Small Things Like These

Sarah Furlong came from a Catholic family and found work as Mrs. Wilson’s employee. As someone who became pregnant at age 16 without being married and was shunned by her family, Sarah would have been an obvious candidate for the convent’s Magdalen laundry and for having her baby taken away from her. However, Mrs. Wilson’s intervention meant that Sarah was able to continue with her work and raise her baby within the household. Minimal description of Sarah, who dies of a hemorrhage while wheeling a barrow of crab apples when Furlong is 12, is provided. She often appears in memories associated with food and the kitchen, as “the scent of lemon […] took him back to his mother at Christmastime in that fine, old kitchen; how she used to put what was left of the lemon into one of the blue jugs with sugar to steep and dissolve overnight and had made cloudy lemonade” (19). Sarah is portrayed as a nurturer, embodying a form of goodness that has little to do with the church’s ideas of privation, as both Furlong and the text seek to challenge Society’s Conflation of Gender and Morality.

Sarah keeps the truth of Furlong’s paternity a mystery, a feat that allows him and the gossiping townspeople to entertain the idea that a Protestant visitor of Mrs. Wilson’s fathered him. Sarah thinks that by leaving his paternity obscure on his birth certificate and relying upon Mrs. Wilson’s protection will improve Furlong’s prospects in life, highlighting the theme of Otherness and Belonging in a Closed Culture. When Ned is revealed to be the father, this raises the question as to why he did not marry Sarah to save her from the stigma of being an unmarried mother. However, the precedent of their unconventional choices sets the scene for Furlong’s bold decisions later in the novel.

Mrs. Wilson is a Protestant widow who lives comfortably off the pension of her farming land outside New Ross after her husband is killed in the war. This abundant land’s relative isolation from the town and the association of the aristocratic big house with an older yet equally powerful authority, the British Empire, give Mrs. Wilson and those in her home an air of autonomy. The wealthy matriarch of her household, she dispenses with patriarchal norms when it comes to Sarah Furlong’s pregnancy and allows her the dignity of a normal life, rather than referring her to the Magdalen laundry. Although it is likely that Mrs. Wilson knows the truth of Furlong’s paternity, she respects Sarah’s wishes to keep it a secret. Mrs. Wilson is Protestant in religion and in the literal sense of the word, as her privileged position allows her to challenge the status quo. Like Furlong, she represents the difficulties of Otherness and Belonging in a Closed Culture.

Mrs. Wilson, who has no biological children of her own, becomes a surrogate parent to Furlong, educating him through the use of her library and giving him A Christmas Carol to encourage him to become an excellent student. Despite her privilege, Mrs. Wilson’s egalitarian attitude is shown in her belief that “everyone should have a vocabulary” (20), an extension of her belief that everyone should have a chance at life, regardless of their background. Furlong replicates this belief in his attitude toward Sarah. Even long after Mrs. Wilson’s death and well into his own family life with Eileen, Furlong continues to revere his home of origin as the model of elegance, judging his wife’s decoration as tacky in comparison. Moreover, the fact that Mrs. Wilson is identified only by her title and last name indicates Furlong’s lifelong respect and veneration of her.

Ned, Mrs. Wilson’s farmhand, is also secretly Furlong’s father. The narrator does not reveal his last name, so only the name of Furlong can be given to the protagonist, who is defined by his matriarchal lineage. Indeed, Ned himself purposefully contributes to the subterfuge surrounding Furlong’s paternity, telling him that Mrs. Wilson had many visitors, and “who knew whose arms his mother had fallen into” (53). Furlong, who discovers the truth after a stranger remarks on the resemblance between him and Ned, does not judge the latter harshly for his silence, thinking instead that it was part of a routine of “daily grace” on Ned’s part to spin the illusion that “he had come from finer stock” (62). Thus, Ned sacrifices his own position as a father to make Furlong feel that he has high-born blood, potentially like Mrs. Wilson’s, and to improve his confidence. Like his son, Ned remains in lifelong devotion to Mrs. Wilson, even continuing to work on her land long after her death.

Interestingly, the fact that the resemblance between Ned and Furlong is not apparent until the latter reaches middle age implies that the myth of Furlong’s identification with Mrs. Wilson and a potential English father occluded the truth. It is only later that Furlong recognizes Ned’s paternal gestures in the tying of shoelaces and the teaching of shaving. Furlong’s appreciation of the hot water bottle gift that Ned gave him when he was a child comes in the form of delayed gratification, as he experiences being “comforted by that gift, nightly” (20). This prefigures the satisfaction that Furlong experiences when he finally learns Ned is his father.

Furlong was initially attracted to his wife Eileen for “her shiny black hair and slate eyes, her practical, agile mind” (9). When they met, she was working in an office called Graves & Co; however, as was the custom for many Irish women, she gave up her job in favor of being a housewife on getting married and having children.

Eileen, who has none of Furlong’s issues with Otherness and Belonging in a Closed Culture, is earthier and more conformist than he. She prefers to fit in and look after her own rather than risk her social position by helping others. She buries her head in the sand about the nuns’ activities at the laundry, insisting that “if we just mind what we have here and stay on the right side of people and soldier on, none of ours will ever have to endure the likes of what them girls go through” (31). Unlike Furlong, who challenges Society’s Conflation of Gender and Morality, she lulls herself with the false beliefs that there are opposing categories of women and that well-brought-up young girls like her own daughters will be immune to the terrors of the laundry. With the family’s reputation and her daughters’ future at stake, she seeks to remind Furlong that they are not like Mrs. Wilson, who can support renegade causes without adverse consequences. While Furlong begins the novel aligned with Eileen’s wish to nurture the family according to the status quo, the couple soon diverges in deciding how to respond to his discovery of Sarah.

Kathleen, Joan, Sheila, Grace, and Loretta are “black-haired like Eileen and fairly complexioned” (9). They stand out for their intelligence, and in Joan’s case, for having musical talent. Kathleen and Joan attend St. Margaret’s, the Catholic school that is adjacent to the convent and the Magdalen laundry. The fact that the school is the best one in New Ross for girls throws the daughters’ fortune in with that of the nuns and makes their position and future vulnerable when Furlong opposes the convent by rescuing Sarah. Thus, in his attempt to make Sarah an exception to the nuns’ cruelty, he risks the bright future of his daughters, demonstrating the theme of Precarity and Privilege in Patriarchal Society: They will now likely be dismissed from the school due to their association with him.

Keegan creates an impression of the girls’ vulnerability not only with regard to the nuns but also because of the men who surround them. Little Loretta’s fear at the “sight of the big, fat Santa coming down the street” indicates some fear of men and strangers, and Furlong is anxious that his daughter will not be “brave enough or able for what the world had in store” (15). Furlong is sympathetic about the plight of the young women at the convent, but he is wary of the way men are starting to look at his teenage daughters and anxious to save them from any situation that may see their futures compromised, as his mother’s was. Furlong’s children are subject to the binary of Society’s Conflation of Gender and Morality.

Mrs. Kehoe is the owner of the cafeteria that nourishes Furlong’s men with warming, hearty food. Like Furlong, she worked hard to get to her present position. Her propensity to serve fish and chips on Friday in line with Catholic tradition indicates that she, like Eileen, stands with the status quo. Later, she gives Furlong an explicit warning that he needs to leave the convent business alone; she reminds him, “You’ve reared a fine family of girls—and you know there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St. Margaret’s” (59). Sensing that Furlong may not be finished with the question of Sarah’s treatment at the convent, she reminds him of the nuns’ power over his own daughters, since the same organization determines the fates of the girls at the convent and of his own children’s education.

The Mother Superior of the Good Shepherd Nuns Convent is a tall woman with an initially calm demeanor. The fact that “her eyes were neither blue nor grey but somewhere in between” (41) suggests her slippery, changeable nature and that Furlong does not know where he stands with her. Indeed, her behavior mixes traits of levity, such as her reference to Furlong by the boyish name “Billy,” with more pointed barbs, such as teasing him for being born outside of marriage, and saying that it must be “disappointing” to “have no boy to carry on the name” (42). Her duplicity continues in the act she stages with Sarah Redmond, the girl who was locked in the coal yard, as she pretends that Sarah lost her mind and was simply playing a game, making the situation “a big nothing” (43). This is a warning to Furlong to keep quiet about what he observed at the convent. Moreover, in referencing his daughters and how much she knows about them, she reminds him that she is a gatekeeper who can influence their futures, representing Precarity and Privilege in Patriarchal Society.

While Furlong observes the power wielded by the Mother Superior, he is not intimidated by her and even seeks to make her uncomfortable by staying as long as possible. Still, after accepting her cash bonus for the coal and going to Mass, he feels like a hypocrite knowing that Sarah is still suffering under her. Thus, he learns that his vision of Christian charity is different to hers and that he wants to embody true goodness rather than merely have the appearance of it.