Lady Susan

“I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present and state of mind.” 

Susan writes to her brother-in-law, Charles, at the outset of the novella, blatantly obfuscating the truth of her situation. Firstly, she does not like Catherine, as the audience quickly understands, and so any mention that Susan desires to become acquainted with the woman she worked so hard to prevent her brother-in-law from marrying represents a bold-faced lie on Susan’s part. However, the audience never receives Charles’s response, so it is unclear as to whether she has successfully deceived him with her apparent pleasantries. Similarly, she also lies to him about the nature of her stay at the Manwarings, a household she has left in utter chaos as a result of both her relationship with Mr. Manwaring and her attempt to marry Sir James to her daughter, thereby stealing him from Miss Manwaring. The irony of both these statements is subtle at first; the audience only learns later, in Susan’s subsequent letter to Alicia, the depth of her deception. 

“I have been called an unkind mother, but it was the sacred impulse of maternal affection, it was the advantage of my daughter that led me on; and if that daughter were not the greatest simpleton on earth, I might have been rewarded for my exertions […] but Frederica, who was born to be the torment of my life, chose to set herself so violently against the match that I thought it better to lay aside the scheme for the present.”

In her letter to Alicia, Susan demonstrates her lack of maternal bond with her daughter, Frederica. Although Lady Susan recasts her attempt to marry Frederica off to the obnoxious Sir James as a benefit to her daughter, there is no indication that this