Looking at Lady Susan as a whole, it's fairly obvious as to why Austen chose an eponymous title. Lady Susan and her slippery actions pervade the entire narrative, acting as the subject of every letter. However, it's also fairly clear from the way she's treated that she acts as the antagonist in most situations. So in thinking about this, I suppose I'm having trouble figuring out why Austen would name her novel after Lady Susan; it's a little like taking Aladdin and renaming it Jafar.
Now I've sat here a good 60 seconds and thought about this a little more, and I realized the difference is that this story lacks an Aladdin. We have obvious "good" characters (Mrs. Vernon, Frederica, Reginald, etc.) and a "bad"Lady Susan, but the narrative isn't really about the protagonists, is it? We hear their thoughts and see through their eyes, but Lady Susan is the only one in this story with any real agency. Everyone else stands as helpless bystanders, witnessing the things Lady Susan does yet powerless to stop them. Why this is... I'm not positive. But it is definitely an interesting dynamic in a novel to give the antagonist more freedom than anyone on the "good" side.
Actually, Austen didn't name it, her nephew did after her death when it was first published in his second edition of her biography. From what I could tell, he named it Lady Susan because, as you discuss, she is the character the narrative revolves around.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the novel was likely called Lady Susan because she is the central character. However, I would argue that her importance goes deeper than that. We mentioned in class last week that the switch to third person narration at the end of the piece suggests Lady Susan’s ultimate lack of power, despite how manipulative and conniving she acts up to that point. In a way, for me at least, this makes her a pretty pathetic character. Lady Susan writes and behaves as though she has control over her situation. She is proud of her scheming and the influence she apparently has over others. But, when her voice is literally taken away in the end, all of that manipulation is trivialized: Lady Susan never had any real control after all. The reader comes to understand that Lady Susan is actually powerless as Austen’s narrator marries her off. This shift in perspective makes Lady Susan more pitiable to me: not only is she powerless, but she behaves as if she is not. In other words, her ultimate helplessness is magnified by her charade of agency throughout the rest of the novel. While this does not help us sympathize with her the way we do with a protagonist like Aladdin, it might make her character less despicable, at least enough to understand why the novel might have been named after her.
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