A Celebration of Family, Faith and Innocence: How Green Was My Valley
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

“I am going to pack my two shirts with m y other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.”

Granted, I am one of those people who blubber easily, but I cannot read these opening words of Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley without tears, for bound up in this sentence (as in a cloth) are all the components that make this novel a sweet and memorable read. There are the homely details of family life; a housewife’s head scarf, a best suit, a pair of extra socks. There is the hint of all of the work that goes into the raising of a large family (in this case, one with nine children) and the hair of the gentle Mrs. Morgan going slowly white under that blue cloth. Then, there is the valley, the symbol of a world of innocence and faith that Huw Morgan loves and lives to see destroyed by the physical and spiritual pollutions all around him. This story of a Welsh coal mining family is unapologetically sentimental, yet touched with an unflinching realism that rings true to life. The older I get the more I believe that a little sentimentality, a good cry for that which has been lost in life, can be very healing for the soul.

The Welsh are a deep and ancient people, with an incomprehensible language and a natural flair for poetry and song. If you have been to Wales (and I have) you have heard the Welsh sing, and you never forget it. Every little town has its choirs and bands. Music plays an important role in the daily life of the Morgan family. Though they spend their days in the belly of the mine, they soar, through song and language, in their leisure hours. Huw is a bright boy whose only struggle in school is against the prejudice of his schoolmasters toward the Welsh. In Victorian times there was a concerted effort to stamp out the Welsh language, and children were punished for speaking their native language in school. Government policy fostered a program called “Welsh Not.” A board with the letters WN cut into it was hung around the neck of any child heard to speak Welsh, and the last child wearing the sign each day was punished. Llewellyn describes this practice in the novel, and his blind rage at the schoolmaster causes his final expulsion from the school and his rejection of the intellectual life it promised.

Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd was born in 1906 in St. David’s, Wales. He entered the workforce at sixteen, first washing dishes in a London hotel and moving to progressively more responsible positions in hotels around Italy. In 1924 he joined the British army and served six years in India and Hong Kong. After leaving the service he worked in a series of odd jobs, including a stint as a miner in South Wales. He worked on the manuscript of his first novel for twelve years, finally taking leave from a screenwriting job at Twentieth Century-Fox to finish it. How Green Was My Valley was published in 1939 to rave reviews. It won the National Book Award and was made into an Oscar-winning film the next year with Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara. Though he penned many more novels, nothing Llewellyn wrote equaled the success of his first book. For many years he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, and during that time wrote the screenplay for my favorite John Wayne movie, The Quiet Man. (This is a film about the Irish much in the style of How Green Was My Valley – every St. Patrick’s day I make a boiled beef dinner and watch it – that was a commercial and critical success.)

Llewellyn lived in several countries, married twice, and was a lifelong Welsh national. He died in 1983.

As Huw Morgan waits for the slagheap to swallow his childhood home, he remembers a world untouched by the complexities of modern life. No one locked a door, there were no policemen or jails in the community. Neighbors monitored each other, sometimes severely, and the church was the center of social and spiritual life. Women kept the house and did the dishes, and men worked in the mines. Children spoke when they were spoken to and were beaten for disobedience. For the most part, they were happy, yet the slow influence of civilization, both good and bad, crept inexorably in just as the slag from the mines crept down the hill toward their homes. Unions, immorality, theaters, education and technology combined to destroy their way of life forever. Huw is a strange character, hot-tempered yet unable to marry, intelligent yet stubborn and unwilling to use his mind to achieve something above the level of the mine. His long illness as a child gives him the perspective of the outsider, and he sees the lives of his family with an objectivity unavailable to the rest of the group. As the novel draws to a close he reflects that, though much has been lost, nothing that we hold in our hearts is ever really gone. “There is no fence or hedge around time that is gone,” he says. “You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.” His beautiful retelling of a special childhood may take you back to an innocent time of your own, gone, but never lost.

How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, is the October selection for the Best Books Club. In November we will read The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. To join the Best Books Club simply click on [email protected].

Readers comment on the World Trade Center Attacks:
I have thought a great deal about your eloquent plea to read our way through this spiritual and temporal crisis in which we find ourselves. I would like to add some thoughts of my own. Maybe, reading is not enough. From reading we acquire knowledge, but knowledge is not enough. Knowledge is merely information. It is what we do with that information that is the key to our actions, and through them, we decide the future.

This requires understanding, and from understanding the beginning of wisdom. We achieve this understanding by study, by thought, and by questioning. We have lived too long in an age of “automatic assumption”, it is time that we think for ourselves. This is a grave responsibility. It presupposes that we have the experience and the knowledge, and the wisdom to do this. How do we achieve this? The way you have suggested – read and study the events of the past, and the thoughts of those who participated. By doing this we will avoid making the same mistakes again. Let us all pray for wisdom, for patience in achieving our purposes, and the diligence to pursue them to the end.

-Phil

Friday and Saturday I was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena taking donations for relief in New York. Many people gave just about everything they had. Sweet little children with money in Their piggy banks gave everything they had saved for the year and even longer. The emotions they expressed were at times unbearable. The amazing thing is that a lot of the people only know this as the only way relieve their emotions. As tears were shed I wondered If I could teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that is not a short lesson. It was truly wonderful working side by side those newscasters from KNBC Los Angeles, they are really normal people like us. Firefighters are looked at as heroes but we are vulnerable too. I am truly humbled and give thanks everyday for my family and blessings.

-Larry

Here is a great story about learning to love to read:
I have been a lover of good books for many years. In the 1970’s, a wonderful remedial reading teacher (9th grade) realized that I was placed in the wrong class. She remedied my

Dislike (ignorance) of reading for pleasure in just 14 weeks. ‘Mrs. Faircloth’ assigned me to read one novel of my own choosing, and a one page written report each week, for the entire semester. The rest of the class was assigned two novels and two page written reports for the whole semester. On the last book that I read, she generously gave me two weeks … (Exodus by Leon Uris.798 pages.) She got me hooked!

-Sterling

Readers comment on Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Jane Austen has been my favorite author ever since I read “Emma” out-loud to my mother one summer while home on break from college at BYU. We laughed together over every page and together developed a new vocabulary using Jane Austen words and phrases. We still express our sanguine feelings to each other. I enjoy seeing the movie and TV adaptations, but nothing can replace the language and wit of Jane. I love reading her words best. Fanny Price is a heroine that I relate to. I worship Elizabeth Bennet, who is afraid of no one, even the great Mr. Darcy, but I find myself much more like Fanny. I hope I can be as strong in my convictions, as she was. Marilyn, thank you for your essay on literature. I’ve shared it with friends and family. In times of personal distress I turn to Jane Austen and other favorites to help me find my balance and gain inspiration, and I’m grateful for them. It’s been nice to return to Mansfield Park the last couple of weeks.

-Elizabeth

I just finished reading your article in Meridian magazine about Mansfield Park.

I really enjoyed it. Jane Austen has been my favorite author since the third grade, when I first read Pride and Prejudice. Unthinkable as it is, I didn’t even know she had written more books until after my mission. I used a summer in England to work my way through the rest of the books and had so much fun doing it. I must admit that Mansfield Park wasn’t ever my favorite, but I also wanted to especially warn against the latest film adaptation of this that came out. I don’t know what book they were working from, but it didn’t bear much resemblance to this one. They tried to mix some personal parts of Jane Austen’s life with the book. They tried to make Fanny into Jane, which I just can’t agree with. I don’t know if you had the misfortune to see it, I wish I hadn’t, but it is dark and tainted and not really true to the book. I should have known they had played with the story with the PG-13 rating. Anyway, I thought it was worth a word of warning to those who might love the book and then stumble across the movie in the video store. It is very disappointing, and left me feeling a little like I needed a shower.

-Karen

Mansfield Park is a very good book. I have read commentaries on Jane Austen’s books and one point that is brought up is that Pride and Prejudice with the main character of Elizabeth was written when Austen was younger and tended to champion the fighter, the verbal jester who she felt could confidently win her battles in life. Fanny, in Mansfield Park, by contrast, doesn’t battle. Her most strenuous action is to assert herself in the battle over the play. While all around her are striving and conniving, she is trying to maintain her own tiny place in the sun. She is constantly manipulated when she’d rather just be left alone. And, largely by her inaction, she emerges the winner, although I don’t think she is ever completely sure how she arrived at that place. So, in a later book, is Miss Austen trying to state that instead of being the busy, brazen verbalist, sitting back and being good will bring about the just rewards such goodness deserves? Has she abandoned Elizabeth Bennet because the problems of her own life have forced her to adjust her viewpoint on how life success can be achieved for a woman in England in the 1800’s?

And while we admire Fanny’s inherent goodness and willingness to assert herself when “push comes to shove”, isn’t her meekness a little overdone? Being a “charity girl” had to be a miserable existence, but there were instances when she could have been more openly honest about what she felt and perceived, especially in regards to Henry Crawford. And while she wins Edmund at the end, does he really “win” Fanny? Or does it seem like he is settling with her because he doesn’t want to emotionally extend himself any more like he did with Miss Crawford. Every time I read this, I end up with different viewpoints. This time seems a little cranky. But reread this book every so often and observe how you differ in your perception each time.

-Cindy

I enjoyed your article and agreed with your thoughts. However, I wanted to add my opinion of Jane Austen’s work. I enjoy watching the films based on her stories, because of their brevity, but have only read Pride and Prejudice. As a whole, I find her plots, characterizations, and dialogues very well conceived and agree that she is a wonderful writer. On a personal level though, I do not care for her subject matter (my favorites are Lewis or Twain) as it seems to me like a lot of “fluff”. I must take her work too seriously, but the class inequalities of that time are too sad. The characters representing the period are so full of themselves. It is embarrassing, and maybe too close to home. Although the rich are painted with disdain at every turn, the heroine eventually achieves this station, and is always the exception. That just may be one of the intended ironies.

-Vic