How Green Was My Valley

I actually read this last year for Paula’s Dewithon but didn’t get around to reviewing it; I wanted to include it though because it does feel like a part of my life! Watching the BBC drama in 1976 I thought Angharad was the most sophisticated name I had ever heard and idolised her for it, but I didn’t realise the drama was based on a novel until I started this blog and wondered if it would live up to my expectations. Luckily it did and I was swept up in the story of the Morgan family living in the coal mining valleys of South Wales. What I wasn’t prepared for though was my reaction to the language. My dad was one of 7 children growing up in South Wales and it was as if he and all my chattering aunts were back in the room. There were phrases used that I hadn’t heard since dad died 20 years ago, ‘go on with you’ was one of his favourites and my grandmother’s and aunts’ voices came through the steamy Morgan kitchen.

But the book is about far more than Angharad’s relationship with the wealthy mine owners son, Iestyn Evans. Narrated by Huw, the Morgan’s youngest son, we’re absorbed into the world of his late 19th century youth. It’s a respectable family home, where Huw is proudly sent to the grammar school; floors are scrubbed, men are scrubbed at the end of the day, chapel is adhered too, and there’s always food on the table.

I was struck by the division of labour. This is a patriarchal society with no doubt, when Huw is bullied at school, his father finds him a boxing instructor and teaches him to stick up for himself. The men’s wages are everything and their employment is hallowed, they’re given their food first, they speak first and they expect to be obeyed. But they hand their wages over to their wives who take enormous pride in their ability to economise and provide comfortable homes for their families; for which they’re respected and admired – but god forbid any girl who goes into the fields with a boy, the full weight and shame of chapel and her family will come down on her if they’re caught.

Facts are mixed with fiction at the end of the century with the colliery strikes. The loosely organised valley unions challenge the rich mine owners over fair pay and tension comes not just from the strike but also over debates of joining together to form a centralised union. The bitterness tears through the family as much as the valley.

First published in 1939, the Morgan family, with their range of ages and aspirations are a saga all to themselves, and because it’s largely told through the eyes (and stomach) of a hungry school boy there are a lot of descriptions of food, which I love. There are weddings and funerals, birthdays and a soup kitchen; washing pots and pans, steamy stoves; and an endless supply of kettles boiling; there’s an abundance of blackberry tarts, fresh trout tickled out of the river, cakes and jellies and blancmange, strawberry tart and cream and roast chickens and pies, the plates all polished with bread.

I see there are 3 more volumes following Huw into adult life, but I’m happy to leave him in the valley at least for now.