“Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her from behind an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book: she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren’t as rarefied as angels, and so they just couldn’t look her in the eye.”

The opening chapter introduces the theme of Class Hierarchies and Visibility and the novel’s irony that class distinctions do not indicate a person’s value. Sarah’s intimacy with their dirty laundry represents knowledge of the Bennet girls that they would like to pretend she doesn’t have, and it captures her understanding that their superior status does not make them superior beings, as suggested by the analogy of angels.

“It did not do to speak at all, unless directly addressed. It was best to be deaf as a stone to these conversations, and seem as incapable of forming an opinion on them.”

Addressing the theme of Class Hierarchies and Visibility, the servants help maintain the pretense by being unobtrusive about their labor—ironic, since their labor is necessary to the family’s comfort. The mirrored relationships of downstairs and upstairs reflect how the servants are nonetheless paying attention, since events in the family will impact them, as events of the novel show.

“The drover’s road was ancient. It swept along the ridge, and was not surfaced or shaped like modern roads were […] The openness, the prospect here were striking; you could see steeples, villages, woods and copses miles away, and the smooth distance of far hills.”

The beaten track, not really a road that runs behind Longbourn, offers a metaphor for Sarah’s longing to see more of the world and provides a path for her to get to London and her dreams when she sets out to follow Ptolemy. This same road is the path for change in the novel; it brings James to Longbourn, and it will bring James and