MOVE over, Elizabeth Bennet, you finally have a contender. When Lizzy won our hearts with her good-natured impertinence and intelligence, she didn’t have much competition from any other female character. None of her four sisters, including the angelic Jane, were as witty or vivacious; Charlotte Lucas lacked her good looks and spirited disposition while Miss Bingley was just plain nasty. Now it is revealed that there was one other female living at Longbourn who was sensible, opinionated, well-mannered and attractive. She was also thoughtful and very hardworking. Her name was Sarah, and she was the Bennets’ housemaid.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has inspired countless writers since its publication in 1813. Many sequels and prequels (and even a zombie mash-up) have been written to satisfy the desire of legions of readers to know more about the lives of the Bennets, the Bingleys, and the Darcys. In this most recent Pride and Prejudice-inspired work, written 200 years after the original was presented in three volumes by publisher Thomas Egerton, author Jo Baker has revealed a brand new dimension by imagining the lives of the servants at Longbourn.

So while the gentle-born young ladies upstairs occupy themselves with attracting rich husbands, the staff downstairs comprising Mr and Mrs Hill, the butler and housekeeper, and two housemaids Sarah and Polly, spend their days cooking and serving meals, washing clothes, cleaning the house, making soap, maintaining the yard, tending the kitchen garden and chickens, and grooming the horses that drive the misses to their neighbours’ houses or various assemblies and dances.

In clear contrast to Austen’s famous opening sentence — “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” — is the opening passage of Longbourn which finds Sarah huddled at the pump-handle in the yard at 4:30 on a cold morning doing laundry because “washday could not be avoided.” A detailed description of the manually intensive laundering process follows — bed sheets, pillowslips, petticoats, table linen, undergarments and Mr Bennet’s neck cloths all have to be washed by hand with harsh lye soap which stings Sarah’s already callused and cracked hands. It is still only slightly worse than carrying chamber pots down the narrow back stairs and emptying them outside. If she is lucky they contain “just nightwater” without “the dreadful slopping thunk of solids.”

Mr and Mrs Hill are a decent pair, albeit with secrets of their own, while Polly is so young that out of kindness Sarah lets her wander off and ends up working alone. Her full day’s labour is physically taxing and mind-numbing, but besides her wage she can depend on receiving a full meal, a safe bed to sleep at night, and the loan of books to read from Elizabeth and Mr Bennet’s library.

A voracious reader, Sarah knows that she wants more from life than endless hours of labour. She wonders what it would be like to go away, “to confront the open world, the wide fields of France and Spain, the ocean, anything. Not just to hitch a lift from the first fellow who looked as though he knew where he was going, but just to go.”

Not that there is a lack of young fellows to offer a lift. There is James, the newly hired footman whose arrival intrigues Sarah and brings hope of some excitement to her drudgery. But her initial attraction turns into resentment when she realises that the interest is not mutual and he refuses to pay her any attention. What she doesn’t realise is that he follows her quietly from a distance when restlessness causes her to take long walks at night, or when she is sent out on an errand in heavy rain. He even takes over some of her heavy chores. She does notice that he avoids officers and turns away each time he sees a soldier approach.

Then there is the dazzlingly handsome and well-dressed footman at Netherfield who is obviously keen on her. Mrs Hill, however, is not at all keen about the fact that he, Ptolemy Bingley, is of mixed race, a mulatto. “How can you be a Bingley?” Sarah asks. “If you were off his [sugar] estate, that’s your name, that’s how it works. My mother was one of Mr Bingley, Senior’s, slaves. [He] brought me back here. He was always very fond of me. And of my mother, too, though he left her there. I was just a boy.”

Sugar estates. Slaves. Colonial enterprise. The reader starts to realise that the snowy-white picture that was presented by Austen left some very nasty dark streaks untouched. Further dark streaks appear when Sarah recalls her vague memories of her deceased parents; her father she remembers was a weaver. Later in the novel when Mr Wickham boasts of soldiers crushing the Luddites in the North, he is referring to weavers and other textile artisans who were being made redundant by increased mechanisation introduced during the Industrial Revolution. Between 1811 and 1813, many small and large uprisings took place in factories across Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire which were dealt with by thousands of soldiers.

Longbourn may upset purists who would prefer to enjoy Austen’s delightful novel of manners for its undoubted literary merit and not see it intruded upon by an unflattering messy backdrop. But even they will enjoy the reappearance of key male characters from Pride and Prejudice. Mr Wickham drops by the kitchen often and proves himself to be an even nastier person than readers thought. Mr Collins receives more sympathetic treatment than in the original, perhaps because Sarah finds him approachable and feels badly for his failed attempts to win the respect of the Bennets. But it is obvious even to her that Elizabeth and Mr Collins will simply not suit.

Most important of them all, Mr Darcy appears a few times. Sarah even moves to Pemberley with Elizabeth after their marriage and is able to give readers an intimate peek inside their relationship. In one memorable scene Sarah proves that besides Elizabeth she is the only character who is able to withstand Darcy’s very forceful personality.

Jo Baker’s fitting tribute to Jane Austen’s most celebrated work of romantic fiction is also an endearing love story in its own right. The richly detailed and absorbing narrative filled with memorable characters and some beautifully written scenes will leave readers feeling well-rewarded for allowing Baker to take them below stairs to retell Austen’s classic from the servants’ perspective.

Longbourn

(NOVEL)

By Jo Baker

Knopf, US

ISBN 978-0385351232

352pp.