[inglor_cz]

Please don't idealize the mythical village. Too many people do, because they are distant enough (in time and space) that they view premodern life as some sort of Golden Age paradise.

My grandmother (1926-2016) grew up in a remote eastern Slovak village well before it acquired electricity and other perks of modern life. You cannot get much more traditional than that.

Wealth and poverty still played a role, it does everywhere. The village wasn't "relentlessly measured", but it was relentlessly judgmental and hierarchical. You couldn't do shit if the most powerful people mistreated you. And you carried an unshakeable burden of your ancestry with you. If your mother was considered a "witch" (seriously) or a "slut", your place on the village pecking order was somewhere down below.

Plenty of people escaped traditional villages to get rid of this burden. Urban anonymity has some positives. Capitalism can be cruel, but at least it is not utterly rigid. Often, you can make money somehow - perhaps not millions, but enough not to be a pauper. But in a traditional, closed village, you could never shake off the stigma of a "slut's daughter" etc. If you didn't want be disdained forever, you had to move out, end of story.