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A hundred and fifty years old, and reciprocal
The two stereotypes in this conversation are specific, named and mutually sustaining. The northern one holds that southerners are warm, charming and work-shy; the southern one holds that northerners are efficient, prosperous and cold. Both have slurs attached — terrone for a southerner, polentone for a northerner — and both are old enough to have a documented origin: they took their modern shape in the decades after unification, when an explanation was wanted for a widening economic gap, and character was the most convenient one available. The alternative explanations, which Lesson 83 set out, require arguing about land tenure, tariffs and public investment. What the lesson is actually about is Sara's observation, which is the sharpest thing in it: non c'è tempo and non c'è il lavoro are the same fact described from two positions. Internal migration made that reciprocity concrete — several million people moved from South to North between the 1950s and the 1970s, and the factories of Turin and Milan were staffed by people from Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, which is why Francesca's industrial North and Sara's emptied South are two halves of one history rather than two places. Note finally what Alex gets right and what he gets wrong: the contrast he noticed is real, and the explanation he reached for first was the received one.