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Mrs. Wilson
The Mother Superior is the corrupt nun who heads the convent at St. Margaret’s, as well as the convent’s Magdalene laundry. In New Ross, she functions as a symbolic and practical stand-in for the larger Catholic Church, deciding what is and isn’t moral and doling out punishments for those whom Church doctrine deems fallen from grace. The Mother Superior’s most notable features are her cruelty and her hypocrisy. Although she presents herself as a humble servant of God, she rules over New Ross with an iron fist, and she treats the girls and young women committed to the Magdalene laundry with vengeance and callousness rather than mercy. Notably, when she senses that Furlong may come forward about the abuse he has witnessed at the Magdalene laundry, she coerces him into keeping silent by implicitly threatening to take away his daughters’ spots in the school at St. Margaret’s, the only secondary school in town where girls can get a decent education.
The Mother Superior Quotes in Small Things Like These
The Small Things Like These quotes below are all either spoken by The Mother Superior or refer to The Mother Superior. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5 Quotes
‘And we see another of yours in the choir now. She doesn’t look out of place.’
‘They carry themselves well.’
‘Won’t they all soon find themselves next door, in time to come, God willing.’
‘God willing, Mother.’
‘It’s just that there’s so many nowadays. It’s no easy task to find a place for everyone.’
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Deciding to say no more, Furlong went on out and pulled the door closed, then stood on the front step until he heard someone inside, turning the key.
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Chapter 6 Quotes
What most tormented him was not so much how she’d been left in the coal shed or the stance of the Mother Superior; the worst was how the girl had been handled while he was present and how he’d allowed that and had not asked about her baby—the one thing she had asked him to do—and how he had taken the money and left her there at the table with nothing before her and the breast milk leaking under the little cardigan and staining her blouse, and how he’d gone on, like a hypocrite, to Mass.
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Chapter 7 Quotes
‘Take no offence, Bill,’ she said, touching his sleeve. ‘Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.’
He stood back and faced her. ‘Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs Kehoe?’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ She paused then and looked at him the way hugely practical women sometimes looked at men, as though they weren’t men at all but foolish boys. More than once, maybe more than several times, Eileen had done the same.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said, ‘but you’ve worked hard, the same as myself, to get to where you are now. You’ve reared a fine family of girls—and you know there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St Margaret’s.’
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The Mother Superior Character Timeline in Small Things Like These
The timeline below shows where the character The Mother Superior appears in Small Things Like These. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
Before the girl can say more, the Mother Superior —someone Furlong rarely interacts with—answers the door. Gesturing toward the girl (Sarah), the Mother Superior...
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Furlong, left with no choice, follows the Mother Superior into the immaculately clean convent. A picture of John Paul II hangs above the mantelpiece....
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The Mother Superior gets up then and remarks how “disappointing” it must be to Furlong not to have...
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...the girl (Sarah) from the coal shed reappears, her choppy hair badly combed out. The Mother Superior orders the girl to sit down and have some cake and tea. The girl obeys,...
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...silently as the young nun leads the girl (Sarah) away. He understands, intuitively, that the Mother Superior wants him gone now, yet they continue a stilted conversation anyway. The Mother Superior comments...
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Not long after, the Mother Superior rises to escort Furlong out. She gives him an envelope—a little something for Christmas. They...
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Chapter 6
...they usually give him a little something extra for Christmas. Furlong presents the envelope the Mother Superior handed him. Eileen opens it and finds a card inside, and a 50-pound note. She...
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Chapter 7
...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...
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