How Green Was My Valley

“If table manners prevent the speaking of the truth, I will be a pig.”

Owen is a quiet boy, but he refuses to hold his tongue. He can tell that the mining community is on a doomed trajectory, and he refuses to politely stand by, saying nothing while he sees his friends and family suffer. A generational gap emerges between the young men who want to fight against their bosses and the older generation who are invested in the status quo and the manners which they believe makes them respectable people. Owen would rather be a pig than be silently exploited.

“Then I heard Bronwen singing, quietly, just near to me.”

When Huw first wakes up after falling in the freezing water, the sound of Bronwen’s voice alleviates his panic and helps him to reaffirm his sense of self. He is confined to his bed, but even in this desperate situation, her voice is a comfort to him. The comfort that Huw finds in Bronwen’s voice is a foreshadowing of the comfort that they will find in each other’s company many years in the future. Even though he is still just a child, the first stirrings of his deep love and affection for Bronwen are already an important part of his identity.

“How can there be fury felt for things that are gone to dust.”

Huw asks himself a rhetorical question when recounting the auspicious evening when Elias the Shop burst into the home and accused Gwilym of profanity. By the time Huw decides to write everything down, the village and the community will have crumbled into nothingness. The thought of feeling anything as strong as fury for something that has “gone to dust” (96) seems absurd. The emotions of the past seem inconsequential in comparison to the suffering of the present.

“The men of the Valleys have built their houses and brought up their families without help from others, without a word from the Government.”

Reverend Gruffydd explains to Huw why the patriarchal and hypocritical ideals of the Valley must be tolerated, at least for the time being. The small community is built on a shared set of religious principles which have allowed the community to be built up without help from the government. Reverend Gruffydd advocates for careful, slow progress rather than confrontation.

“There is a right way and a wrong in everything.”

Reverend Gruffydd suggests to Huw that the people of the Valley need to be gently encouraged toward more progressive views. Given the rapid modernization of the world, however, his politics will become decidedly more radical in the coming years. His belief in slow and gradual change will be put to the test.

“And he will never come back.”

Marged loves Owen but she has forced herself to abandon any idea she has about a future relationship. After their brief moment of passion, Owen abandoned her. To Marged, the version of Owen who loved her is now dead. He is no longer a part of the world, and neither is the version of herself who could allow herself to love him. Faced with reality, she mourns the loss of the Owen who loved her and accepts the love of his brother instead.

“Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world.”

When Huw witnesses a childbirth, his father takes him aside for an important lesson. The experience is chastening for Huw, who until now did not grasp the pain involved in giving birth to a child. Gwilym frames this pain as a cost of existence, a price that God demands be paid by women so that men—and, by extension, humanity—can continue to exist. Childbirth is a necessary pain, Gwilym suggests, and Huw should use this to add nuance to his understanding of the nature of existence.

“You have had a bit of Welsh law to-night, for a change. I will be glad to see what will English law do in return.”

The characters explicitly draw a difference between English and Welsh law. English law is foreign and imposed upon the community by outside institutions such as the judiciary and the police force. Welsh law is a rawer, more localized form of self-determination under which the community polices itself. Gwilym sarcastically mocks English law as ineffectual and out of step with the community’s ideals, goading Elias as an additional insult after beating him and recovering his turkeys. Gwilym has enacted Welsh justice and English law is unavailable to Elias because it is a self-interested, external force which has no bearing on justice in an actual Welsh community.

“Your roof may fall, and this room and the others may become filled with slag.”

The slag heap is where the waste and excess from the mine is dumped. For Huw, the slag heap becomes a functional metaphor for the buildup of spite, bitterness, and resentment which accumulates in a small town over the years. Each person has a metaphorical slag heap within them, piling high with regrets and threatening to one day collapse, sweeping aside everything in the process.

“Nobody knew what he wanted, and nobody could be found to answer his questions, so he went off again.”

After the young girl is murdered and her killer is executed by the mob, a police officer visits the Valley. The police officer represents the external, English justice system which is resented by the Welsh community. The people of the Valley believe justice has been done, so they refuse to engage with the representative of the English institution.

“One night I heard a choir of a thousand voices singing in the darkness, and I thought I heard the voice of God.”

The strike causes suffering in the working-class community but, amidst the suffering, communal events become a means of fostering solidarity. The male voice choirs are an important part of Welsh culture, distinguishing them from the English. With the men on strike, they sing hymns to raise funds. The choir represents the collective voice of the people, singing in defiant unison against those who try to exploit them. Even to the young Huw, this communal defiance seems divine.

“Marry a preacher and you marry the Chapel.”

Angharad’s desire to marry Reverend Gruffydd comes with conditions. As Bronwen explains to Huw, marrying a priest involves marrying the institution of the church. She is subjecting herself to the life of a priest’s wife, a far different life than if she were to marry the relatively wealthy Iestyn. To be married to a priest is a life of poverty and responsibility, so Angharad is choosing far more than just a romantic partner. She would be choosing to accept poverty in exchange for love from a man 22 years her senior, while at the same time agreeing to share her husband with the community.

“There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss.”

As Huw ventures closer to learning about the reality of sex, he kisses his sister-in-law on the lips. The kiss is a strange blend of innocence and desire, an act which he cannot fully explain but which satisfies his longing and makes him feel ashamed. Huw lacks the maturity to fully process his feelings for his sister-in-law and outbursts such as the kiss are physical manifestations of this internal maturation.

“I knew I wanted to put an arm about Ceinwen, and I knew that I was in heats to kiss her again, but the stupid spirit was in me to deny both.”

Ceinwen represents a form of teenage temptation for the young Huw. He does not particularly like her but, at a time when he is struggling to process his feelings for his brother’s wife, she provides him with an outlet for his sexual urges. He dislikes his own temptation, so he wants to reject her and, in doing so, reject his own impulses. His physical yearning and his lack of maturity, however, fill him with a desire to kiss her again and lead to the inevitable confusion within his adolescent mind.

“English grammar and composition is difficult even for the English, but worse and worse for a Welsh boy.”

The marginalization of Welsh culture is such that—even in schools in Wales—Welsh children are placed at a natural disadvantage in an educational setting. Speaking Welsh is actively harmful to Welsh children’s chances of attending a university, with English favored above all else. For Huw, the reality of education is that he must work twice as hard as his English peers simply because he was not raised with the English language.

“Who am I to preach to other men? My sins are as great. Greater.”

Reverend Gruffydd functions as the focal point of the Valley’s religion and morality. He preaches about sin to his congregation and guides them through their moral quandaries. At the same time, however, he is aware of his own failings. Reverend Gruffydd is distinguished from other sins not because he is free from sin, but because he is both aware of his own hypocrisy and because he has no equivalent figure to guide him.

“There is plenty of time, and plenty of coal.”

After Huw’s first shift in the mine, Gwilym jokes about the future. There is plenty of time for Huw to become a solicitor, he says, and plenty of coal remaining in the mine. Ironically, neither of these statements will prove to be true. The coal industry in Wales will be destroyed and the mining towns left abandoned, while Huw’s window to move into a more white-collar profession will have passed. Gwilym seems content now, but his contentment foreshadows tragedy in the future and his words seem auspicious in the historical context.

“There is good-bye, and good-bye.”

Beth is upset that Owen and Gwilym Jr. have travelled to America without giving her the opportunity to say good-bye in the fashion she would like. Her frustration is not necessarily with saying a certain type of good-bye, but in the lack of control she feels as her sons are growing up. London is far away, and America is even further; the further her sons travel from her, the more she misses them. The nature of each good-bye, whether it is for leaving for London or to America, is a metaphor for her coming to terms with the distance between herself and her beloved sons.

“There was a line drawn between us that was plain as though put there fresh with chalk every day.”

When Huw first moves in with Bronwen , his dead brother’s presence haunts the relationship. They have loved each other for many years in a platonic sense but a line is drawn between them as they are forced to reckon with the reality of living so closely together. Each day, the same line is redrawn as Ivor’s absence reminds them of the strange nature of their relationship.

“Four new slag heaps had been started, with their cable tips running to the top of the mountain.”

As the village has grown, so have the slag heaps. The slag heaps represent the buildup of negative emotions and dark secrets in the small community. As the population grows, so do these negative emotions. Now, the slag heaps cannot be ignored. The detritus of the community is reaching a breaking point as the slag heaps and secrets are piled too high. They are ready to slip and consume the village, metaphorically destroying the Valley by flooding the community by making their most guarded secrets public.

“The unfortunate affair, as I have said, was caused by a reference to the defendant’s sister, a married woman, and a well-known preacher.”

When he stole the Morgans’ turkeys, Elias the Shop promised to bring English law to the Valley. Years later, he has weaponized the English legal system to destroy the Morgans’ reputation. He brings a case of assault and battery against Huw for a minor scuffle. Though the case is quickly dismissed, it gives Elias the opportunity to spread malicious gossip about Angharad and Reverend Gruffydd in a public setting. The English law is weaponized against a Welsh community, offering spite rather than justice to the people concerned.

“There is blind we are at times in our lives, sometimes over years and years.”

The intimate (and still platonic) relationship between Huw and Bronwen has developed organically over so many years that Huw cannot have a subjective view of the situation. To him, every aspect of the relationship is natural and respectful. Only when he hears the gossip around town is he made to feel naïve, viewing the situation objectively for the first time. He loathes gossip, but he understands why his situation may have caused gossip to start.

“Where the hell will the slag go, then? If you want to work, the slag must come out. If it comes out it must have a place to go.”

The precarity of working-class life is represented by the slag heap. The same bitterness and resentment which is represented by the slag heap will eventually collapse and destroy the community, but the poor people of the Welsh valleys have no other option than to continue to mine. Their bitterness and resentment must go somewhere, just like the slag. The foreman is blaming the mining community for their own inevitable destruction for the crime of wanting to work.