Longbourn

This section presents the most dramatic divergence from Pride and Prejudice as it provides a glimpse of the Napoleonic wars, which began by the time Austen was revising her novel First Impressions to what would be published as Pride and Prejudice. Napoleon’s armies invaded Portugal in 1807, with the aim of taking control of Portuguese trade, and the British sent troops to support the Spanish and Portuguese forces. The Peninsular War, as it was called, was a bloody, drawn-out series of battles, which the text explores through James’s intense experiences in war, which also clarify his mysterious character. James’s experience in war bears out the suspense built in earlier chapters regarding scars on his back, why he dislikes officers, and why he is especially sensitive to men preying on young girls. James’s murder of Pye is presented as his stopping a cruel man, much as the British are fighting to stop Napoleon. It is a symbolic act that also captures the nuance of his character: He cannot ignore injustice when he sees it, but he is also willing to approach it with violence, as he did when punching Mr. Wickham for touching Polly.

James shows himself otherwise to be a moral man, not a murderer, showing care for the suffering children who are also casualties of war. He seeks his regiment when he is separated on the march, and for this, he is treated as a deserter and given a cruel punishment from which he still bears scars. This breaks his sense of loyalty for a time, as he walks away from the army, then the family who takes him in and nurses him back to health, and then the ship’s crew he joins. While he may have once, like Sarah, thought of his home as a small place where nothing happens, when compared to the deprivations of war, rural England seems a paradise of calm, warmth, and plenty that he comes to dream of. The irony that he admires Mr. Bennet and returns to take a place in his household runs deep; James’s life would have been much different if Mr. Bennet had acknowledged and taken him in at birth, as the elder Mr. Bingley did with Ptolemy, highlighting the themes of Class Hierarchies and Visibility and Personal Happiness and the Satisfaction of Work. James is made invisible by Mr. Bennet’s unwillingness to acknowledge him, and he could’ve died in war, but his sense of personal happiness comes from dreams of returning to Longbourn and seeking employment there, with the man who used to visit him.

This section also presents a bleak tone in comparison to the other sections, as it examines the absence of James, which is noticed only by the other servants, again highlighting Class Hierarchies and Visibility. With the disappearance of James, both Mrs. Hill and Sarah feel bereft. Mrs. Hill’s motherly attachment to James, and the history of her care of Mrs. Bennet during her pregnancies, deepens and humanizes her character, but the lack of concern the Bennets feel over a vanished footman is expressed by Elizabeth, who is confused when Sarah calls him Mr. Smith. The text otherwise portrays Elizabeth as fairly attentive and kind to the servants, but in this moment of forgetting James, even Elizabeth embodies the lack of social awareness of the gentry. The fisherman’s hut where James recovers is a mirror, in some ways, to Mrs. Hill’s little domain, with the older woman, the young woman, and the girl. It is a version of a life James could have but declines in favor of a home he recognizes and feels he belongs to. This also demonstrates the value James places on the concept of home; previously, he tried to remain unattached to the animals of Longbourn, let alone the people, but he could not help but feel grateful for the consistency of home and of routine. This section also considers his sense of trauma after leaving war, as he reacts strongly to seeing the militia, and something about his person—perhaps his youth and strength—leads Mr. Wickham to correctly guess that he is a former soldier. Additionally, Sarah’s past fear in seeing the soldier whipped in Meryton ties her to James in emotion: She feels for the soldier, showing tenderness of heart that ultimately attracts them to each other, and when she returns from Meryton frightened, it is James who comforts her. The scene of his whipping summons the image of the soldier in Meryton, further linking the lovers and highlighting the brutality of war.

Mrs. Hill has paralleled Mrs. Bennet in her concern for the girls in her care; she is also like Mr. Bennet in that she holds fast to respectability, going so far as to arrange a marriage for outward appearance rather than for romantic love, highlighting the theme of The Attraction of Marriage and its subjectivity depending on the character. However, Mrs. Hill is also a symbol of one of the text’s primary ideas: She thinks about how God watches over all, seemingly uncaring in his observance, particularly to those in servitude. Her other consolation is her work, highlighting the theme of Personal Happiness and the Satisfaction of Work—Mrs. Hill can disappear into her work, forgetting her worries, even when she thinks of James. However, the prospect of service and its unceasing work loses its appeal when there is no reward, even to the most earnest of workers, such as Mrs. Hill. For Sarah, the images of the Bennet girls as butterflies—pretty and idle—and herself a prisoner capture her feelings about her work as a sort of prison, which foreshadows this feeling intensifying even when James returns. The tension Sarah feels has steadily climbed throughout the text, as she was not looking for only a lover but also a sense of freedom, which she will never find without seeing something of the world outside of Meryton. The continued contrast between the Bennet girls and Sarah is significant because they are close in age, they share similar dreams, but their agency to reach these dreams is very different because of their respective social classes.