Longbourn

via Goodreads

Longbourn

By Jo Baker

Pub. Alfred Knopf, 2013

It was Jane Austen's birthday yesterday, and this year was the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice! So let's defend Miss Austen's honor, shall we?

I had never read a Pride and Prejudice retelling/sequel until now, and I feel that I was perfectly justified. I thought that this one might be different, since it was the same old story told from the servants' point of view. Granted, there were no vampires, or guitar playing Mr. Darcys. The book was well-researched, and it was nice to get a fresh look at Lizzy Bennet, Mr. Collins, and all the rest. With all that said, I cannot recommend it.

This novel follows Sarah, a servant girl in the Bennet household. Predictably, she doesn't like being a servant, and dreams of adventure and travel and not having to clean other people's clothes. The narrator is omniscient (but only in the servants' minds!), so we get to see Sarah's thoughts of frustration, the humble prayers of Hill, the housekeeper, and the conflicted desires of James, the footman.

James shows up at Longbourn out of the blue and is promptly hired by Mr. Bennet. Sarah finds herself caught up in a love/hate triangle with him and Ptolemy Bingley, a servant on the Bingley estate. The triangle pretty closely parallels the one with Lizzy/Darcy/Wickham, at least for a while.

Why you'll hate it too...

  

• So far this doesn't sound that bad, right? Well, let's just say that this book falls into one of my least favorite genres: the "issue" story.

  It's like a glee episode: they have to fit in bullying, drug abuse, three different types of sexual questionings and an attempted suicide in 45 minutes. They have to address each of these "issues," so the story quality is thrown out the window.

In Longbourn, there's an illegitimate child with one of the main characters from Pride and Prejudice, a married man is revealed -- in the epilogue, no less -- to have a homosexual relationship on the side, and there's a completely unnecessary masturbation scene. I'm no prude, but was Lydia and Wickham's affair not scandalous enough for this author? I just feel like the book got you to expect way more than a soap opera -- and then it was just a soap opera.

• The novel messes with the characters of Pride and Prejudice more than I would have liked. Mr. Bennet is significantly changed. Lizzy is made to be cold and thoughtless in her dealings with servants, which I feel was a bit unjust.

•  The best plot-line was abandoned halfway through. As I said, Sarah finds herself attracted to Ptolemy Bingley, while also having strong feelings for James the footman. Here is a description of her feelings for James: 

  “Already a good way gone towards being properly out of humour with him, she had fully intended to continue in that course until she loathed him heartily. Now, she was obliged to shuffle past him, and nod her thanks, and consider to what degree she had already been uncivil, and if he had warranted it or not.”

 Sound familiar? I think it's rather like many of Elizabeth's thoughts regarding Darcy, and especially like Mr. Darcy's on Elizabeth:

"But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful statement of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying..."

 I think imitation really could have worked in this novel. But, she solves the Ptolemy problem much earlier than Lizzy solves the Wickham problem, and then we're left with strange Twilight-esque lovesickness for the rest of the novel. Plus, any pretense that the novel is about the plights of servants is abandoned in favor of the love story.

Some Praise

• Baker does seem like a very skilled writer. Though she can imitate Jane Austen's prose, she more often opts for very descriptive scenes, which are much more akin to the Bronte sisters. Think moonlight walks and the wind blowing their long skirts around. Here's a great extended metaphor she uses:

“Behind her, in her absence, the house was grinding along, its cogs turning and teeth linking, belts creaking, and there must come a moment – any moment now – when a cog would bite on nothing, and spin on air: some necessary act would go unperformed, some service would not be provided; the whole mechanism would crunch and splinter and shriek out in protest, and come to a juddering halt, because she was not there.”

• Lots of research must have been done for the making of this novel. We get to know about the daily lives of Regency servants: washing the clothes, making lye soap, sweeping the floors, all in loving detail. Sometimes too much detail, but that depends on how squeamish you are.
• We get to know more about the time period, and about why the militia is stationed in Meryton. James the footman fought in the Napoleonic wars, so we get an extended flashback in which he talks about the horrors of the war against the French, fought in Spain.
• We get to know a little bit more about Mrs. Bennet (she has her serious moments) and Mr. Collins.

 In Conclusion...

Just read Pride and Prejudice again. Watch the next season of Downton Abbey. Anything but this. Oh, did I mention that Wickham-haters might actually appreciate this novel? Wickham is -- I'm not kidding -- basically a child molester. Seriously, he tries to seduce the maid, who is like ten years old. Weird, right?