane is furiously imagining how Lady Susan is managing it all, how wicked she is really being. 

(Spoiler Alert.) What a shame! Jane is again (as in other books) so full of righteous, judgmental, moral superiority—and yet, and YET, the morally superior sister-in-law contrives to steal Lady Susan’s beau for Lady Susan’s daughter! It’s implied that she later succeeds (with some difficulty, as Reginald was truly in love with the mother), after manipulating the daughter into her own custody, also against Lady Susan’s wishes. The daughter actually had fallen in love with Reginald, and so Mrs. Vernon had concluded that naturally her brother should belong to the daughter instead of her widowed mother!  Not one single syllable of reproach about the daughter falling in love with her mother’s beau. Not one misgiving about trying to steal Lady Susan’s fellow.

Lady Susan’s sole obvious fault (aside from those handful of letters to her friend that did admit to all sorts of bad behaviors) was that she was trying to push her daughter into a comfortable situation with a man the daughter did not love.  She was clearly trying to do it for her daughter’s own good. That was a common practice of the time, and she did not end up forcing her daughter to marry him, after all.  She actually does it herself—which proves she truly deemed it a good situation if she’d take it on herself (and it was readily admitted by all that she had more charm and beauty than her daughter, so it wasn’t out of desperation). And while she may not have been absolutely in love with him, she was clearly doing the best she could for her circumstances.

I can only conclude that Jane was inspired from jealousy, or perhaps sympathy with a girl in Lady Susan’s daughter’s position, as she did write it while near the girl’s age. Yes, if Lady Susan really was as awful as it was revealed in those letters to her equally lascivious friend, then she was a bad character indeed. However, I suspect Jane did know an admirable woman of Lady Susan’s description, and those damning letters were the most fictional part of the entire novella—a product of Jane’s imagination and likely a few malicious rumors.

            Fascinating language sidenotes: When Lady Susan’s daughter runs away from her boarding school, it’s repeatedly referred to as an ‘elopement’; perhaps I knew it could be used that way, but it was a bit jarring! Far more fun was her modern usage of the word ‘lame’: ‘Certainly,’ I replied, deeply sighing at the recital of so lame a story.

And on that note, I will end this review!