So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men

All of Keegan’s stories and novellas feature Irish characters and settings and delve into the specific social and political history of the region. Small Things Like These is set in the 1980s and follows Bill Furlong, a coal and fuel merchant in New Ross, Ireland, whose mother was an unmarried teenager when he was born. Due to Catholic religious beliefs barring women from having children out of wedlock, Bill’s mother was ostracized by her family and shamed by the broader community. While working as an adult, Bill suspects that an alleged “training school for girls” is actually a Magdalene laundry, church-run facilitates that forced “fallen” girls and women into imprisonment and forced labor. Many inmates were unmarried, young mothers whose babies were taken away or put up for international adoption. Other women incarcerated in these facilities were from poor families or deemed too flirtatious or bold. While Keegan did not set out to deliberately write about misogyny or Catholic Ireland in Small Things Like These, she “[…] did want to answer back to the question of why so many people said and did little or nothing knowing that girls and women were incarcerated and forced to labour in these institutions.” Her decision to set the book in 1985 was intentional; she explains, “If it was set in another time, it might not have allowed me to question and criticise the society we ourselves created, our current misogynies and fear, the cowardices and silences and perversities and survival tactics of my own generation” (Keegan, Claire. “Claire Keegan on Small Things Like These: ‘I wasn’t setting out to write about misogyny or Catholic Ireland.” The Booker Prizes, 2 Dec. 2024). 

Foster is set in southeastern Ireland. The novel takes place amid the Troubles, a violent conflict from the 1960s until 1998 between Unionists—loyalists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a member of the United Kingdom—and Nationalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to join the Republic of Ireland. In the book, characters acknowledge the 1980s hunger strikes that imprisoned Irish republicans took part in as an act of protest. Foster is also steeped in the particular socio-religious world of 1980s Ireland. At the time, Catholic morality was weaponized against women due to the country facing a recession and high unemployment rates. Unwed mothers were shamed, ostracized, institutionalized, and sent to work in abusive Magdalene laundries, and infants were forcibly taken away from their mothers. Additionally, birth control was prohibited, and abortion was criminalized. The intersections of Catholic doctrine and restrictions on women’s rights shape the story, as the narrator’s farmer parents have more children than they can afford due to birth control’s prohibition. This causes the family to struggle financially. Catholic Mass is also central to the narrative, as religion is embedded into the fabric of community life. 

Across Keegan’s works, she analyzes how misogyny manifests in both individuals and institutions like religion. While So Late in the Day does not focus as incisively on a distinct historical or political context, the Irish social environment nevertheless influences the narrative and its critique of patriarchal culture. For example, Sabine argues that although there are social and political changes underway in Ireland, “a good half of men” still want women “to shut up and give [them] what [they] want” (34); this critique is directed at the sexist and entitled Cathal. Sabine’s argument echoes broader leftward shifts in the country, including the legalization of divorce, marriage equality, and abortion (in that order). While the Catholic Church still possesses power in schools and other institutions, its presence in Irish society has diminished considerably (Sheehan, Jack. “It’s time to read Claire Keegan, one of Ireland’s best writers.” The Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2023). 

So Late in the Day charts this misogyny through the subtle and overt actions of the collected stories’ men and their interactions with women; each story puts a persistent sense of chauvinism on display, which includes a deep-seated sense of entitlement and violent rage the men embody and inflict upon women. The collection’s focus on complex gender relations is evident in the novel’s subtitle. Additionally, when the title story was published in France in 2023, it was called “Misogynie” (Corrigan, Maureen. “Claire Keegan’s ‘stories of women and men’ explore what goes wrong between them.” NPR, 13 Nov. 2023). This naming, coupled with the collected stories’ content, underscores Keegan’s characteristic examination of misogyny. In the work, she positions the violent and subtle patriarchal norms its male characters uphold as an individual yet universal conflict with which its female characters must contend.