Symbols Small Things Like These Claire Keegan

The Coal Shed Symbol in Small Things Like These

What Is the Coal Shed in the Story?

The coal shed is a small, locked outbuilding on the grounds of the local convent in New Ross. Bill Furlong, the coal merchant, delivers fuel there regularly. In Chapter 6, he arrives on a frosty Sunday morning and finds the bolt stiff with frost. When he forces it open and shines his torch inside, he discovers a young woman—later named Sarah Redmond—trapped on the floor. The shed contains only coal dust and the “excrements she’d had to make” (Chapter 6: 5 | evidence chap-0006-chunk-0002). Literally, it is a storage space for heating fuel, a common feature of Irish homes and institutions in the 1980s. But its function as a prison for a vulnerable woman transforms it into the novel’s most potent symbol.

Where the Coal Shed Appears

The shed is first mentioned indirectly when Furlong delivers coal to the convent earlier in the story. In Chapter 4, he stumbles upon a chapel where poorly dressed girls polish floors under a nun’s watch; one begs him to take her to the river to drown (Outline, Chapter 4: 3). This foreshadows the convent’s cruelty but does not yet involve the shed. The most significant return to the shed occurs in Chapter 6, when Furlong finds Sarah locked inside for the entire night—or longer. He later reflects on the incident: “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” (Chapter 7: 6 | evidence chap-0007-chunk-0004). The shed reappears in Chapter 8, when Furlong returns on Christmas Eve to retrieve Sarah and leads her through town (Outline, Chapter 7: 6). Each recurrence deepens the symbol.

How the Meaning Shifts

Initially, the coal shed is a mundane, neutral space—part of Furlong’s daily work. He thinks of it only as a delivery point. When he discovers Sarah, the shed becomes a site of horror and hidden injustice. The physical darkness and cold mirror the moral darkness of the convent. Later, after Furlong leaves Sarah at the kitchen table with nothing to eat, the shed haunts him as a symbol of his own complicity. He berates himself for taking the Mother Superior’s fifty-pound note and for not asking about Sarah’s baby (Chapter 7: 6 | evidence chap-0007-chunk-0004). By the novel’s end, the shed transforms into a place of redemption: Furlong willingly enters it again to free Sarah, an act of moral courage that risks his family’s security. The shed thus shifts from a hiding place for shame to a crucible for conscience.

Character and Theme Connections

The coal shed is tightly linked to Bill Furlong’s character arc. A hardworking family man, he initially wrestles with the choice between safety and justice. His discovery challenges the comfortable life he has built. The shed also connects to the novel’s central themes:

  • Silence and Complicity – The Mother Superior and the nuns try to normalize Sarah’s imprisonment, treating it as a minor matter. Furlong’s wife Eileen urges him to ignore what he saw to protect their daughters. The shed embodies what the town collectively chooses not to see.
  • Moral Courage – Furlong’s final return to the shed represents his refusal to remain complicit. He leads Sarah past staring neighbors, risking scandal. The shed becomes the symbolic threshold between cowardice and bravery.
  • Class and Economic Hardship – The coal shed is part of the convent’s material infrastructure, built on the labor of women like Sarah. Furlong’s own poverty as a child, raised by a domestic servant, gives him empathy for the imprisoned girl.
  • Hypocrisy vs. Ideals – The novel opens with the 1916 Proclamation’s pledge to “cherish all the children of the nation equally” (Outline, Epigraph). The coal shed, where a mother is locked in filth, is the starkest contradiction of that ideal.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Keegan choose a coal shed rather than a more obvious prison cell for Sarah?
The shed is a working part of the convent—a place for fuel, not punishment. Its ordinariness emphasizes how cruelty is hidden in everyday spaces. Coal, associated with dirt and labor, also reflects the convent’s view of women like Sarah as disposable resources.

2. How does Furlong’s memory of his own mother influence his response to the coal shed?
Furlong’s mother, Sarah, was a domestic servant taken in by Mrs. Wilson when she was pregnant and alone. He reflects that turning away from the imprisoned girl would “deny his own existence” (Outline, Chapter 4: 3). The shed becomes a mirror of the vulnerability his mother once faced, compelling him to act.

3. In what ways does the coal shed connect to the historical Magdalen laundries described in Keegan’s author’s note?
Keegan’s note records that Ireland’s last Magdalen laundry operated until 1996, with tens of thousands of women incarcerated (Chapter 9: A Note on the Text). The coal shed functions as a miniature, symbolic version of those institutions: a hidden, locked space where women were held, their babies taken, and their existence erased. The shed’s bolts and dark interior evoke the systemic imprisonment the author later documents.

4. What does the state of the coal shed reveal about the convent’s treatment of women?
When Furlong opens the door, he finds “excrements” on the floor, indicating Sarah has been locked in without sanitation for hours or days. This neglect shows that the nuns view the women in their care as less than human. The shed is not a temporary oversight but a deliberate containment—disguised as discipline.