Between being and seeming

Lady Susan and the narrative configuration of the improper woman in the 18th century

Abstract

This article examines the identity configuration of Lady Susan, the protagonist of Jane Austen’s epistolary novel, through the lens of French Semiotics and Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity. Drawing on the analytical framework developed in the dissertation A identidade feminina interior e exterior de Lady Susan (Milene de Almeida Silva, 2021), the study demonstrates that the character is constructed through a complex articulation between being and seeming, moving within the semiotic square of veridiction (Algirdas J Greimas; Joseph Courtés, 1979) and projecting a way of life that diverges from the normative expectations imposed on eighteenth-century English women. With an idem grounded in noble lineage, beauty and eloquence, and an ipse oriented toward self-determination (Paul Ricoeur, 2006), Lady Susan produces a self-narrative that combines discursive manipulation with internal autonomy. Her epistolary strategies reveal both an acute awareness of the social mechanisms regulating femininity and a deliberate subversion of them, aligning the character with debates on power, normativity, and the female body developed by Michel Foucault (1978, 1985, 1986), Simone De Beauvoir (1970), and Virginia Woolf (1942). By repositioning Lady Susan as an anti-heroic and improperly feminine figure, this article highlights how the novel implicitly critiques gender constraints while expanding interpretive possibilities concerning femininity, agency, and performativity in Austen’s work.