What is the main theme in the novel, The Furies?

Much of the success of Charnas's first published novel, Walk to the End of the World (1974), lay in the book's sheer ferocity, its willingness to depict the patriarchal rulers of the Holdfast as perverse, one-dimensional, genuinely evil monsters. The book's power was that of a young writer, a woman capable of great anger at the evils of our world.

The author of The Furies, however, is no longer a young woman and no longer sees the world in terms of black and white. There is real evil in the world, Charnas tells us, and we must combat it, but it is not merely "over there." It does not merely reside in "those others." It is all around us; it is even in us.