Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea

[ailbhe]

Wait - all those maids and hired hands described as French are actually black, aren't they?

I think I preferred the books before I realised that.

Comments

[sashajwolf]

I think they're white French Canadian. The issue comes up in this article.

[estoile.livejournal.com]

Umm ... are they? French has always made sense to me, it being Canada and all ...

[ailbhe]

I think that's why I never noticed before. Someone mentioned it to me months ago and I just reread them and I do think so. Charlotta the Fourth (Miss Lavendar's maid) is twice described as having "brown paws."

Also, the representations of dialect don't look much like French-speaking English, now.

And there isn't a single servant, indoor or out, described as an adult. Young this or that boy.

[estoile.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've always found it unsettling, at best. (Not least as my grandfather was Quebecois.) Just hadn't twigged to the 'socially non-White' aspect, as such.

Very good analysis below. Thank you.

[barakta]

I reread this series last month... Gutenberg++

Interestingly thought while some people are definitely socially non-white in the books. I'm not sure Charlotta the Fourth is entirely "deemed socially non white" so much as "Poor, but good salt of the earth poor who has to work hard".

In later books Charlotta the Fourth (I can't work out how enraged that Lavender can't remember her maids names, cos that's how 'non-white' people have been treated for generations by the "ruling classes") gets married and Anne goes to the wedding and remains in contact with her and her new family.

I got the impression Charlotta the Fourth was of a lower socio-economic class and therefore a maid and by being a maid to someone of a "higher class" is exposed to people of a higher class than herself and "given opportunities" which might not have often arisen... One mode of social mobility in a time when things were very class/family/history defined.

What I found interesting on rereading was how Anne became "family" and left me wondering if the boy she had meant to be would have remained a servant or become family in anything like the same way.

A lot of the books in the series do discuss people who were "well classed" but poor or crappy for various reasons and also people of "lower classes" who have managed to prove themselves worthy or married up or other social mobility. One wonders whether for their times the books were radical in that people didn't just stay with the ordained order of things and there was challenge to it.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Also, the representations of dialect don't look much like French-speaking English, now.

I *think* that's because the dialect being represented is Acadian, not French. I'll have to pull my set out and re-read it.

The Acadians would have been considered "French" (and very low-class French, at that) by the English/Scottish.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

They're not black as in descended from Africans, but they're not White by the standards of the British descended Protestants, as I understand it. jeejeen told us that when the Blythe's "boy" tells her that "Gilbert got de turn", that means he's an adult man being referred to as "boy" to keep him in his place, same as happened to African-American men. I always just assumed it meant he was twelve!

But yes, it kind of makes a lot more sense of Quebec pissed-off-ness when you realise that.

[ailbhe]

The dialect is actually not like most representations of French-speaking English, either, and Charlotta the Fourth is described as having brown paws, twice.

[ailbhe]

Oh, and Davy is threatened with having to wait for his food until everyone is finished, "Like the French."

[sfred]

Ugh, I hadn't twigged that either.
I've just read 'Before Green Gables', which is an LMM-estate-approved prequel and is quite good. Must re-read the actual books now.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I've been enjoying re-reading the Enid Blyton St Claire's books, but ...

... why do none of the stay at home mothers drive? Why are some of them too busy to have their children home from boarding school in the holidays?

I could go on about how the girls look down on those less fortunate than themselves, but I shan't.

I still enjoyed the books over all again though.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Why are some of them too busy to have their children home from boarding school in the holidays?

Odd 1930s childrearing ideology? In The Diary of a Provincial Lady, which was written by a middle-class woman in the 1930s and 1940s, the mother's constant anguish is that she is un-PC for wanting to be affectionate towards her children and see more of them. The dominant ideology she's operating within seems to be that it is pure maternal selfishness to want to be with your children; the child-centred thing to do is to give them as much autonomy as possible once they have left home for boarding school.

[jenett]

The driving, there's a good explanation for, so my mother (born in the mid-30s) once pointed out to me. Cars of that era often didn't have automatic steering, so it took a rather major amount of physical upper body strength to get the steering wheel to turn.

And since most women weren't encouraged to develop that kind of physical strength, most of them didn't drive.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I re-read them recently too and came to a conclusion that like most blatantly rubbish excuses* of the time, "too busy" is probably something medical (poss. mental health related) and/or reproductive, like caring for an ill relative, depression, or the menopause - things that make the mothers "less" than their usual sparkling socialite selves and therefore embarrassed to be seen by their future sparkling socialite daughters in case they get the message that women of their class can get by for a while without wearing makeup, silk stockings and a perfect hairdo and twinkling around the place all day. That's a bit of a guess though.

*there is a better word for this but I am too dizzy to remember it

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

another thing that spoilt a lot of enid blyton rereads for me is how the "bad" kids are almost always ugly. also damn, but that woman has some *awfully* sanctimonious protagonists. still, loads of fun when i was in the target audience, so i can't complain :)

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

My mom tells a story of how her grandfather always insisted on them having a cleaning lady, because floor scrubbing was "no work for a white woman".

Now, considering that we were all born and lived IN THE CAUCUSUS, one can safely assume that both the white and the non-white women in this little vignette were, well, caucasian.

I think there's an anachronism at work here, with class prejudice and racial prejudice not being as sharply defined back then as they are for us (no -isms, if that makes sense). You looked down on people who weren't white, and on people who were working class; and it didn't violate any boundaries for you to mix up cause and effect by believing that if all brown people are working class, then all working class people are brown.

Which they probably were, to boot, what with being outdoors a lot and not obsessing about veils and parasols all the goddamn time. Anne's constant battle against the sun and her freckles is totally a class thing - she wants to elevate herself to the level of the more refined Diana and the more established Gilbert. There's all kinds of class stuff going on in that series, and Anne is essentially a climber: from peniless orphan to respected teacher via a lot of pretentious intellectual posturing in her teenage years.

[sfred]

The freckles thing is something I always had trouble with, even when I was 8 or 9 and reading Anne for the first time. But at least that (and the hair-dying thing) is written so that it seems like a silly thing she's doing before she becomes happy with and in herself.

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had forgotten about the freckle thing. I know I found really odd, considering that I was living in Ireland, which probably has the highest density of freckles in the *entire world* and at least half of my class in school had visible freckles (myself included). I think I just dismissed it as 'odd stuff from books', into the same category as magic wardrobes, Fruhstuck und Mittagessen, magic waves and foiling smugglers with only your wits.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

you do know that in Russian, chërnyi, black, means Caucasian? I love that the same word can turned inside out to have a completely different racial connotation in different cultures. It shows up the radical instability of racial categories like nothing else.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I believe the French in Anne of Green Gables were Acadians. The Acadians settled PEI in the 1600s, and there would have been some intermarriage with the native Miq'mac. During the French-English war (1758), most of the Acadians were deported to France. After the war those that remained were stripped of the titles to their land, leaving them to work as tenant farmers and labourers. I think what's in Anne of Green Gables is *mostly* about class, rather than race.

Jerry Buote is almost certainly Acadian, as "Buote" is a historical Acadian surname in that area.

"you've flavored that cake with ANODYNE LINIMENT." ... "Well, you'd better go and give that cake to the pigs," said Marilla. "It isn't fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Buote."

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Class is the dominant model, I'd say. and there are issues of class and skin colour, but it's not black and white, pun intended.

Colour may be part of the equation on class, in terms of local communities, but it's class all the way through.

Anne retains her class, even 'tho she was the poor mouse from the orphanage, as she is the legitimate daughter of married teachers. Her circumstanecs her reduced, but her birth right is assured. She's as 'good' as anyone else. Would not have been so, if she'd been a foundling.

I always find the class and decency undercurrent, very familiar. All that scrubbing and being neat and tidy at all costs. Very poor Scottish. :-)

Cleaniliness, godliness and respect for all others, who are equally clean and tidy, and godly. I always smile when the mother in the poor fishing homes, hears that Emily is from New Moon when they are out selling magazine subscriptions, and she changes the table covering up a level!

T'is a world I know well. :-)

Anne of Green Gables Avonlea

[(Anonymous)]

I just read these two books this month, and was very deeply disturbed by it. Most review pages seem to love the books, but I was glad to find your blog and read that others found the same problems that bothered me.
I thought the books too preoccupied with rating people by looks, class, property, religion, everything. While preaching against over-valuing looks, property, etc., the actions of the characters show these things to be truly important to the author. Woe betide you if you are homely, don't dress right, are awkward, or lacking in imagination!
People in the books pick favorites among children by background, looks and vivacious personality, not valuing all children just as they are. And I agree, it certainly did seem that it was only because Anne's parents were teachers, that she was acceptable!
Values are everywhere mixed up. The author is more horrified by a child telling a lie, than by his virtual torture of another child. Wow, then anonymously lying about neighbors in the press is treated as a harmless prank! Corporal punishment is seen as a valid in the school under some circumstances, supposedly teaching a kid to respect, not hate, the person who whips him. A good author would have better psychological perception- a good author can be appreciated across time & cultures. Maud Montgomery is very much a creature of her own time & class.
And I took the unmitigated prejudice against the French rather personally I must say, being of French-Canadian descent. Every one of the comments cited above really hit me in the face. It seems French children and lower-class children are only good as slaves- excuse me- servants (I felt like I was reading Gone with the Wind here & there). No imagination for them! And 'paws'???!!! Animals have paws, not people! Well, I guess paws are a little higher than hooves, so servants can eat garbage, but not poisoned food!
Some might say, it's just an old book, but I read a very recent newspaper comment by an 'English' Canadian saying the French have been treated well 'for a subjugated people', and they should stop complaining. So this prejudicial attitude still exists!

Re: Anne of Green Gables Avonlea

[ailbhe]

You forgot to sign your name.

And yes, prejudice in all its many forms does still exist. I've got lots, though I'm not sure of where all of them are.

Re: Anne of Green Gables Avonlea

[(Anonymous)]

From "Elle"-
Sorry I am not used to blogging, and don't know how to put my "name" in. Do I use OpenID or LiveJournal?
But I was just thinking about the time my brother went to Indonesia. Soldiers stopped the car at a roadblock; they wanted to know if my brother was connected with the terrorists. The driver said, "Can't you see he is a good man? Look how white he is"
We all do have prejudices; the important thing is that we try to be fair. A book that displays prejudice without condemning it may not be good for children, unless the parents/teachers discuss that problem with the young reader.

[moustachios.livejournal.com]

Just got back from a week visiting relatives in Quebec, so I'm coming late to the comments, but... yeah. Discrimination, historical and current, in Canada is very much tied to language (which is tied to religion, as most French-speakers were/are Catholic, and also to race, as we've tended to marry Natives much more often than later WASP settlers). This might be interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_White


It's been slowly changing since the seventies, but the old prejudices still come out here and there. The last two days we were there, we had little day-trips to Montreal, and we ate in restaurants instead of packing a lunch or snacks. When we ate in small greasy-spoon places, the waiters greeted us in French; when we went to a higher-end spot, they greeted us in English. I was rather intensely pissed off.