Longbourn

Summary (from the publisher): A brilliantly imagined, irresistible below-stairs answer to Pride and Prejudice: a story of the romance, intrigue and drama among the servants of the Bennet household, a triumphant tale of defying society's expectations, and an illuminating glimpse of working-class lives in Regency England.

The servants at Longbourn estate--only glancingly mentioned in Jane Austen's classic--take centre stage in Jo Baker's lively, cunning new novel. Here are the Bennets as we have never known them: seen through the eyes of those scrubbing the floors, cooking the meals, emptying the chamber pots. Our heroine is Sarah, an orphaned housemaid beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When the militia marches into town, a new footman arrives under mysterious circumstances, and Sarah finds herself the object of the attentions of an ambitious young former slave working at neighboring Netherfield Hall, the carefully choreographed world downstairs at Longbourn threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, up-ended. From the stern but soft-hearted housekeeper to the starry-eyed kitchen maid, these new characters come vividly to life in this already beloved world. Jo Baker shows us what Jane Austen wouldn't in a captivating, wonderfully evocative, moving work of fiction.

 

Review: Longbourn revisits the beloved Bennett household made famous in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Yet in this novel, it is the servants that take center stage. While in the original novel the house servants are merely an ends to a mean - the shadowy figures that deliver messages, answer the door, prepare the food, and help the girls dress - in this novel, housemaid Sarah lives out the drama of Pride and Prejudice from a very different vantage point. Sarah, younger housemaid Polly and housekeeper and butler Mr. and Mrs. Hill are quite thrown by the appearance of a new footman, James Smith, and also by the family's excitement and preparation for new social events with the arrival in the neighborhood of the Bingleys. Increasingly, Sarah feels trapped in her repetitive and labor intensive role in the household and longs for adventure into the great unknown of London and beyond.

 

Longbourn not only rewrites the famous Austen story but tells a parallel story, with Sarah as the heroine. Just as Elizabeth and Darcy misunderstand one another in the original novel, Sarah and James get off to a bad start as well. Sarah is not impressed with James at all at first saying, "This was the great addition to the household. As far as Sarah could see, he was no great addition to anything at all." Just as Elizabeth disparages Darcy, Sarah views James negatively saying, "He was such a frustrating mixture of helpfulness, courtesy and incivility that she could indeed form no clear notion of him." And just as Elizabeth's head is turned by Wickham, Sarah is distracted by a neighboring household's footman for a time.

 

The characters who seem so charmed in the original novel are portrayed differently through the eyes of their maid. For example, the quaint habit Elizabeth has of walking for miles across the countryside is seen as producing more work for Sarah; "If Elizabeth had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she'd most likely be a sight more careful with them." Yet they are undeniably the same characters as Austen first fashioned: "Oil on troubled waters, Jane was: a blanket over flames." Mr. Collins is just as socially awkward and unwelcome, Mrs. Bennett just as histrionic, and Lydia just as silly. It was interesting to see the supposed lack and lower status of the Bennett sisters revealed in this novel to be mere comparison to the extreme elite; in comparison to their house servants the Bennetts have riches and freedoms beyond imagining.

 

Although capturing the spirit of the original story and characters, Baker makes no pretensions to write this in the same style as Austen. The third person narrative that follows primarily Sarah, Mrs. Hill, and James in turns is very much the author's own distinctive voice. Baker does take liberties with some of the characters, giving some characters, most notably Mr. Bennett, secret lives that many Austen readers will no doubt object to. However, I enjoyed this novel far more than I even imagined I would. I found myself drawn to Sarah, curious to see what her fate might be, and also enjoying the feel of a behind the scenes look at the famous Bennett sisters.

 

This is the second novel I have read by Jo Baker, having previously read The Undertow. She does a particularly excellent job in both novels of imagining the perspectives of multiple different individuals and imagining life from different vantage points.

 

Stars: 4