Longbourn: A Novel

I am ashamed to admit I hadn’t even heard of this book until I read a wonderful review of it on author Kate Forsyth’s blog. Being a lover of Jane Austen since I was very young, I was dazzled by the premise of this novel; in fact, I was awed by the imagination and ideas underpinning it – Baker has taken the story of Pride and Prejudice and created something completely original using the well-known tale of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy as a frame narrative but telling it from the point of view of the Bennett family’s servants.Don’t for a minute believe this is Upstairs/Downstairs Austen-style. Longbourn is so much more than that. For a start, “upstairs” is only relevant in regard to the impact it has on “downstairs”, but that’s not to do this novel justice either. Richer, more complex, imbued with a period-appropriate sensibility that manages to gesture to larger things, to a wider world and the promise of more, it also imagines a milieu at once familiar and strange and all together believable.While the characters we know and love from Pride make an appearance, Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Kitty, Mary, Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr Bingley, Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham along with many others, it is those we’re not so familiar with, the characters who were mere whispers in the hallways, shadows in the corners of the rooms, absences that nonetheless made meals appear, cleaned the house, did the laundry, emptied chamber pots, drove the coaches, prioritised the needs of the upstairs family over their own and, in one barely memorable exchange, we’re told fetched shoe roses, who are centre stage in this book.In Longbourn (named after the village in which the Bennett house stands), we follow the daily life of housemaid Sarah, the much put-upon housekeeper and cook, Mrs Hill, her gap-toothed husband, young Polly (Mary) and, later, the footman James. Through mainly Sarah’s eyes we come to understand that life upstairs runs smoothly but only through the hard work and sacrifices, the constant scrutiny and awareness of those who suffer (without complaint) downstairs. But because they accept what life has meted out, how birth gifts or damns you with blood and social position and the possibility or not of rising above it, it doesn’t prevent them dreaming of different things, different outcomes for themselves and those they care about.Assumptions about the servants and the indifference with which their needs and emotional wants are treated (or ignored) by the Bennetts and others who cross their sometimes chaotic threshold is subtly exposed. Lizzie Bennett, the woman many readers swooned over (almost as much as Mr Darcy) and cheered as an early champion of feminist principles and modern relationships is, in Longbourn, revealed to be as much as a myopic product of her class as any other gentlewoman of the period. Even Jane, who is generally thought to be considerate and kind, is unable to empathise with her servants – her gestures and questions revealing her ignorance – not wilful, but inevitable. That the Bennett girls, even giddy and selfish Lydia and Kitty, are never held to account by the servants who share their lives, that there’s no resentment, demonstrates an acceptance of circumstance and treatment a modern reader might find difficult to handle. Baker is masterful in her gentle peeling back of private layers to show how ingrained social practice and birth are in Austen-times and thus readers also come to accept that this is how it is and the story rolls on, across the hills and dales, through muddy fields and streets, the dark narrow lanes of town and in and out of the rooms of the Bennett house.The love story of Mr Darcy and Lizzie takes a back seat in this tale as a slow-burning love affair unfolds downstairs, as complex personal histories, reasons for certain behaviours are hinted at and skeletons are spied in servants’ closets too. As the tale progresses and the Bennett girls move towards that which their mother wants more than anything for them, marriage that will elevate them socially, it’s below stairs that the action and poignant drama takes place – yearning looks, snatched conversations, overheard exchanges, caution thrown aside or bundled close.What I particularly loved about Longbourn and the way in which Baker makes every scene and event in Pride and Prejudice match those in her book, is that she also bestows characters in Austen’s novel with a darkness and complexity that’s as unexpected as it is gripping. I won’t say anymore except that you will never think of Mr Bennett in quite the same way and as for Mr Wickham – well, if you thought him a bounder in Austen’s hands, in Baker’s he becomes something much worse.Baker also takes us beyond the final pages of Pride and Prejudice and allows us a glimpse into Lizzie’s life as Mrs Darcy. It’s testimony to the power and beauty of Baker’s tale that this, while a nice curiousity, is very much rendered second place to the much more interesting and heartfelt outcome awaiting her main characters. I couldn’t credit that I was longing for Lizzie and Mr Darcy to vanish so I might know more of Baker’s creations and their dénouement.Written in beautiful, evocative prose that like the barley sugars so beloved of Polly and Lydia, you want to hold it in your mouth so as to savour the sweetness, Longbourn recreates a time and place we thought we knew but are invited to revisit and see it through different eyes and understand its alternate hues.As much as I adore Pride and Prejudice, Longbourn deserves champions as well and I am happy to be one. It gives voice to the silent, a presence to the shades that walked the halls of stately and not so stately homes; it allows the young men who sacrificed themselves for the politics and wars of others to stand up and be briefly counted, to be remembered for other than their officers’ gambling, partying and distractions. Not afraid to explore pain, desire, loss, grief and sacrifice, Baker also imbues the often bleak tale with humour, love, friendship and a deep compassion.Simply stunning.

This book surprised me. Knowing it was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the servants' perspective, I figured it would be very different from the original, but I really had no idea just how different. I haven't read that many reviews of it, but I imagine it's got a lot of purists' unmentionables in a twist. There's a gritty realism to it that stands in stark contrast to the sanitized world of Austen's novels.In Longbourne, readers get a healthy dose of filth, violence, abuse, sex (though mostly implied), and bodily fluids. Many bodily fluids. More bodily fluids than you could possibly expect from a book like this. Which is the only thing that makes sense, really, because it was the servants' responsibility to clean up those bodily fluids, and to gloss over it would make the book lose credibility.This book uses the storyline of Pride and Prejudice as a framework only. Yes, you get to see most of the characters from the original at some point, but they're usually described from a different angle, one that I'm sure a lot of Austen fans will find annoying if not outright infuriating. Seen through the eyes of servants, these are not quite the characters we're familiar with. Elizabeth does not have the traits of a heroine here; she mostly seems selfish, and condescending towards the servants. Jane is dismissed as "a good and pretty girl, so deserving of good and pretty things." Lydia and Kitty are pretty much the characters we know, but Mary is painted in a far more sympathetic light than we've come to expect. Ditto for Mr. Collins, who the reader will feel more pity for than scorn in this story. Mrs. Bennet is less obnoxious and ridiculous; Mr. Bennet is less witty, more bitter and mean. Wickham is even more slimy and despicable. And Bingley and Darcy are so far removed from the story that they're pretty much non-entities. Instead of offending me, though, all these things just made perfect sense--and I felt like I was reading something entirely new.One negative review I did read complained that there was too little of actual P&P in this novel and the author only wrote it as a retelling of that book because it would sell better. I don't agree with that at all. I think there's great value in this as a twist on a familiar and beloved story. It gives the world of P&P more dimension, more color, and more life. It makes you realize that the world you read about in Austen's novels is only the glittery surface of a past that actually bears a lot of resemblance to the world today--and to actual, real life.I understand why an Austen fan might find all of this off-putting. This story makes the servants seem so much more complex, more sympathetic, more real, and more interesting human beings than any of the "on-screen" characters of Pride and Prejudice. I can see how it might ruin the original story, because you'll find yourself looking at all of it quite differently. Frankly, it makes the conflicts and difficulties of the P&P characters seem pretty trivial, and all the drama pretty trumped-up and obnoxious. The lower classes had real problems. The upper classes had "first world problems."I'm a huge fan of gritty realism, and to say I loved this aspect of the book would be an understatement. Has it ruined the original story for me? I doubt it, not any more than the campy-but-fun smut that is "Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife" ruined it for me (a book I read so long ago my copy has the old title, "The Bar Sinister"). I'm not a purist. I'm just someone who wants to read a good story.As for the writing, the author's prose is deceptively simple: whether it's a sight or an emotion, she brings this world to breathing, pulsing life with writing that is as plain as it is beautiful and evocative. She has the ability to paint a more vivid picture in one sentence than many writers can do in ten. The sensory details in this book are so plentiful and so poetic that it takes little imagination to become completely immersed in this world.There are two reasons I'm giving it four stars instead of five. The biggest flaw is the lengthy section of flashbacks that happens just after the halfway point. It just didn't feel necessary or organic to the story, especially since that is pretty much the last we see of that character-- you never get back inside that character's head again once the novel returns to the "present day." I also felt that the ending was a bit too vague for my tastes, but then, I'm a romance reader at heart, and the way this wraps up left me wanting an epilogue where everyone that deserves it is happy and healthy.Ultimately, I enjoyed this very much, and I highly recommend it unless you're a purist, in which case, don't even consider reading it, because you'll undoubtedly loathe it.