Russia through the prism of British mentality

Russia through the prism of British mentality.

Karen Hewitt wrote a nice book for Russian readers, which must help them to understand   behavior and national features of Englishman’s. In a course of narration she constantly compares English and Russians characteristics.  From my point of view sometimes assessments that she give to Russians are not quite fair. I believe that in this book Russia described through the prism of British mentality. Let’s try to revise some of them and look on them in a little other side.

For the beginning let’s start with third part and chapter two, topic about divorce. Karen Hewitt starting with the example of Russians woman words: “There are too few educated man around and too many alcoholics!”  I believe it s not the best point to show about relationships in Russia. From my angle, it is the same quantity of educated mans and woman’s in Russia. But mostly I amazed by that stereotype about men’s alcoholism is still in the minds of people. On the one hand this stereotype is substantiate, a lots of man suffered from alcoholism, but statistics shows that lots of woman are alcohol abusers too.  Woman’s alcoholism began hanging out in nearly after 1920 year, than after 1917 revolution woman’s start to work as a mans. On another hand Karen Hewitt write about modern England and that’s why she must focus on modern Russian society too. I believe she not really informed about modern society, because last year’s saw that young people in Russia are trying to be more conscious about their health. I believe that is a person is writing a book about two cultures he must be more careful in writing about foreign culture and try not to stereotype society of foreign country. Because I, for example, was not really happy to read out that “There are too few educated man around and too many alcoholics!”

Also one of traits of Karen Hewitt narration is that she talking thereby that sound like “English people do everything right and live properly as Russians are unfair all the time. The point I’d like to raise is that in many cases she just compare the right English and wrong Russian.

Talking about grandparents in third chapter of third part she describes the living conditions of British and Russian woman in old age. Relying on her words we might think that in Russia woman over fifty – fifty-five do nothing at all and at the same time English women at the same age are most active person in the world.  At first from English point of view sitting and growing grandchild at home (by that helping their own child) is mean to do nothing. Maybe Karen Hewitt don’t find growing child is really difficult occupation but actually it is. Also she specify different activities of overage English woman. But Russian woman got the similar. For example my two granny’s are not woman who always just sitting at home. At first, both of them at the age over fifty. One is the real European granny, according to Karen’s words; she is working as freelance realtor. Also she organized excursions and got a lot of public activities. It s rather difficult to say that she is “doing nothing very much for years and years. Another mine granny is more typically for our national mentality. She was a babysitter for me and also help my parents with my brothers but she got a different sport activities and always goes somewhere for holidays. Also she got second highest education nearly fifty years old. The point I’d like to make is that Karen Hewitt was a little bit too pectoral in talking about activities of our old people.   Of course she was right in one way but I believe it’s no need to generalize. 

The two points, which were considered above, are clear and of course every Russian reader understand that Karen Hewitt was not really right talking about Russians living standards.  Maybe it s not really terrible but having a good look on that cases I wonder how reasonably Karen image lifestyle of Modern British society for Russian reader. Even we wouldn’t pay attention to the fact that the book is only about English, about British there are few words in the began, we could understand that describe living of English people strictly from her oven position. As we know Karen Hewitt comes from high middle class and her living standards are really good. That s why she don’t really pay attention to the lifestyle of people, who comes from humble background.

To cut a long story short,  I want to say that “Understanding Britain today” is rather good book which  opens some features of living in England for Russian reader.