I have been thinking about The Darling Buds of May recently, and how radical it is as a text. (spoilers ahead)
The Larkins are happy. They are infectiously happy, yet they do not follow social propriety. They live an incredibly joyful and idyllic existence, yet they break almost every social expectation of their time.
The first series of the 90s TV series (With Pam Ferris as Ma, David Jason as Pop, and Catherine Zeta Jones as Mariette) follows the book very faithfully, so I'll just note about the book.
In the opening chapter of the book, we learn two important transgressions. Firstly, Mariette is pregnant, and she can't decide on who the father is. Pop, upon learning this, doesn't become angry or demanding, he simply accepts it as fact.
Secondly, Ma is fat. She is huge. Bates talks about how she keeps having to have her rings cut off, how vast she is, and how she jiggles as she laughs. Notably, she is happy. She is happy in her body and who she is. Her fatness implies her happiness, to some extent. She doesn't view having to have rings cut off as an indictment on her morality, rather as a small inconvenience to her day. Her fatness brings her no other troubles, so she doesn't see need to do anything about it (as she is not burdened by the beauty standard of being thin.)
There are other things, like the fact Ma and Pop aren't married (they simply cohabit.) This fact becomes a telling moment for Charley, as he has transformed from a man of a moral and upright society, to a man who can "use his loaf" and has become relatively untroubled by abstract forms of morality. He tells them that, actually, for tax reasons, there may be no benefit to them being married. He probably wouldn't have said this earlier on.
I reckon The Darling Buds of May is an indictment of society's abstract moralities, and rather is a treatise on the joy in living a simpler existence where the cardinal rules are: Use Your Loaf, and Be Nice.
