The Furys Chronicle

[5] 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" [6] No date is given, but the action takes place over three or four weeks a few years before World War I.

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.

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".

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.

Anthony Mangan has suffered a stroke and his silent, paralysed body, bound to a chair, dominates the Fury household.

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.

In partial defence Edward Stokes, in The Novels of James Hanley, argues that The Fury, is "a prologue or overture" to a trilogy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This further increase Peter's emotional turmoil, and eventually, late at night, he manages to get into Anna Ragner's house, where her, in a crazed state, he murders.

The novel ends with Peter, covered in blood, being pursued by a mob across Gelton and then arriving him deliriously proclaiming that they are now "free".

[20] He also sees in the murder "an evident desire for social as well as familial vengeance, since Mrs Ragner's power is directly linked to the economic oppression of Gelton's working class".

At the beginning of the novel Fanny Fury has suffered a nervous breakdown because of the murder, but after spending time in hospital she recovers.

[36] Denny Fury arrives back in Gelton with two, young drunken sailors, "who have dragged him have across the world", after being torpedoed, it turns out, twice, physically and mentally shattered, and without a home.

However, prior to taking the Irish ferry, they both set out on a long train journey to visit Peter in prison in a place called Darnton.

The novel concludes with Fanny and Denny Fury arriving in Dublin, Ireland, where their seaman, son Anthony lives, on their way to Cork.

[41] However, men are still returning from torpedoed ships at the beginning of the novel,[42] and the gunmen, who cause Fanny Fury's heart attack – mentioned in An End and a Beginning – were probably engaged in the Irish War of Independence, which began January 1919 and ended with a truce in July 1921 (violence continued in Northern Ireland, and there was the subsequent Irish Civil War, June 1922 to May 1923).

[43] The concluding novel takes place over roughly three weeks, presumably in 1927 or 1928, because "Peter Fury has just been released from prison after serving fifteen years for the murder he committed in 1912".

Soon after leaving the prison, Peter travels to Cork, Ireland, where he visits the graves of his parents and his aunt Brigid Mangan, who is now senile and does not know him.

[46] Most of the action takes place in Ireland and it is Hanley's second novel set there, the first being Resurrexit Dominus (1934), that was published in a limited edition of 110 copies.

[47] There are also in The Secret Journey a couple of scenes in Cork, involving Brigid Mangan, and in Our Time is Gone Desmond Fury visits his wife's home Rams Gate, Rath Na.

[51] Another major difference, is that, in the revised version of events told in this novel, Peter did not have an affair with Mrs Ragner, and she does not know him when he comes into her bedroom prior to killing her.

Sheila restarts her affair with Peter, but this is only out of pity for him and the reader soon learns that she is still in love with Desmond, despite his unwillingness to start a family, and neglect of her in pursuit of ambition.

[57] However, at the time of the novel, Miss Fetch is leading a contented life as a devout Catholic, sewing for the Church, and carefully maintaining the house, and her memories of the more lively past.

While Peter has by the end of the novel "managed to stagger a few paces along the road to freedom and independence" it is unclear what the future holds for him.