“Lady Susan’s character is more extreme than we expecte from Jane Austen…Here Jane Austen is showing us the mind of a ‘wicked woman’ in action, from within, an exercise which she was not to attempt again. She was to attempt folly and frivolity and immorality, but never so directly did she attempt to portray vice. Lady Susan, with her…cruelty to her daughter and her ruthless selfishness, is unique in [Austen’] work.”

“Lady Susan is a strange work, psychologically speaking, in part because its youthful author seems undecided about whose side she is really on…to be sure, Lady Susan is a villain…But she is also a survivor, a woman who refuses to be a passive victim…Lady Susan continues to excite interest for just this reason.”

“[Lady Susan] stands alone in Austen’s work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters, and who knows herself to be wasted on the dull world in which she is obliged to love.”

“Lady Susan, the herione of anti-heroine, inhabits a world in which men control propery and woman must make property of men. A female rake, she is a handsome egotistical widow who enjoys her own energetic duplicity, her sexual allure and above all her manipulative eloquence.”