Longbourn

Sarah’s hands serve as a visible reminder of the toll of hard labor upon the body. Her discomforts contrast with the ease enjoyed by her employers, evidence of her hard work and a symbol of her class difference. Sarah’s hands are described as hard and rough, often reddened, sometimes blistered and burned when she is curling the hair of the Bennet girls. The chilblains are further evidence of the discomfort she suffers in the service of keeping others in ease and luxury; the itching and irritating chilblains represent her dissatisfaction with the wearying and endless work. When she dresses the Bennet girls, Sarah takes care that her rough and blistered hands do not snag or stain the delicate fabrics, an outright symbol of the different labor that defines their class. At Pemberley, when her job entails dressing Elizabeth and tending to her clothing, Sarah’s hands reflect the change in station: “Her hands grew softer with the softer work” (313). At the very end, when they return to Longbourn, Sarah’s hand in James’s signals her status as his partner and the mother of his child.

For both Sarah and James, the sea represents distant, exotic locales far different than the rural agrarian society they know. Sarah’s longing to view the sea signifies her wish to see beyond the small village where she grew up; the sea represents the freedom she wishes she had. For James, crossing the sea means entering a new and unpleasant life when he enlists in the army and ships off to war; the world he finds is far different, and distant from, the farm where he grew up. When Sarah searches through James’s pack in the stable loft at Longbourn, the seashells she finds are a marvel to her; they represent the treasures of faraway places, all the wonders of the world that she hasn’t seen. They also represent the secrets James is keeping from her, the experiences of his past that she doesn’t know of, good or bad. In the scene where he leaves the Spanish family that has nursed him back to health, the seashells take on a different valence; James collects them as a reminder of his time there, expressing his wish only to preserve the good memories,. When Sarah at last reaches the sea on her quest for James, it represents a culmination of her search, and a kind of reward for her travels; she has found the freedom she sought.