Previous
Chapter 6
Themes
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
In the days leading up to Christmas Eve, Furlong dreads going in to work. But he does anyway, and when he arrives, the workers are there already. Furlong considers how all his employees have turned out to be good, hardworking men. He remembers how Mrs. Wilson used to say, “To get the best out of people, you must always treat them well.” He feels grateful that he’s always taken his daughters “to both graveyards” over Christmas each year—to visit his mother’s gravestone and Mrs. Wilson’s. Furlong sets out in his lorry and can tell, from the black smoke it emits, that he will soon need to replace the engine—and that the new windows Eileen wants for the house will therefore have to wait.
Mrs. Wilson’s advice to Furlong has clearly shaped the worldview he has adopted as an adult—this is why he makes a point to visit Mrs. Wilson’s grave as well as his mother’s each year. But this worldview puts him at odds with many of the other characters in the book. Most of the religious authorities and townspeople Furlong interacts with—Eileen included—seem to believe people must earn the privilege of others treating them well, not that treating others well is a responsibility people should take upon themselves to carry out.
Themes
Furlong goes about making his deliveries. He thanks customers for their Christmas cards and tries to linger a while at each home to chat. He tries to remind himself of people’s inherent goodness. Life, he tells himself, is just about “learning how to manage and balance the give-and-take in a way that let you get on with others as well as your own.” But then the hollowness of this thought hits him as he wonders why he didn’t think to give the sweets his well-off customers gave him to those customers who are clearly struggling.
Furlong believes in being good and merciful to others, but his need to remind himself of it so often—and his realization there that he doesn’t always practice what he preaches—shows that care for others isn’t necessarily something that comes naturally to people. Instinctually, perhaps, a person is inclined to look after themselves and “[their] own,” and they must “learn[] how to manage and balance” care for others with care for themselves.
Themes
Literary Devices
When Furlong arrives back at the yard, his men are already eating their meals at Kehoe’s. Mrs. Kehoe sees Furlong and remarks how tired he must be after a long day of deliveries and orders him to sit down for a hot drink. Furlong obliges and agrees that he’s been busy, but it’ll be nice to have a few days off now. Mrs. Kehoe replies, “What it is to be a man […] and to have days off,” then she laughs harshly.
For as grateful as Furlong is to his wife and as aware as he is of the hurdles his daughters face due to their gender, Mrs. Kehoe’s remark in this scene, however jokingly she makes it, points to Furlong’s relative ignorance about the nonstop, exhausting nature of women’s work. Men like Furlong work hard out of the house and deserve to have days off, of course, but for women (in general) often the work never stops. Not only are they tasked with domestic chores and childrearing, but they also must contend with the myriad ways in which society oppresses them or holds them to an unequal double standard.
Themes
After a pause, Mrs. Kehoe asks if it’s true that Furlong has had a chat with “herself above at the convent,” referring to the Mother Superior. Furlong confirms the rumors, and Mrs. Kehoe continues. It’s none of her business, of course, but she thinks it would be wise if Furlong didn’t make trouble with the Mother Superior—the nuns hold a lot of power in town. Furlong replies, “Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs. Kehoe?” But Mrs. Kehoe dismisses this point. Furlong has worked hard to give his family a good life—and, as Furlong ought to know, “there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St Margaret’s.” And completing their studies there is essential to his daughters’ success in life. Furlong thanks Mrs. Kehoe for her advice. Then he pays for the men’s suppers and heads out. He leaves Mrs. Kehoe the change she counted out for him.
Mrs. Kehoe and Furlong’s conversation in this scene builds on the argument Furlong had with Eileen earlier. Furlong takes issue with Mrs. Kehoe’s recommendation that he avoid making trouble with the convent, suggesting that the convent and the broader religious institution it represents wouldn’t have so much power if more people didn’t allow themselves to be intimidated by the church. But Mrs. Kehoe, in noting that there’s “only a wall separating [the laundry] from St. Margaret’s] shows that Furlong’s stance is overly idealistic and does not account for the very real power the convent has to harm Furlong, his family, and anyone else who might try to challenge them. Should Furlong continue to make trouble with the Mother Superior, Mrs. Kehoe implies, it would be so easy for the Mother Superior to kick Furlong’s daughters out of school in retaliation. Furlong is in the right, morally, of course, but Mrs. Kehoe’s argument shows how difficult it can be in practice to do the right thing when one has so much to lose. Moral uprightness, in other words, while something everyone should aspire to, is in many ways a privilege that not all can afford.
Themes
Get the entire Small Things Like These LitChart as a printable PDF.
Outside, it’s started to snow. As Furlong walks past the Town Hall, he almost trips on a loose stone and has the sudden impulse to blame Mrs. Kehoe. Furlong carries on, looking inside shops for gifts for his family. At Stafford’s shop, he asks Mrs. Stafford if she has “a jigsaw of a farm in five hundred pieces,” but she says no.
Furlong’s sudden impulse to blame Mrs. Furlong for his having tripped on a stone is illogical, of course, and serves to illustrate how much their conversation bothered him—it’s distracting him so much that he can’t mind where he’s walking. Furlong’s request for a jigsaw puzzle symbolizes his nostalgia for the relative innocence of his youth and his desire for order and meaning, something he has had increasingly less of since discovering the truth about the laundry.
Themes
Later, Furlong catches sight of himself in a mirror and decides he should get a haircut. There’s a long line at the barber’s. As he waits, he finds himself unable to chat with the others. Instead, he thinks about what Eileen mentioned earlier about the barber’s dying son. He gazes at his own reflection in the mirror and tries to spot a resemblance to Ned. He wonders if the woman at Mrs. Wilson’s house was mistaken, but he doubts it. He recalls how sad Ned had been after Furlong’s mother’s death, and how Ned had been the one to teach Furlong how to shave. He considers what “an act of daily grace” it must have been for Ned to conceal his paternity, wanting Furlong to believe he “had come from finer stock.”
It affects Furlong deeply to realize how oblivious he has been all these years, repeatedly and implausibly failing to recognize Ned as his father. He is ashamed, too, never to have noticed and been grateful for the subtle ways Ned performed fatherly duties in secret, itself an act of fatherly selflessness. In a highly judgmental and class stratified world, Ned wanted his son to dream that he might have come from good stock, despite his illegitimate birth.
Themes
Literary Devices
After his haircut, Furlong stops at Hanrahan’s to pick up the leather shoes he ordered for Eileen. The woman behind the counter is the wife of one of his best customers, but she acts indifferently toward Furlong now. Furlong pays for the shoes and exits the store. It’s past dark now. He crosses the bridge over the Barrow and considers the rumor that it’s cursed—supposedly, the abbot of the monastery placed a curse on it after the townspeople expelled the monks from the town for levying tolls on the river. The abbot warned the town that three of their own would die each year. Uneasily, Furlong recalls the Dublin girl he met at the chapel, how she’d begged him to take her to the river to drown.
It's unclear why the client’s wife behind the counter treats Furlong indifferently, but her iciness could point to the beginnings of the town turning against Furlong due to his run-in with the Mother Superior—the fact that Mrs. Kehoe knew about it indicates that word has already begun to spread around town. Furlong’s reflections on the cursed bridge speaks, perhaps, to the harm that the town has brought on itself by submitting to hypocritical, power-hungry religious authorities. In not even trying to defend themselves against the Church, they have as good as cursed themselves, dooming themselves to further oppression.
Themes
Furlong walks onward until he reaches the convent. He approaches the coal house, opens the door, and calls out for Sarah Redmond, telling her she’s coming with him. As they walk back through town together, people whom Furlong has known for his whole life refuse to acknowledge him when they spot the girl’s bare feet and realize she’s not one of Furlong’s. As they cross through town, Furlong wonders what the point of life is, if not to help others. He feels suddenly brave with the girl by his side. He thinks of Mrs. Wilson and how generous she was to him. Had it not been for her, what would have become of his mother? What would have become of Furlong himself?
This is a major turning point for Furlong’s character. It marks the first time he has chosen to act on his moral conviction. Previously, he has anguished over perceived moral shortcomings, whether other people’s or his own, but he has let his fear of social ostracization and his concern for his daughters’ futures silence him into inaction. Retrieving Sarah from the convent shows that he’s no longer willing to accept moral hypocrisy. The dismissive or judgmental looks the townspeople give Furlong when they see Sarah’s bare feet and register that she must be from the laundry hints at the consequences Furlong will face as a result of his good deed—it will turn the town against him.
Themes
As Furlong approaches the door to his house, Sarah by his side, he knows there will be “a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door,” but he also knows whatever it is, it can’t be harder than whatever Sarah has endured. Foolishly, he allows himself to “believe[] that they would manage.”
Once more, Furlong finds himself before a door. But the door no longer symbolizes Furlong’s powerlessness to effect change in his life—now, it represents his willingness to fight back against the forces that hold him back and coerce him into minding himself at the expense of others. Furlong’s fate isn’t certain—and indeed, his hope that he and his family will “manage,” regardless of whether and how the town chooses to retaliate against Furlong for helping a “fallen woman” like Sarah, is in all likelihood foolishly optimistic. But Furlong’s story ends with a sense of meaning and closure for his choice to reach out and engage with the world, extending mercy and compassion to another person at the expense of his own welfare.
Themes
