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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Small Things Like These, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Subjugation of Women and Girls
Religious Hypocrisy and Abuse of Power
Complicity
Humanity vs. Selfishness
Summary
Analysis
Furlong grew up poor, born to a teenage mother who got pregnant while working as a domestic servant for Mrs. Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in a huge house on the outskirts of town. Word of the pregnancy spread, and Furlong’s mother’s family cut ties with her. Mrs. Wilson, though, let Furlong’s mother keep her job. She took her to the hospital, too, when it came time for her to give birth. Furlong grew up at Mrs. Wilson’s house. Mrs. Wilson, who had no children of her own, helped him with this studies and gave him work to do. She supported herself with her husband’s pension—he’d been killed in the War—and with income from her small herd of livestock. Ned, the farmhand, also lived at the house.
The social atmosphere of New Ross, Ireland, comes into focus in this early chapter with the detail of Furlong’s mother’s family disowning her as a result of her pregnancy and the illegitimate child that resulted from it. Ireland’s culture in the decades after World War II was highly conservative with regard to sex and sexuality, in large part due to the heavy influence of the Catholic Church and the (Protestant) Church of Ireland. In addition to situating the fictional small town of New Ross within the broader culture atmosphere of Ireland in the 1980s, when Keegan’s novella is set, this passage also signals Furlong’s status as a perpetual outsider, however the town might make a show of accepting him on the surface.
Active
Themes
Overall, everyone got along. And religion wasn’t a source of tension, either: on Sundays, Ned would drive Mrs. Wilson to the Protestant Church, and then he’d take Furlong and Furlong’s mother to chapel. Everyone would return home afterward and leave their respective bibles in the entryway until next Sunday. The schoolchildren would bully Furlong, though his living at Mrs. Wilson’s house mitigated some of the abuse. Eventually he transferred to a technical school. His mother died when he was 12, suddenly, of a brain bleed. He never found out who his father was. Years after his mother’s death, when he went to the registry office to get his birth certificate, the clerk gave him “an ugly smile” as he handed Furlong the birth certificate with “Unknown” written on it.
The detail of religion not being a big deal between the Catholic Furlongs and the Protestant Mrs. Wilson implies that this is not the norm—that to most people in New Ross, a person’s religious affiliation matters a great deal in determining where and among whom they are accepted. This recollection from Furlong thus further establishes how central religion is to life in New Ross. The registry office clerk’s “ugly smile” at Furlong reinforces this point, with the narration implying that the clerk is judging Furlong for his illegitimate birth and uncertain parentage, regarding it as something shameful.
Active
Themes
Today, Furlong doesn’t much dwell on the past. He lives in town with his wife, Eileen, and their five daughters, all of whom are doing well at school. His eldest two are now attending secondary school at St. Margaret’s. Furlong sometimes watches his daughters “going through the small things” that constitute daily life and takes silent pride in them.
Active
Themes
One night, Furlong remarks to Eileen how lucky they are: they don’t have much, but they’re so much better off than others. Furlong recounts coming across Mick Sinnott’s eldest child gathering sticks on the side of the road earlier that day. It had been raining out, and Furlong gave the child what spare change he had in his pocket. Eileen disapproves, suggesting that some people bring misfortune on themselves—Sinnott has a drinking problem. Furlong protests that surely Sinnott’s child is blameless, but Eileen bristles.
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Furlong sometimes thinks about his daughters “getting big and growing up, going out into that world of men.” Still, he knows how good his family has it—and how easily they could lose it all. Times are rough in Ireland. Furlong has seen how the dole (welfare) queue lines grow ever longer. People constantly leave for England or America. One day he saw a young boy licking milk out of a bowl left outside the priest’s house for a cat. Still, the hardship just pushes Furlong to keep working hard to give his family a good life, and to ensure that the girls complete their schooling at St. Margaret’s, the town’s only decent school for girls.
