The Heart's Invisible Furies

The Heart’s Invisible Furies tells the story of Cyril Avery’s life through the 20th and 21st centuries and during great social change. When Cyril is born, Ireland is still under the heavy influence of the Catholic Church; laws exist that oppress and target women and gay people.

After gaining independence from Britain over 20 years prior, it is a country still laying its political foundations. People who rebelled against independence during this time were sent to Irish internment camps along with those who supported the separation of Northern Ireland. This lasted until the 1970s, when a period of social upheaval saw the overturning of several unjust laws and policies. One such law enacted in 1861 was the Offense Against the Persons Act and placed being gay alongside bestiality, illegalizing both as criminal offenses against society as a whole. People caught in sexual acts with other men were subject to abuse and imprisonment, as well as social ostracization. This law was not repealed until the 1990s when another widespread social movement fought for change and rights for the LGBT+ community (Halpin, Hayley. “Here’s a short history of the battle for LGBT rights in Ireland.” The Journal, 2018).

Another law targeted women and prevented them from continuing to work after getting married. This law was designed to punish women who chose an unconventional route in life and influence them to remain housewives who bear children. This law, known as the Marriage Bar, was introduced in Ireland in the 1920s and not repealed until the 1970s during the same period of social upheaval as the LGBT+ movement.

Alongside the existence of these prejudicial laws was a deep-rooted societal hatred toward gay people, inspired by their own religious roots. Cyril’s life is shaped by this hatred as he is forced to hide who he is and experience or witness violence on more than one occasion. As of 2023, Ireland is a progressive nation and leads Europe in its policies regarding LGBT+ rights. In 2015, a Referendum was made to the Constitution of Ireland that sought to legalize gay marriage across the country. It was the first country to do so by Referendum, allowing the people to decide—and they spoke loudly.

Cyril’s role as an observer of the need for social change continues after he moves away from Ireland during the post-war period. Amsterdam’s history becomes a strong influence on him during his time there; he works for the Anne Frank House and meets several survivors of the Holocaust, including Bastiaan’s parents. Cyril finally feels as though he can be openly gay in Amsterdam as well, but Ignac’s experiences of child commercial sexual exploitation indicate that many men who live there still do not. When Cyril and his family move to New York to help with the AIDS epidemic, he sees how callously and quickly the country turns against people who contract the disease. The President himself dismisses queerness as “disgusting” and something to avoid, and people everywhere abandoned members of their own family out of shame and fear of contracting AIDS.

Cyril visits several patients who are dying alone including Julian. Several of them show the intolerance gay people faced during the epidemic; for example, an older man is only concerned about whether people think he is gay, and Julian blames gay men for his disease, refusing to allow any of his family to know he is dying of AIDS. These novel details represent the stigma that was born out of the AIDS epidemic and continues to permeate society today, as many still believe that only gay people can contract AIDS, that it is gay people’s fault that AIDS exists, and that people who contract AIDS deserve their fate. (“Stigma and HIV.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021).