"Lady Susan" by Jane Austen is a short epistolary novel that follows the manipulative and conniving widow, Lady Susan Vernon, as she schemes to secure wealthy marriages for herself and her daughter. Written entirely through letters exchanged between characters, the story unfolds through gossip, scandal, and the revelation of Lady Susan's deceitful nature. Despite being an early work of Austen, the novel showcases her talent for creating complex characters like Lady Susan, who is portrayed as heartless, selfish, and unscrupulous in her pursuit of personal gain.
The plot revolves around Lady Susan's cunning efforts to manipulate those around her, leading to outrage, shock, and helplessness among her acquaintances. Through the epistolary format, readers are given glimpses of Lady Susan's underhandedness, her daughter's predicament, and the reactions of those caught in her web of deceit. Despite the lack of traditional narrative prose, the novel offers a wickedly fun and engaging exploration of love, manipulation, and Regency society.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include themes of manipulation, emotional abuse, and infidelity, which may be uncomfortable for some readers.
Has Romance?
There are romantic elements that drive the plot, characterized by manipulation and societal expectations.
From The Publisher:
"I am indeed provoked at the artifice of this unprincipled woman."
This high-spirited tale, told through an exchange of letters, is unique in Jane Austen's small body of work. It is the story of Lady Susan, a brilliant, beautiful and morally reprehensible coquette who delights in making men fall in love with her, deceiving their wives into friendship and even tormenting her own daughter, cruelly bending her to her will.
Austen clearly delighted in her wicked heroine-tracing Lady Susan's maneuverings to remarry yet continue on with her lover, and to marry off her young daughter, with great wit, zest and unfailing panache.
This little-known gem, Austen's only epistolary work, is perhaps both her funniest and bitchiest book.
The Art of The Novella Series
Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.
Ratings (20)
Incredible (2) | |
Loved It (5) | |
Liked It (6) | |
It Was OK (5) | |
Did Not Like (1) | |
Hated It (1) |
Reader Stats (55):
Read It (21) | |
Want To Read (22) | |
Not Interested (12) |
3 comment(s)
It feels to short because I wanted more. It's not one of her best but it's still good!
i never knew jane austen wrote a novella
this is like a gift from across time
so funny, the original mean girls, so perfect
every woman in this book thinks of men as children to be manipulated
not just lady susan, who is the most manipulative of them all, but all of them, except maybe frederica
just as biting and sharp as her later works
My dear Sister,—I congratulate you and Mr. Vernon on being about to receive into your family the most accomplished coquette in England. As a very distinguished flirt I have always been taught to consider her, but it has lately fallen in my way to hear some particulars of her conduct at Langford: which prove that she does not confine herself to that sort of honest flirtation which satisfies most people, but aspires to the more delicious gratification of making a whole family miserable.
This little novella was an absolute
riot and I cannot believe that it’s been relegated (in most editions) to being lumped in with Austen's juvenilia and unfinished work: this and a Penguin Little Black Classics copy seem to be the only standalones available from major publishers, which is an absolute shame.
Lady Susan is an epistolary novella…and it
actually reads like a collection of letters. Typically authors of epistolary works will take a good deal of creative license and, apart from the salutation and signature, include quite a lot of narration and dialogue in the ostensible epistles when such content would be fairly unrealistic for a real-life letter writer to include. I’m fine with either approach (within reason), but Austen’s style is much less common and so is incredibly refreshing. It really
feels like covertly reading someone’s mail—the important pieces, at least—and getting all the delicious gossip completely uncensored. It actually brought to mind
84, Charing Cross Road, the only letter collection I’ve ever read, and made me wish letter-writing was still alive. It also helps that the letters are pretty short, so the novella flies by.
Style aside, the characters are a hoot. I cannot express how absolutely delighted I was to find that Lady Susan, at the decrepit old age of 35, is somehow still hot and in competition
with her own daughter (or her suitor’s…wife? Yikes!). She twists almost every man—and woman—she meets around her little finger and takes perverse pleasure in doing it. Altogether, she’s absolutely shameless and an all-around terrible and selfish person, but amazingly fun to read about. And it’s not just her: all of the letter writers are witty, pithy, and often hilariously petty. However, Lady Susan is the decided protagonist who is at the center of everything that happens, so it’s only right that she steals the show.
The final chapter is not a letter, but a Conclusion written by an unnamed narrator (probably just Austen herself). While the ending may be a
bit abrupt, I felt like everything had been sufficiently set up and so I was completely content.
A total surprise, laugh-out-loud funny, and one of my favorite works by Austen (with the slight caveat that of course it’s a fairly short novella and so can’t be expected to have quite the fullness of characterization or emotional impact as a full-length novel).
Some favorite passages:
Not that I am an advocate for the prevailing fashion of acquiring a perfect knowledge of all languages, arts, and sciences. It is throwing time away to be mistress of French, Italian, and German: music, singing, and drawing, & c., will gain a woman some applause, but will not add one lover to her list—grace and manner, after all, are of the greatest importance. I do not mean, therefore, that Frederica’s acquirements should be more than superficial, and I flatter myself that she will not remain long enough at school to understand anything thoroughly.
Some mothers would have insisted on their daughter’s accepting so good an offer on the first overture; but I could not reconcile it to myself to force Frederica into a marriage from which her heart revolted, and instead of adopting so harsh a measure merely propose to make it her own choice, by rendering her thoroughly uncomfortable till she does accept him—
I talked to him about you and your daughter, and he is so far from having forgotten you, that I am sure he would marry either of you with pleasure.
If I am vain of anything, it is of my eloquence. Consideration and esteem as surely follow command of language as admiration waits on beauty, and here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.
Humbled as he now is, I cannot forgive him such an instance of pride, and am doubtful whether I ought not to punish him by dismissing him at once after this reconciliation, or by marrying and teazing him for ever.
My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die.
CONCLUSION This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer.
What can you read after
Lady Susan?
About the Author:
Jane Austen was born in Steventon rectory on 16 December 1775. Her family later moved to Bath, then to Southampton and finally to Chawton in Hampshire. She began writing Pride and Prejudice when she was twenty-two years old. It was originally called First Impressions and was initially rejected by the publishers and only published in 1813 after much revision. She published four of her novels in her lifetime, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Jane Austen died on 18th July 1817. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were both published posthumously in 1818.
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