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

[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.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I think that's more the class/ethnic thing of only WASPs being actually White, though, rather than Charlotta being African-black. She probably is darker skinned than the Scottish-descended Protestants, both because of genetics and because she has to work harder than them!

I mean, I'm willing to be corrected by someone with a better knowledge of Canadian history, but as I say, I'm pretty sure that the French Canadians are people who'd we recognise as white, but they weren't seen as white by the English-speaking ruling classes in Canada at the time.

(sorry, just read your comment again, and you're probably not actually disagreeing with me, are you?! I agree that they're definitely represented as non-white!)

[ailbhe]

I've changed the original post to read "socially non-White" instead of "black." Gosh, it's ugly.

I'm reminded of English books describing Irish people as dark-skinned and apelike - Punch cartoons and things.

Part of the nastiness is that the comparison is to African-black people and is supposed to be insulting. Ew.

Racism in insidious, complicated and unpleasant shocker, film at 11, I know.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Ew, indeed. There's also an Enid Blyton 'brown paws' = 'hard work outdoors' = 'vulgar, common, dirty' thing going on there too, I'll be bound.

[ailbhe]

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