Gender Expectations
Lady Susan’s downfall comes about not through any particular moral failing or character flaw, but rather as the result of social defect: she manifests too much testosterone and not enough estrogen. Which is to say she challenges gender conventions in general and the patriarchal system in particular by going about her business not in the way that most women do, but in the way that most men do. Or, again in other words: by using every lowest trick in the book. For this transgression she must be suspected, snubbed, persecuted and punished. The monarch at the time of composition was mad King named George, after all.
A Widowed Woman in Want of a Husband
Prior to mastering the particular art of writing novels about young single women looking for financial security by landing a husband, Austen sharpened her focus by first whittling away at how a widowed woman who has depleted her husband’s funds goes about landing a husband to maintain her lifestyle. Not just a woman, of course, but a Lady. And not a Lady through the art of marriage, but a Lady to the manor born. Lady Susan—the novel and the character—are almost like negative photographic images of Austen’s more famous stories. Experienced rather than virginal, aristocratic rather than common and devious rather than coquettish. And yet, despite being by any objective account a perfectly villainous woman, Lady Susan proves to be just as bewitching in her own way as any of the Sisters Bennett or Dashwood.
The Power of Self-Victimization
Lady Susan is exceptionally manipulative and she takes full advantage of the one gift that being a woman provides: playing the victim card for all its worth. Although the 21st century has witnessed a complete turnaround in which even the most powerful and privileged of men shamelessly manipulate through a strategy of self-victimization, this was solely the domain of women at that time. Recognizing this advantage, Susan perfects it to the point of raising it to an art. Unfortunately for her, she seems to fall into the trap it also creates and so her inevitable downfall is due partially to believing in her victimhood so much that she assumes she has fooled everybody else.
