Väike Fadette

George Sand's (Armandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, 1804-1876) village novel "Väike Fadette" enchants us with the author's sincerity and affection for its heroes to such an extent that we don't even think about asking whether these boys and girls went to school, whether they could read, write, calculate, etc. We are taken to a world close to nature, where sowing, harrowing, haymaking, threshing and digging ditches are pleasant pastimes The childishly naive vision of rural life of the great French lady makes us smile, but at the same time conjures up for us - Estonians who have sprung from the country folk - the home garden of childhood, the fragrant meadow, the white nights of June. The latter are absent from this book (because it gets dark early in the summer in the writer's homeland), but they are perceptible in the enchantment of "Väike Fadette".