In a post on Writer Unboxed, David Corbett uses Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These to examine the concept of menace without overt violence. “Keegan’s ability to create menace without violence…reminded me that some of the greatest threats we face are not physical so much as social, psychological, emotional, and moral,” Corbett writes. “By implication, they also provide some of the most dramatic forms of personal danger we can portray in our writing.”
How does she do it?
- Character. The story is told through the POV of its protagonist, a fuel merchant with a tragic background. Born to an unwed teenage maid, Bill Furlong suffers schoolyard torment due to his illegitimacy and later the early death of his mother. He works his way up through the coal business, but financial problems were never far from sight. A tense man, his marriage is outwardly happy, but troubled.
- Locale. The story is set in Ireland, which at the time was conservative and Catholic. The iconic site in town is the local convent, where nuns take in “troubled” girls who cleanse their sins by helping in the laundry business from sun up til sundown. There are rumors in town that the nuns have a lucrative business adopting the girls’ illegitimate babies to wealthy foreigners.
As Furlong is delivering coal to the convent, he’s approached by a girl who begs him to take her away. Though he cannot help her, the girl reminds him of his mother, who had been in similar straits. A tense emotional link has been established. Later, Furlong encounters a different girl who has been locked in the coal bin, seemingly as punishment after her 14-week old baby had been taken away.
At the convent, however, the Mother Superior says the girl had been lost, obviously a lie. Further, she makes it clear to Furlong that she knows his name and his daughters, a subtle threat. When the girl is brought before them, the Mother Superior bullies her into saying that she had hid in the coal bin during a game of hide and seek. Though the girl is sent away, Furlong finds her on his way out and tries strikes up a conversation, which is thwarted by another nun.
Corbett asks a number of questions that can help the reader identify how Keegan created a sense of menace without depicting or threatening actual violence. Those factors include the implied threat to Furlong’s daughters, the heavy-handed way the nuns control how and when the girls at the convent speak, the bold lies told by the Mother Superior, and the way Furlong’s background creates his empathy for the girls.
