Out of This Furnace: Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Mike’s badly burned body is brought home, and he is briefly laid in the children’s bedroom upstairs before being buried on a dark, wintry day. Mary cannot imagine going on living without him, but she has no choice. Once all the guests have departed and the funeral has ended, she must cook supper for the children and send them to bed. In the morning, the children have to go to school, and she has to prepare breakfast, and then there is the washing, which she can put off no longer. The company gives her a check for $1300, although Mike’s brother, Joe, believes she should have gotten more. Mike’s lodge also gives her $500, which she uses to cover the funeral expenses.

Mary soon moves, “unable to remain in rooms that had known Mike's living presence.” She gives his clothes to strangers, and, while sifting through her closet, she finds his overcoat with the button she had sewn on for him just before he died. Unable to contain her sadness any longer, she breaks down, as “grief had its way with her and left her empty.”

The narrative skips ahead to the year 1914, and Mary now lives near Anna, whose closeness to her is a comfort.  Her quarters now consist of two rooms in a larger house full of children and boarders. The house is cozy but very old and impossible to heat adequately in the winter. Mary is now just over 30 years old with four children. She has $1000 in the bank and knows how to make dresses and keep an orderly house. “Thus equipped, she [takes] up where Mike left off,” and begins a series of odd jobs that allow her to stay close to home to watch over the children. She washes and sews, and cleans a dentist’s home and office. On days when she is away from home, Anna watches over Mikie and Agnes.

Mary soon learns that people’s sympathy for widows is short lived. While no one is unkind to her, they are too preoccupied with “their own problems of living.” Meanwhile, Johnny finds different ways to bring in some money for his mother. The pennies he had always received for collecting junk now go straight to Mary. On Saturdays, he collects wood and hangs around the coal wagons to snag a stray piece, sometimes earning the sympathy of the driver who, if “properly approached,” tosses him shovelfuls to bring home.

The second summer after Mike’s death, Johnny gets a job selling newspapers, earning a dime for every 40 papers he sells. On some nights he fails to sell that many, while other nights, he sells more than that. At one point, he also elicits the sympathies of a woman by telling her that his father was killed in the mill, leaving behind four children and their newly widowed mother. The woman buys him lunch and bean soup. In another instance, Johnny witness a boy slash another boy’s bicycle tires. The offender warns Johnny not to tattle on him, and after Johnny vows to hold his tongue, he comes to understand that “what he witnessed was evil, not merely a criminal or heartless thing, but evil itself.” It is a lesson he will take to heart later in life. 

Dorta, Mary, and Joe are in Mary’s kitchen. The two women discuss their shared curse as widows, and Dorta informs Mary about the dull and cruel normalcy of widowhood in the First Ward. “For a few days everybody is sorry for you; after that you're just another widow,” she says. “There are hundreds of widows. Widows are nothing.” Mary thinks that that “the world has no place for me” because “a widow is outside of everything.”

The women discuss Mary’s financial hardships, and Joe suggests that Mary once again consider taking in boarders. Dorta explains that the immigration cycle has changed over the years: fewer men are coming over, and the ones that do either want higher-class accommodations or just board with their relatives. She suggests that Mary remarry, and Joe suggests a widower and former boarder of his named Paul Czudek as a potential suitor. Mary, however, says she is not emotionally ready to take this step, as she believes that Mike was the best man she ever knew. “It takes a long time for the dead to die,” she says.