Indirect Inheritance

In Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan, Frederica appears through the biased descriptions of the letters that other characters write. However, in Letter 21, the only letter Frederica writes in the novella, she can explain herself in her own words. As Frederica tries to convince Reginald De Courcy to intervene in Lady Susan’s arranged marriage between Frederica and Sir James Martin, this letter is the closest access to Frederica’s true character in the text and therefore can serve as a basis of evidence for comparison between Frederica’s character and Lady Susan herself. Scholars often assume that Frederica’s qualities and outcomes simply oppose those of her mother. I wish to argue that Frederica takes after her “wicked” mother more than these scholars, and even Lady Susan herself realize. While Lady Susan disregards morality by engaging with its language, she indirectly mothers Frederica to become her likeness by disengaging with her role of motherhood or engaging with it in subversive ways. Lady Susan passes on her qualities to her daughter, who begins to write and use language to affect her fate, despite her mother’s ignorance that she does so. Lady Susan therefore indirectly gives her daughter the tools to achieve her desires within the novella’s social economy, despite how these desires conflict with Lady Susan’s own.