Review: Lady Susan by Phyllis Ann Karr - decent retelling of a forgotten Jane Austen novella
I found out about Lady Susan, Jane Austen's epistolary novella, the same way I find out about a lot of things I review on this LJ - via smartbitches. Turns out that it was actually the first novel-length work Austen has ever written - and it's unlike anything we tend to expect to her. The protagonist (the eponymous Lady Susan Vernon) is a cheerfully immoral character who sleeps with married and unmarried men, lies and manipulates everyone around her, treats her sweet, gentle daughter cruelly - and doesn't get punished for it.[Spoiler (click to open)]I mean, her big scheme gets derailed, but she is ultimately able to salvage the situation to her advantage.And while (as the Smart Bitches review rightfully notes), the novel has its weaknesses (the kind one might expect of a writer still trying to master her craft), Lady Susan is such a delightfully amoral character that it's easy to overlook it.
I suspect that's why, over the years, we've seen several attempts to expand on the novella and flash out the story. The original was an epistolary novel, told almost entirely in letters, and it ends quite abruptly. I could practically see the writers thinking - what if I flesh out the characters that aren't Lady Susan, build upon the hints within the narrative, fill in the parts that weren't depicted and add more meat to the bones? Why, it would be a pretty good novel!
And at least three writers tried. I could find plenty of information about the most recent attempt - Lady Vernon and Her Daughter by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway , but it didn't interest me too much, because tried to make Lady Susan sympathetic, thus missing what made the original novella so interesting in the first place. What I was curious about was what may have been the easiest attempt - Lady Susan, a 1980 novel by Phyllis Ann Karr. The internet didn't really net much information, so I went searching though the vast trove of hidden treasures that is the Chicago Public Library system - and, sure enough, I was able to find a copy.
I wonder just how often this book was checked out over the past few years
Like Austen's original, Karr's version dealt with recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon trying to figure out a way to secure her financial future by marrying her daughter, Frederica, to James Marsten, her own dim-witted, by wealthy lover. When Susan's affair with the married Mr Mainwaring is discovered, she flees to the estate of her former in-laws. While Catherine De Courcy, her sister-in-law, doesn't buy Susan's mourning widow act, hospitality rules are hospitality rules. Before long, our protagonist seduces Catherine's brother, the young Reginald De Courcy (simply because he distrusted her and manipulating him into changing it was too fun to pass up). But Frederica's attempted escape from the boarding school -and a few other unexpected developments - threaten to unravel Susan's plans and carefully weaved web of lies, forcing her to take drastic actions to try to keep everything on track.
Karr's version expands on the original plot quite a bit. Just to give an idea of how much, the background information about Lady Susan and Frederica's stay at Mainwaring estate, which is summarized in a single short letter in the original, is basically the first third of Karr's version (and each third is a little over a hundred pages). This isn't a bad thing. It gives Karr a chance to flash out the settling, flash out the characters a bit more, and add personalities to characters that barely had any in the original. Lady Susan gets a bit more dimension. The novel gets into why she's so awful to her daughter - she doesn't really understand Frederica, because the two have very different temperaments and priorities, and, being a selfish, self-indulgent person, Susan seems to legitimately not understand why her daughter likes books and romance. Whereas in the origninal, she often treated Frederica as an annoying pest (who is also an idiot), in this, it comes off as more of "why don't you understand that I'm trying to do what's best for you, damn it." The fact that what's best for Frederica happens to be what's best for Susan it's lost on the reader, but one gets a sense that it doesn't come entirely from the place of selfishness.
I also like that we get to see more about Susan's manipulation. In the original, we get her writing a lot about how she tricked so and so, but in Karr's version, we actually get to see how she did it - and, to the author's credit, it (mostly) works. Based on that, you could buy Susan as a manipulator who really could turn enemies into devoted lovers.
As for Frederica... Karr's version expands her role quite a bit, to the point where one may argue that she is this novel's co-protagonist.She is still a timid, kind-hearted person, but we gets a bit more dimension, a bit more development. She gets an interest in the English literary classics, which Karr was able to weave it into a plot. She gets friends, and we get a better sense of how she sees her mother, and the world around her.
But in a notable change, Karr's novel gives her a romance with Charles Smith, a character that is only briefly mentioned once in the original, and which (as Karr herself readily admits in the afterword) might as well be a completely original character[Minor spoiler](in fact, him being an existing character that still does what his original counterpart did introduces a plot hole. A plot hole that Karr addresses, in a way that kind of works - but she could have saved herself a lot of trouble by just creating a character from scratch (though then, we wouldn't have obligatory final act romantic complications... but I digress)). The romance works on its own, but it does make this Lady Susan an odd creature - a romance novel that seems to exist side-by-side with an Hnonore Balzac drama. By the standards of the romance novel, Susan is too cynical, and she neither finds love nor get punished. When you treat the novel is a drama... Well, like I said, I think Frederica/Charles romance works overall, but it follows a lot of romance tropes that become a lot more obvious when placed in a genre where they don't properly belong.
None of which is necessarily bad. Just... different.
There are many things about Karr's version that I liked. Even before I read the afterword, it was clear that she had done her homework, and she tried to infuse the setting with interesting period detail. There is a lot of great, well-constructed, witty dialogue - and not just in exchanges involving Lady Susan. While we don't see any of the letters that were part of the original, we do get to see characters writing them, and editing them. It subtly drives home that even when the characters are mostly honest in the letters, they are not necessarily completely honest, and they spin a bit to put themselves in better light. And I was actually impressed how, overall, Karr's version stuck surprisingly close to the original plot without (for the most part) feeling like the story is being forced to go in a certain direction because Austen wrote so.
And yet... overall, if graded on a 5-point scale, I would give this version of Lady Susan a solid 4. It was entertaining, the writing was good, and many parts worked pretty well... but I didn't quite grab me the way some of the other novels I reviewed on this LJ did. I enjoyed reading it, and I might reread it again, but...
Let me put it this way. If you read Austen's original and liked it, I would definitely recommend it. But if you are more of a general fan of Austin, or just someone looking for a novel set in the Regency era...If it happens to be in your local library, by all means, pick it up. But if it doesn't... I'm not sure looking through your local used bookstores is worth the trouble.
----
The original "Lady Susan" is available online for free, and reprints of it are available on Amazon and other places books are sold. Karr's version went out of print decades ago, so your local library or a used bookstore would probably be your best bet.
I suspect that's why, over the years, we've seen several attempts to expand on the novella and flash out the story. The original was an epistolary novel, told almost entirely in letters, and it ends quite abruptly. I could practically see the writers thinking - what if I flesh out the characters that aren't Lady Susan, build upon the hints within the narrative, fill in the parts that weren't depicted and add more meat to the bones? Why, it would be a pretty good novel!
And at least three writers tried. I could find plenty of information about the most recent attempt - Lady Vernon and Her Daughter by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway , but it didn't interest me too much, because tried to make Lady Susan sympathetic, thus missing what made the original novella so interesting in the first place. What I was curious about was what may have been the easiest attempt - Lady Susan, a 1980 novel by Phyllis Ann Karr. The internet didn't really net much information, so I went searching though the vast trove of hidden treasures that is the Chicago Public Library system - and, sure enough, I was able to find a copy.
I wonder just how often this book was checked out over the past few years
Like Austen's original, Karr's version dealt with recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon trying to figure out a way to secure her financial future by marrying her daughter, Frederica, to James Marsten, her own dim-witted, by wealthy lover. When Susan's affair with the married Mr Mainwaring is discovered, she flees to the estate of her former in-laws. While Catherine De Courcy, her sister-in-law, doesn't buy Susan's mourning widow act, hospitality rules are hospitality rules. Before long, our protagonist seduces Catherine's brother, the young Reginald De Courcy (simply because he distrusted her and manipulating him into changing it was too fun to pass up). But Frederica's attempted escape from the boarding school -and a few other unexpected developments - threaten to unravel Susan's plans and carefully weaved web of lies, forcing her to take drastic actions to try to keep everything on track.
Karr's version expands on the original plot quite a bit. Just to give an idea of how much, the background information about Lady Susan and Frederica's stay at Mainwaring estate, which is summarized in a single short letter in the original, is basically the first third of Karr's version (and each third is a little over a hundred pages). This isn't a bad thing. It gives Karr a chance to flash out the settling, flash out the characters a bit more, and add personalities to characters that barely had any in the original. Lady Susan gets a bit more dimension. The novel gets into why she's so awful to her daughter - she doesn't really understand Frederica, because the two have very different temperaments and priorities, and, being a selfish, self-indulgent person, Susan seems to legitimately not understand why her daughter likes books and romance. Whereas in the origninal, she often treated Frederica as an annoying pest (who is also an idiot), in this, it comes off as more of "why don't you understand that I'm trying to do what's best for you, damn it." The fact that what's best for Frederica happens to be what's best for Susan it's lost on the reader, but one gets a sense that it doesn't come entirely from the place of selfishness.
I also like that we get to see more about Susan's manipulation. In the original, we get her writing a lot about how she tricked so and so, but in Karr's version, we actually get to see how she did it - and, to the author's credit, it (mostly) works. Based on that, you could buy Susan as a manipulator who really could turn enemies into devoted lovers.
As for Frederica... Karr's version expands her role quite a bit, to the point where one may argue that she is this novel's co-protagonist.She is still a timid, kind-hearted person, but we gets a bit more dimension, a bit more development. She gets an interest in the English literary classics, which Karr was able to weave it into a plot. She gets friends, and we get a better sense of how she sees her mother, and the world around her.
But in a notable change, Karr's novel gives her a romance with Charles Smith, a character that is only briefly mentioned once in the original, and which (as Karr herself readily admits in the afterword) might as well be a completely original character[Minor spoiler](in fact, him being an existing character that still does what his original counterpart did introduces a plot hole. A plot hole that Karr addresses, in a way that kind of works - but she could have saved herself a lot of trouble by just creating a character from scratch (though then, we wouldn't have obligatory final act romantic complications... but I digress)). The romance works on its own, but it does make this Lady Susan an odd creature - a romance novel that seems to exist side-by-side with an Hnonore Balzac drama. By the standards of the romance novel, Susan is too cynical, and she neither finds love nor get punished. When you treat the novel is a drama... Well, like I said, I think Frederica/Charles romance works overall, but it follows a lot of romance tropes that become a lot more obvious when placed in a genre where they don't properly belong.
None of which is necessarily bad. Just... different.
There are many things about Karr's version that I liked. Even before I read the afterword, it was clear that she had done her homework, and she tried to infuse the setting with interesting period detail. There is a lot of great, well-constructed, witty dialogue - and not just in exchanges involving Lady Susan. While we don't see any of the letters that were part of the original, we do get to see characters writing them, and editing them. It subtly drives home that even when the characters are mostly honest in the letters, they are not necessarily completely honest, and they spin a bit to put themselves in better light. And I was actually impressed how, overall, Karr's version stuck surprisingly close to the original plot without (for the most part) feeling like the story is being forced to go in a certain direction because Austen wrote so.
And yet... overall, if graded on a 5-point scale, I would give this version of Lady Susan a solid 4. It was entertaining, the writing was good, and many parts worked pretty well... but I didn't quite grab me the way some of the other novels I reviewed on this LJ did. I enjoyed reading it, and I might reread it again, but...
Let me put it this way. If you read Austen's original and liked it, I would definitely recommend it. But if you are more of a general fan of Austin, or just someone looking for a novel set in the Regency era...If it happens to be in your local library, by all means, pick it up. But if it doesn't... I'm not sure looking through your local used bookstores is worth the trouble.
----
The original "Lady Susan" is available online for free, and reprints of it are available on Amazon and other places books are sold. Karr's version went out of print decades ago, so your local library or a used bookstore would probably be your best bet.