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

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Eastern European Jewish stock, that should have been. Not a lot of farmers in that lineage.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Tangential - I too come (partly) of Eastern European Jewish origin, but my branch of the family was the only embourgeoised one. The rest of the family continued as farmers in the shtetl, and I think even in 1939 a very large proportion of Eastern European Jews still led rural lives, particularly in Poland and Ukraine.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Interesting - in my family at least, there are no farming roots as far as I know. There are *rural* roots; e.g. my dad's paternal grandmother comes from a tiny village somewhere on the Ukraine-Poland border. But her father was the town apothecary. Likewise my mom's paternal great-grandfather was from a proper shtetl near Minsk, but he was a Hassidic scholar and so didn't have any occupation.