Characters

Reading the epistolary novels made it a little harder to judge the character of the person writing the letter. As we discussed in class, the reader is more suspicious of the writer's motives, but it was hard to make assumptions about the main characters of the novel whereas the characters not writing the letters got a character description from an introduction that we would assume to be accurate. For example, Mr. Desmond's character is never directly described, but it is shown in events such as the beggar where his reaction is contrasting two other characters' reaction to her and her children. Mrs. Johnson is never really described, but the fact that she tells Lady Susan to put herself before her daughter and has Lady Susan secretly visit when her husband asked her not to see Lady Susan shows a lot about her character and reveals even more about Lady Susan.