The Furys Chronicle is a sequence of five novels, published between 1935 and 1958, by James Hanley (1897–1985). The main setting is the fictional, northern, English town of Gelton, which is based on Liverpool, where Hanley was born, and involves an Irish Catholic family of seafarers, similar to Hanley's own. The action takes place between 1911 and 1927. The first novel in the series, The Furys, was Hanley's sixth novel.
History
Originally conceived as a trilogy,Edward Stokes, The Novels of James Hanley, Melbourne, Australia, F. W. Cheshire, 1964, p. 42 this sequence of five novels by the Liverpool born writer of Irish descent, James Hanley, chronicles the lives of the Furys, an Irish immigrant family, in the fictional northern English town of Gelton "a fictional counterpart of Liverpool".Stokes, p. 42. These novels were published over a period of more than twenty years (1935–1958) and cover the period from 1911 until 1927.Stokes, p. 43. The series is based on Hanley's own experiences of growing up a Catholic of Irish descent in a city divided by sectarian tensions. The father, Denny (Dennis) Fury, had been a stoker on ships, as had Hanley's father. Both Hanley's parents were born in Ireland, his father Edward Hanley in Dublin, like Denny Fury, and his mother, Bridget Roache, in County Cork, like Fanny Fury.Chris Gostick, "Extra Material on James Hanley's Boy", in the OneWorld Classics edition of Boy (2007), pp.182-3.
Hanley was fourteen in 1911 so that would have been around the time he left school and started work as a clerk.Chris Gostick, "Extra Material on James Hanley's Boy". In the Oneworld Classics edition of Boy (2007). p.183.
With regard to the family's name "Fury", John Fordham suggests, that "Hanley was aware of the classical allusion", and, that "[w]hile there are no exact parallels with Aeschylus, the novel consistently evokes the Oresteian original": "The Furys, like the house of Atreus, are accursed, symbolic of a once proud family or nation" John Fordham, James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002, pp. 125-6.
Volume 1: The Furys (1935)
No date is given, but the action takes place over three or four weeks a few years before World War I. The strike that takes place in the novel, with its accompanying scenes of violence, appears to be based on the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike, also known as the '"great transport workers' strike", which involved dockers, railway workers and sailors, as well people from other trades. This paralysed Liverpool commerce for most of that summer.Stokes p. 43
The editors of the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of The Furys, and some critics, confuse the strike that occurs in the novel with the 1926 General Strike.See for example, Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, Writing the 1926 General Strike. Cambridge University Press, pp. 152–7. The third novel in the series, Our Time is Gone, is set during World War I.
At the centre of the novel is the figure of Fanny Fury and the conflicts within the Fury family that have been caused by her proud, domineering personality. Fanny no longer has anything to do with two of her children, Desmond and Maureen, both of whom in their restless ambition resemble her. Desmond because he married a Protestant and has abandoned his Catholic faith. Desmond is ruthlessly determined to get ahead and works as a union organiser. Fanny Fury objects to Maureen's marriage to the much older man, Joe Kilkey, who Maureen only married to get away from her mother.
Her family also hate how she privileged the youngest child Peter by sending him to a Catholic seminary in Cork. Ireland, when he was eight, so that he could become a priest. This was his mother Fanny Furys' dream and Peter's schooling represents a significant sacrifice for the Fury family, who live in the slums of Gelton (Liverpool). Like James Joyce's Stephen Daedalus, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Joe Rourke in Hanley's first novel Drift, Peter Fury rebel against his strict Roman Catholic upbringing, and a major event of the novel is Peter's return from Ireland in disgrace, after having been expelled for visiting a brothel. Peter is accompanied by Fanny's sister Brigid Managuan, who has remained at home in Cork, Ireland and never married. Peter is now sixteen and, soon after he returns, has an affair with his brother Desmond's wife, who is rumoured to be a prostitute.
The 1911 strike provides a violent backdrop to the family conflict, and the working class is not presented as "the hope for the future" in this novel, but as "an undisciplined and purposeless mass".Stokes, p. 48. The oldest son Desmond is directly involved with the strike because he is a union organizer, and during the riot he is involved in a violent altercation with a mounted policeman.
During the strike Peter has a strange encounter with the Mephistophelian, homosexual Professor Titmouse, who sensing Peter's "fascination with the sights and sounds of the riots [...] lures him into the central square".Fordham, 132-3. Titmouse represents a cynical view of the motives that lead to the riot, yet Stokes suggests that "through his lunatic rhetoric is somewhat equivocally conveyed what one assumes to be Hanley's own view".Stokes, p. 47. Peter, together with his sister-in-law Sheila, is later again drawn to a scene of violence, and she's is showered with blood when a young man standing next to her is shot.
The fact that Denny Fury goes on strike, combined with unpaid fees for Peter's schooling creates a financial crisis for Fanny Fury, and causes her to first sell furniture and steal her husband's savings, and then leads her to having to borrow money at an exorbitant rate of interest from the money lender Mrs Ragner, with whom her daughter Maureen already has an account. Joe Kilkey, who is a good Catholic agrees to stand surety for the loan, despite his wife's objection. It appears that Fanny's father, Anthony Mangan, had earlier helped finance Peter's schooling. Anthony Mangan has suffered a stroke and his silent, paralysed body, bound to a chair, dominates the Fury household.
The conclusion of the novel has Peter leaving to become a sailor. But just before he joins his ship, two photos of Sheila fall from his pocket, confirming his mother's suspicion, and Fanny Fury violently attacks her son both verbally and physically.
The novel received "a mixed reception from reviewers in both" Britain and the United States and "some thought it one of the most important novels in several years". It was particularly criticized for being "shapeless". In partial defence Edward Stokes, in The Novels of James Hanley, argues that The Fury, is "a prologue or overture" to a trilogy.Stokes. 46. It was dramatized for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 FM, 2 March 2001.Genome BETA Radio Times 1923 - 2009, . Retrieved 17 February 2018
1911 Liverpool general transport strike The strike of 1911 transformed trade unionism on Merseyside. For the first time, general trade unions were able to establish themselves on a permanent footing and become genuine mass organisations of the working class. Strike action began on 14 June when the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union announced a nationwide merchant seamen's strike. Solidarity action in support of the seamen led to other sections of workers coming out on strike. A strike committee – chaired by syndicalist Tom Mann – was formed to represent all the workers in dispute. Many meetings were held on St. George's Plateau, next to St. George's Hall on Lime Street, including the rally on 13 August where police baton charged a crowd of 85,000 people, who had gathered to hear Tom Mann speak. This became known as "Bloody Sunday". In the police charges and subsequent unrest that carried on through the following night, over 350 people were injured. 3,500 British troops were stationed in the city by this time. Two days later, soldiers of the 18th Hussars opened fire on a crowd on Vauxhall Road, injuring fifteen, two fatally: John Sutcliffe, a 19-year-old Catholic carter, was shot twice in the head, and Michael Prendergast, a 30-year-old Catholic docker, was shot twice in the chest. An inquest into their deaths later brought in a verdict of 'justifiable homicide'.Near to Revolution: The Liverpool general transport Strike North West TUC, 2011 Home Secretary Winston Churchill sent in troops and positioned the cruiser HMS Antrim in the Mersey.
Volume 2: The Secret Journey (1936)
Takes place a year later, over about a month in 1912.Stokes, p.43. when Peter Fury has just returned from his first voyage. There are several plot-lines, including Peter Fury's affair with Sheila, his brother Desmond's wife, the break-up Maureen's marriage to Joe Kilkey, and the return of Anthony Mangan to Ireland. However, the main story involves Fanny Fury's growing indebtedness to the moneylender Anna Ragner, because she is unable to meet her monthly payments and has to take out additional loans. Critic Edward Stokes argues that this novel "has more shape than The Furys," because it focusses on this story.Stokes, p. 55. He also describes A Secret Journey as a "strange and lurid a world in which characters loom out of the mist, portentous and larger-than-life".Stokes p. 60.
Peter Fury has been persuaded to take a shore job on the railway by his mother, but this leads to tension between him and his father – because Denny Fury is aware of the adulterous affair, as indeed is Fanny – and Denny Fury goes back to sea. When another son Anthony arrives home, Fanny tries to persuade him to take a shore job, so that there will still be some semblance of family life. She is struggling against a growing sense of loneliness.
Because Fanny sends Peter to Mrs Ragner as her go-between, he learns of the debt, and realises how much his education in Ireland contributed to this situation. Furthermore, Mrs Ragner falls in love with Peter and pays him for sexual favours. Peter is flattered by having two women interested in him, though Mrs Ragner also disgusts him, but because of her interest in Peter Mrs Ragner does not foreclose on his mother, to the disgust of her factotum Daniel Corkran.
Another important plot-line involves the relation of Maureen's relationship with the much-older Joe Kilkey, who she only married so as to get away from her mother. Joe stood surety for Fanny's loan and will not go back on his promise, though Maureen tells him that he should. This leads Maureen to try and raise money. When her brother Desmond refuses, it appears that she went to her former foreman at the jute factory, where she had worked, and somehow obtained the money. This leads to a break-up of what was already a shaky marriage, and Maureen abandons her husband and baby son.
Fanny Fury is changing and struggling to cope, and when her sister Brigid Managan comes from Ireland with plans to take their paralysed father, Anthony Mangan, back to Cork she surprisingly agrees. Brigid believes that he has money. Soon after she gets back to Cork she takes him to Lourdes, France, seeking a miracle cure, so that he will regain his speech and reveal where his money is.