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]

Naturally, different cultures are different - but Marxism is the same everywhere (especialy in the USSR!), so I think we're dealing more with definition drift than cultural disparities here.

Having a cleaner, even today, isn't really the same as having a servant, economically *or* socially. Doing one's own housework with the aid of another person who you pay and doing it with the aid of appliances that you pay for is of course very different ethicaly, but economically the two positions are roughly equivalent. It basically means that while you are not actually rich enough to treat cleaning as something that happens to other people, you are nevertheless able to offset some of your own time/effort with money.

Is it really only 7% of the population that sends their children to private schools? Not rhetorical - really surprised. I mean, what about the Diane Abbotts of this world and that - woul you consider her upper class? I think definition drift is at work here again, because not every private school (esp. faith ones) is an Eton or Rugby.

Plus of course let's not forget that yeah, the middle class *has* been steadily growing since the start of the Industrial Revolution, so if more people can afford the same things today (cars, schools) that only a few could afford in the interwar period, that's not actually that strange.