Perthnasedd Poen ac Undonedd: Kate Roberts a Ffuglen y 1930au (The Relevance of Pain and Monotony: Kate Roberts and Fiction of the 1930s)

This article considers the development of Welsh fiction in the 1930s by examining various ideas concerning the nature of realism. Reading the correspondence between Saunders Lewis and Kate Roberts is a means of analysing the ways in which the two authors perceived the essentials of a realist aesthetics. Saunders Lewis’s reaction to the first draft of the novel Traed mewn Cyffion (‘Feet in Chains’) is discussed along with Kate Roberts’s suggestion made while defending the work that ‘pain and monotony’ are relevant in the 1930s and valid literary themes. It is suggested that Kate’s appeal to the work of the Irish novelist Peadar O’Donnell is important in order to understand her aesthetics. The relationship between Traed mewn Cyffion and one of O’Donnell’s novels, Islanders, is then examined.