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Book
ReviewA
Vivid Sense of a Particular SocietyTwentieth-century autobiography: writing
Wales in English. Barbara Prys-Williams, 2004. Cardiff: University of Wales
Press; ISBN 0708318916, 224 pp., £14.99 paper
SAGE Publications, Inc.2005DOI: 10.1177/09675507050130020503
BrianRoberts
University of Huddersfield
This
study is part of the CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature
and Language of Wales, University of Wales Swansea) Series that explores the
English language literature of modern Wales. It is an examination of the autobiographical
work of seven (all deceased) writers of autobiography including the well-known
academic and literary critic Lorna Sage, the miner-writer B.L. Coombes and
the distinguished poet R.S. Thomas. Except for Coombes (born 1883) the subjects
were all born
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in the
twentieth century with the youngest writer being Sage (born 1943). Others
examined are writer Rhys Davies, novelist Margiad Evans, miner- writer Ron
Berry and humorist Gwyn Thomas. This is a diverse range of writers from different
parts of Wales (and elsewhere in origin) with differing class and other backgrounds; at least initially, the choice seems rather `random'. I began thinking of
well-known possible recruits (e.g., Raymond Williams) to the list but the
inclusion of less well-known and diverse figures made an interesting contrast.
Prys-Williams justifies her selection by saying she has chosen her `subjects
according to my personal judgement of the intrinsic interest of their auto-
biographical offerings rather than from a desire to represent particular Welsh
experiences or propensities in that period'. She adds that each of the writers
discussed provides a `vivid sense of what it was like to live in their particular
society if you were them'. She does caution, neverthe- less, that the views
of Wales are `lively and memorable' but are `distinctly idiosyncratic' and
`should not, however, be mistaken for accurate histori- cal record' (p. 1).
Her main focus is to analyse the `sense of self' as `enacted and discerned
by my chosen writers'. As she admits, it was often a `problematic exercise'
(p. 3). Prys-Williams detects in a number of the authors both a `calculated
self-portraiture' and `unintentional self-betrayal', with at times writers
realizing that there are `unsounded depths' that do not readily arrive into
consciousness (p. 3). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prys-Williams employs the conceptual
apparatus of psychoanalysis to delve into the writers' `sense of identity',
which while commented on by them, has `sometimes seemed inaccessible to them
at the time of writing'. She argues: Many of my subjects experienced a `laming
of the soul' to a lesser or greater degree in early childhood. The lifelong
neediness which resulted for many of them seems to have been an important
impetus to writing about their own lives in various and often highly constructed
forms. By engaging with their lives, at some cost, many of my subjects gained
insight into and, importantly, a sense of power over or control of the past....
It may be significant that some of the most committed self-examination in
the works studied here was written towards the end of the writer's life. (p.
8) The chapter on B.L. Coombes, the miner-writer, is of particular interest
in highlighting processes that can be involved in the construction of a published
autobiography (although some of the discussion is apposite for unpublished
autobiographical writing where, it can be argued, there is also an audience).
B.L. Coombes' These poor hands was a best-seller for the Gollanz Left Book
Club in the late 1930s and detailed the life, suffer- ing and danger of mining
life. Prys-Williams adds that she had grown up
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in a
mining community, the daughter of a doctor who dealt with mining accidents
and diseases. She undertook a great deal of `sleuthing' into various archives
on the writing of the Coombes autobiography and says she has rewritten her
account of it several times. She argues that Coombes, in the light of the
drafting of These poor hands (1939), other tellings and archive materials
(e.g., letters), can be shown to have regarded his life as a `highly malleable
commodity'. There was his per- ception of an intended, receptive (middle class)
audience with an its expectation of a `factual' account of the miner's life
and his conscious self-portraiture as the `naive' working miner. She then
details the compli- cated communication between Coombes and the publisher,
how the auto- biography emerged (with a request for significant changes in
content and a degree of replacement `fictionalization'), while noting that
the Gollancz Left Book Club's had its own purposes within the surrounding
socio-polit- ical climate. The particular approach by Prys-Williams, in using
Freud, Bowlby and Jung in the interpretation of the sense of self as revealed
in autobio- graphical writing, is certainly of interpretive interest and provides
a highly readable and detailed investigation. But, it will not suit those
wary of `applying' such a powerful conceptual apparatus. The references to
Eakin and Lejeune (and others) perhaps could have been expanded alongside
other exciting recent developments in auto/biographical interpretation. However,
the psychoanalytic approach is broadened by Prys-Williams with an intent to
show how her writers undertook an important `class position- ing' in the formation
of their identities, while noting the `historical forces' that are significant
in `shaping achieved identity'. It seems, in addition, that for many of the
subjects, the landscape of Wales was an important aspect of their lives, while
(at least for some) the `particular idiosyncrasies of their bodies have contributed
to their sense of self' (p. 7). For, Prys-Williams, the autobiographies chosen
inspired her `through the personal meanings they have found in the self and
the history that shaped it'.