Feet in Chains

This new translation, launched at the National Eisteddfod, of a major work by Wales’s premiere female novelist admirably conveys Kate Roberts’s clear, spare, realistic style, her unflinching honesty and her avoidance of melodrama, cliché and propaganda (not always avoided by her male contemporaries). Feet in Chains is rooted in her memories of her childhood in Caernarfonshire as the child of a slatequarryman and smallholder. Owen, the clever child, wins scholarships, goes to Bangor University and becomes a teacher. The novel follows Owen’s mother, Jane, from a young married woman in 1880, through motherhood and constant struggles to ‘make ends meet’, to the bitter losses of the First World War. It depicts very clearly the tensions of family life – ties of love and obligation – felt in very variable degrees by different members. Although this is played out on a small stage, the author is so clear-sighted in her comments that it is also universally recognisable and applicable too to wider issues of loyalty and nationhood. The story begins with an interminable prayer meeting but the most important contribution of the chapel to the characters’ lives (and perhaps Kate’s) was literary rather than spiritual. We do not find the spiritual struggles Menna Gallie depicts in her comparable novels such as Strike for a Kingdom. While the novelist and occasionally one of her characters is aware of the subtle beauty of the North Walian landscape, she is brutally clear that it is a desperately harsh place to make a living and the inhabitants have little time to enjoy the view - except, most poignantly, when they are leaving it, possibly for ever. There is a helpful introduction which places the novel not only in the context of the author’s childhood but also in her 1930s experiences of poverty in the south. There are also concluding notes on her use of fictional Welsh place names and on details of historical and linguistic interest. The novel is an unsentimental treatment of lives ground down by hardship and petty injustice. It is in many ways a grim read, but her depiction of the individual characters, their perceptions and reactions make it a very rewarding one. -- Caroline Clark @ www.gwales.com