Overlooked?: Lady Susan
Whilst Jane Austen is credited as having 6 complete novels, she also completed the epistolary novella Lady Susan in 1794. The novella is short, consisting of only forty one letters and a conclusion. As the novel was written when Jane was a teen, it doesn't have the sophistication of her complete novels and she never went back to change the novella into prose as it is presumed she did with Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.
Lady Susan was not published until 1871, when it formed part of James Edward Austen Leigh's memoir of his aunt. The novella has been adapted into a movie entitled Love and Friendship, released in 2016, which is taken from a piece of work from her Juvenilia. The director Whit Stillman stated that he chose the title as he felt it more fitting for a Jane Austen adaptation (perhaps he was thinking of the popular Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility), and also that her manuscript did not have a title. It was her nephew that gave it the title Lady Susan.
The novella has a rather different main character from her novels. Lady Susan Vernon is an intelligent and attractive widower seeking a husband for herself and her daughter. All very innocent you might say, but Lady Susan is a selfish scheming character who is trying to attain a husband whilst having a relationship with a married man. Her suitors are all significantly younger than she is and she uses flirtation and seduction to get her way.
Lady Susan is very cold towards her daughter Frederica, who she finds to be stupid and stubborn but we find her daughter is actually quite a shy person. Indeed we don't even see a letter from Frederica until the twenty first letter in the novella.
The novella is criticized as being too lenient towards Lady Susan, as opposed to Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park who is cast out of good society for running away with Henry Crawford. However, the novella is praised for its humour and charm. It would have been a great novel to turn into prose as we could get more of a sense of the characters and interactions, which the epistolary (letter) format doesn't allow us to do.
Why not give this little gem a try and see what you think?
