Sex, Sects and Society , livre ebook

University of Wales Press - Russell Davies

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

478 pages

English

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In an extended account of national identity, this companion volume to People, Places and Passions provides the first detailed study of the sexual and spiritual life of Wales in the period 1870–1945. The author argues that whilst Wales and its people experienced a disenchantment of the spiritual world, a revolution in sexual life was taking place. This innovative study examines how advances in life expectancy and improvements in health were reflected in emotional life. In contrast to the traditional emphasis upon hardship and hardscrabble experiences, this fascinating and beautifully written volume shows that the Welsh were also a free and fun-loving people.

‘To begin at the beginning’: an introduction
1: ‘Dygŵyl y Meirwon’ (Festival of the Dead): death, transcendence and transience
2: The Citadel: pain, anxiety and wellbeing
3: Going Gently into that Good Night: desolation, dispiritedness and melancholy
4: Where, When, What Was Wales and who were the Welsh? contentment, disappointment and embarrassment
5: ‘The Way of all Flesh’: prudery, passion and perversion
6: Love in a Cold Climate: fidelity, friendship and fellowship
7: Religion and superstition: fear, foreboding and faith
8: The pursuit of pleasure: enthrallment, happiness and imagination
Conclusion: A few selected exits.

Sujets

Europe

History

Great Britain

Histoire

Informations

Publié par	University of Wales Press
Date de parution	28 mars 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781786832146
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	7 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

SEX, SECTS and SOCIETY
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 1 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PMSEX, SECTS and SOCIETY
‘Pain and Pleasure’: A Social History of
Wales and the Welsh, 1870–1945
Russell davies
University of Wales Press
Cardiff
2018
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 3 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PM© Russell Davies, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any
medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or
incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the
written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission
to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to
the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place,
Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-213-9
eISBN 978-1-78683-214-6
The right of Russell Davies to be identifed as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78
and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The University of Wales Press acknowledges the fnancial
support of the Welsh Books Council.
Typeset by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Pentyrch.
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham.
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 4 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PMContents
Diolchiadau – Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: ‘To Begin at the Beginning’ 1
1 ‘Dygwyl y Meirwon’ (Festival of the Dead): Death,
Transcendence and Transience 9
‘Glyn cysgod angau’: the valleys of the shadow of death
‘The last dance’: grief and ars moriendi (the art of dying)
2 The Citadel: Pain, Anxiety and Wellbeing 37
Healthy or Hungry Wales?
‘The Massacre of the Innocents’: infant and maternal mortality
Endangered lives: disease and society
Dead Souls: disasters and misadventures
‘In place of fear’: defences against death and disease
3 Going Gently into that Good Night: Desolation,
Dispiritedness and Melancholy 81
‘Un Nos Ola Leuad’ (One Moonlit Night): suicide
The caves of alienation: worry, boredom and hysteria
4 Where, When, What Was Wales and who were the Welsh?
Contentment, Disappointment and Embarrassment 99
‘Gwlad, Gwlad: Wales! Wales?’
‘Yr hen ffordd Gymreig o fyw’: rural idylls
Prometheus unbound: urban and industrial Wales
Weird Wales
‘Cry the beloved country’: national character and identity
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 5 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PMContents
5 ‘The Way of all Flesh’: Prudery, Passion and Perversion 137
‘Yes Mog, Yes Mog, Yes, Yes, Yes’: popular sexuality
The Harlot’s Progress: pimps, prostitutes and professionals
Brief Encounters: alternative sexualities
6 Love in a Cold Climate: Fidelity, Friendship and
Fellowship 183
‘The Alone to the Alone’: the power of love and the battle to avoid loneliness
‘Til death do us part’: marriage, femininity and masculinity
Bohemian Rhapsodies: Bohemian Wales and Welsh Bohemians
7 Religion and Superstition: Fear, Foreboding and Faith 225
‘Some trust in chariots’: religion and Welsh society
The re-enchantment of the world: the 1904–6 religious revival
Blithe spirits: ghosts, ghouls and Gothic Wales
‘Some enchanted evening’: magic and the pursuit of happiness
‘The Disenchantment of the World’: the ebbing of religion and magic
8 The Pursuit of Pleasure: Enthrallment, Happiness and
Imagination 289
‘It’s in the Air’: culture, technology and time in the frst multimedia age
‘The Battle to the Weak’: sedentary pleasures
‘Perchance to Dream’: producers, players and performers
‘Fields of praise’: sport and society
‘The Trip to Echo Spring’: drink and dissolution
‘Make Room for the Jester’: happiness and humour
Conclusion: A Few Selected Exits 361
Notes 367
Index459
vi
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 6 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PMdiolchiadau – acknowledgements
To Kylie Evans for once more transforming hieroglyphics into a
typescript.
To the anonymous reader who reviewed the volume in an early
draft and made valuable improvements.
To the staff at the University of Wales Press for their guidance and
advice. The errors that remain in the volume are mine, and mine
alone. (Why is it that in the proofng process errors are invisible,
but seconds after publishing they glare at you with gleeful
malevolence?)
To all those researchers working to fnd a cure for MS, thank you
– please hurry up.
To Wales (whatever that is) and the Welsh (whoever you are).
I Cati, Beca a Guto, pob lwc wrth ichi greu Cymru’r dyfodol.
I Nerys, Betsan a Ffon, ac er cof am fy Nhad, John Haydn Davies
(1926–2017), oedd yn drysorfa o straeon o’r cyfnod 1870–1945.
00 Prelims Sex_Sects 2018_3_7.indd 7 07-Mar-18 5:24:55 PMIntroduction
‘To Begin at the Beginning’
Parod yw dyn i liwio’r cread â’i ofdiau ei hun.
(Man is ever ready to fll creation with his own worries.)
Tegla Davies, G{r Pen y Bryn (1923).
Set in the mountain vastness that inspired the national identity
of Ceiriog, O. M. Edwards and countless others is the Arts and
Crafts Movement’s gem of St Mark’s Church, Brithdir. Forlorn
and forgotten, its congr egation long gone to glory, its architectural
and artistic riches are under the care of the Friends of Friendless
Churches – an organisation whose title often evokes a sympathetic
or sentimental ‘Oh’. In the graveyard’s quiet earth is the grave of
Sir Eric Ommanney Skaife (1884–1956). Of all the achievements
of this Sussex-born, Sandhurst-trained career soldier, diplomat,
civil servant, committed churchman and convinced conservative,
a couplet in Welsh carved on the gravestone emphasises the most
important:
Yng Nghymru yr oedd fy nghalon,
Yn ei thir hi mae fy ngweddillion.
(My heart was in Wales
And in her soil are my remains.)
Skaife learnt Welsh whilst a prisoner in Germany during the First
World War and became an ardent eisteddfodwr, a vice-president
of Urdd Gobaith Cymru and a generous patron of many aspects
of Welsh language culture.
01 Intro_SSS 2018_3_7.indd 1 07-Mar-18 5:25:30 PMSex, Sects and Society
Across the same mountains are scattered the ashes of another
person who is not always allowed into the Welsh Valhalla. Bertrand
Russell (1872–1970) was the scion of an even more elite family than
Skaife’s. Russell’s ancestors participated in every great British
political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–40
to the Great Reform Act 1832. This philosopher, logician,
mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel
laureate had a deep attachment to Wales. Born in Trellech,
Monmouthshir e, after his career, Russell retired ‘home’ to Wales and
lived out his long life in Plas Penrhyn, Penrhyndeudraeth.
Were they Welsh? Should their tales be considered as part of the
story of Wales? Or were these nothing more than the desires of
two people to wait the fnal trumpet in a tomb with a view? But
their emotional attachment to the country would seem to suggest
that a positive answer was appropriate. At the very least the couplet
written in a Welsh country churchyard and the ashes scattered over
the hillsides confrm the complexities of Welsh national identities.
The private realms of belonging and being are often the preserve
of the novelist or the literary critic but history too can provide
valuable insights into a person’s national identity.
This is the second of two volumes of the history of Wales in the
period 1870–1945 under the collective title of Pain and Pleasure.
‘Where, when, what was Wales and who were the Welsh?’ are more
than the monosyllabic questionings of children. As ever with such
precocious utterings they help to point towards deeper human
truths that reveal how complex and contradictory the answers can
be. There are almost as many answers to the questions as there
were people within and without Wales who claimed some affliation
and attachment to the nation.
To many Wales was God’s Acre, gently watered by ‘gwlith a
glaw Rhagluniaeth’ (the dew and rain of Providence). Its people
had the piety of a chosen elect. But closer examination reveals
that the spiritual life of Wales was not without its darker side, for
the Welsh too were a people who walked in the darkness of
superstition. After the revivalistic enthusiasm and excitement of 1905
and all that abated, there was an ebbing of the sea of faith. Wales
experienced a disenchantment of the world, a dechristianisation
2
01 Intro_SSS 2018_3_7.indd 2 07-Mar-18 5:25:30 PMIntroduction: ‘To Begin at the Beginning’
and a desacralisation of the nation. One of the most fundamental
factors behind these processes is that over the years 1870–1945,
Wales and the Welsh, despite hardship and hardscrabble existences,
experienced a remarkable transformation in the wealth of the nation
and the longevity of the people. Life expectancy almost doubled.
People were no longer terrifed that they could scent the Grim
Reaper’s breath. This decline in fear must be one of the most
remarkable transformations in Welsh history.
The Welsh were one of the few people who thanked their maker
that they were a musical nation and included musicality as one of
the characteristics of their national identity. In the 1940s Ealing
flm comedy A Run for Your Money, two miners on a trip to a rugby
international in London are scandalised by a ‘No Music’ sign in a
bar. The inference clearly was that such a prohibition would be
1impossible in Wales. The prohibition in Wales, of course, would
have been over the sale of alcohol in the frst place. The Welsh
Sunday Closing Act (1881), the frst legislation to treat Wales as a
separate nation since the Acts of Union in the sixteenth century,
sought to prohibit the sale of alcohol on a Sunday. It was perhaps
the frst step of the tortuous journey along the long and winding