Jane Austen's Lady Susan – A Book Review
This Saucy Heroine Leaves a Path of Destruction in Her Wake
Her maneuverings are quite harmful and devious, yet, thanks to Austen’s wit, one cannot help but laugh and delight in this study of Regency-era manners.
Though written completely as a series of letters, this novella tells a compelling story that is easily followed.
A Travelling Maelstrom
After becoming widowed and losing her own home, Lady Susan bounces from estate to estate, leaving devastation and turmoil everywhere she goes.
She sees others as only being there to serve her purposes whilst she needs them. Then they are to be discarded.
The only person to escape her intrigues is Mrs. Alicia Johnson, a friend who lives in London and helps her with her plots. Mrs. Johnson seems as devious and devoid of feeling as Lady Susan.
Lady Susan’s Major Victims
Frederica Vernon, Lady Susan’s teen daughter, is certainly the most affected by her mother’s lack of natural affection and care. Frederica blooms when in the company of truly caring people, such as her aunt, Mrs. Vernon, the wife of Lady Susan’s brother (a marriage that Lady Susan plotted to overthrow).
But when Frederica is around her mother, she wilts into a despondent, quiet, mousy thing with nothing to say.
- Lady Susan plots, through the entire work, to marry off Frederica to Sir James Martin, a man Frederica detests.
- In the end, Lady Susan marries Sir James herself, after toying with the affections of two men throughout the work.
- Frederica has never received natural, motherly affection from Lady Susan, but under the care of the Vernons, with whom she eventually settles, she begins to relax and blossom. This is the only happy conclusion out of this witty but bitingly harsh novella.
Reginald De Courcy, a young man about 12 years Lady Susan’s junior and brother to Mrs. Vernon, is toyed with throughout the work by Lady Susan to the point that he is ready to propose to her.
He discovers in time, by mere chance, that all the bad things he has heard about her from various sources are the truth, rather than mere slander, and eventually withdraws from her company forever.
- Mr. De Courcy is worked on the moment Lady Susan lays eyes upon him; she determines he will fall in love with her.
- He does become devoted to her, and each time he tries to leave after hearing of some new horror in which she is involved, she placates him and persuades him to stay near her.
- Lady Susan keeps him from people who would offer him true affection, such as Frederica Vernon.
- Eventually, he does break away, ashamed of himself for believing Lady Susan’s lies for so long, and, as Jane Austen writes: “…abjuring all future attachments, and detesting the (female) sex, might be reasonably looked for in the course of a twelvemonth (to visit the Vernons and Frederica). Three months might have done it in general, but Reginald’s feelings were no less lasting than lively.”
Mrs. Vernon, married to Lady Susan’s brother, is a victim of Lady Susan’s plots, as she is forced to let her stay in her household for an extended period of time, due to societal customs and Regency-era good manners.
- Lady Susan lies to Mrs. Vernon and pretends to honour her, whilst speaking ill of her to her friend, Mrs. Johnson, in letter after letter.
- Lady Susan detests Mrs. Vernon, basically calling her a spoiled rich woman bereft of finer feelings and true sentiments.
- Lady Susan affects the entire feelings and mood of Mrs. Vernon’s family by her intrigues involving Reginald De Courcy, Mrs. Vernon’s brother, whom the family hopes will marry well. Mrs. Vernon’s older parents are put in great despair and spend a long, lonely winter convinced their son will marry the older, devious Lady Susan.
One cannot speak of victims in Lady Susan without discussing the Manwaring family, with whom Lady Susan spent time after her husband’s death.
- Lady Susan flirted shamelessly with Mr. Manwaring, causing him to fall helplessly in love with her. She writes to him almost daily, under the ploy of corresponding with his wife, throughout the work, and he visits her at every opportunity.
- Yet Lady Susan speaks of Mr. Manwaring in disrespectful terms, as if he were a plaything, something to amuse her and then be tossed aside.
- Mrs. Manwaring, who desperately wants to hold onto her marriage, if not her husband’s affection, begins to waste away. Her downfall is encouraged by Lady Susan, who begs her London-based friend Mrs. Johnson, who sees Mrs. Manwaring often, to hasten the ill effects of her pining.
- Maria Manwaring, the daughter of the unfortunate Manwaring family, truly wants to marry Sir James Martin. She has been tormented by Lady Susan for many months, who publicly plotted to marry her own daughter off to him. In the end, Maria suffers a sad fate, as described by Austen:
“For myself, I confess that I [sic] can pity only Miss Manwaring, who, coming to Town and putting herself to an expense in cloathes [sic], which impoverished her for two years, on purpose to secure (Sir James), was defrauded of her due by a woman ten years older than herself.”
Plots and Schemes Abound
Lady Susan is a joy to read and an accessible study in Regency-era English manners.
However, the delight has a devilish side, as readers laugh at the horrid way that Lady Susan and her friend Mrs. Johnson view the world and all others. Other people are there only to serve the purposes of these two women.
Truly, in the end, no one really wins, save for the men who escape marriage to the devious Lady Susan, and those who are spared of her company.
Source: Lady Susan, by Jane Austen, Dover Publications, Inc., 2005, an unabridged reproduction of the work as first published in 1871 by Richard Bentley and Son, London.
Lady Susan is a Short But Compelling Work
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Lady Susan Plots and Turns Her Back on Friends.
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