Longbourn

While the labor required to sustain an estate is arduous and unending, the servants seek to find satisfaction in their work that involves more reward than simply pleasing an employer. Mrs. Hill voices the philosophy that work itself can be its own reward—a formula in part meant to console those born into the working class and reconcile them to their lot. Those of the leisure classes, like the Bennets, are allowed to make personal happiness their single aim in life because they have no other demands. For those in the working classes, satisfaction in their work is often shown at odds to the pursuit of personal happiness, which is a desire shared across classes.

Sarah’s dissatisfaction with her life of labor is established early on, as is her wish for a family of her own: “Happiness was a possibility for Sarah; she had a fair idea of what she missed” (54). Her wish to leave for London, to join Ptolemy and have a different life, comes from the desire to find that happiness. Her goals change, however, after Sarah acknowledges her attraction to James. When they begin their love affair, Sarah’s resentment toward her work vanishes. Service is tolerable now that she has joy: “The days, the work: they were as they always had been. […] But it was good now. In substance it was changed not at all, but for Sarah it was nonetheless transformed” (174). She finds new solace in her work because it keeps her close to James.

Mrs. Hill tries to teach the maids to take satisfaction in doing their work well, like scrubbing out a stain or getting the dishes clean. Mrs. Hill tells herself, “[T]here was pleasure in her work, in the rituals and routines of service, the care of conservation of beautiful things, the baking of good bread and the turning of rough, raw foods into savoury and sustaining meals” (108). But she also notes the difference between contentment with her lot and a sense of fulfillment when she wonders, “Could she one day have what she wanted, rather than rely on the glow of other people’s happiness to keep her warm?” (108).

Mrs. Hill promotes the view that the satisfaction of work should be valued above happiness when she scolds Sarah, who wants to leave Longbourn to find James. “You have a home. You have work. You are safe and warm and fed,” Mrs. Hill explains. “And you are spoilt […] if you don’t value any of that” (281). She tells Sarah not to give up her position or her character as a good worker for love; she advises economic security above all, reflecting the bargain she has made with her own future. Sarah chooses personal happiness instead when she leaves her employment with the Darcys and sets out to find James.

For all that she counsels finding satisfaction in one’s labor, Mrs. Hill realizes that work’s reward is, sometimes, merely to distract from unhappiness: “Work was not a cure; it never had been: it simply grew a skin on despair, and crusted over it” (297). James has likewise taken refuge in hard labor when Sarah finds him on the road gang: “[H]e seemed withheld, hidden inside himself, as though he accepted now that this was all there was, and all there ever could be” (330). For Sarah and James, personal happiness is achieved not only by being together but also in being able to choose their own employment, keep their liberty, and move about as they wish. Work becomes a means to an end, not an end in itself.