Irony and Social Protest
Irony and Society
Irony
- Verbal Irony: a suggestion of sense that exceeds or deviates from the plain sense of a literary expression. E.g. when Dr. Martin Luther King envisions freedom in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, and “every hill and molehill of Mississippi,” he ironically lists without explanation places deeply steeped in Southern racism (I have a Dream Speech, 8/28/1963)
- Dramatic Irony: a trope in narrative or drama which ironically contrasts a character’s limited knowledge and what an audience knows: e.g. viewers know that Juliet is merely drugged, but Romeo kills himself under the belief that she has died (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1597)
Sometimes, exasperated readers ask, “Why can’t literary types say what they mean?” Well, it is certainly true that poets and prose writers use a lot of Irony. And Irony works by opening a gap between the surface meaning of words and an implied message.
But here’s the thing. Irony is pervasive in our everyday life. You use and hear Irony in conversation every day. Suppose you suggest that Angelo lend some money to Robert. Angelo responds, “Sure, I can’t wait to give my money to a guy who never pays his debts.” Angelo has just used irony, and you have no trouble understanding his message. Consciously or not, we know that irony is a vital social skill. Think about people who seem socially awkward. Frequently, these folks struggle in conversation because they naively miss unstated, ironic undercurrents of communication.
The only difference between literary writers and ordinary folks is that the former use Irony and Figures of Speech more creatively and meticulously than the latter. In rich literature, complex and profound levels of ironic implication and judgment are suggested by the text’s materials and expressions.
Irony and Social Class
Irony often serves as a marker of social class. You will recall Ryōsu Ōhashi explaining that the Japanese sense of beauty is characterized by an aesthetics of “Implication, Suggestion, Imperfection.” Notice that implication and suggestion work through irony. Remember, too, that Samurai culture reflected an elite social class. A preference for indirect, ironic modes of communication is common in many elite cultures which associate direct, emotional expressions to be uncouth, ill-mannered, a sign of poor breeding. The well-bred, it is thought, will restrain their expressions and be sensitive to ironic implication. It follows, then, that classical artistic genres are often heavily steeped in irony, as we, for example, in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Elites often use Irony to ridicule the disadvantaged. But irony can work in the other direction. An elite’s complacencies and illusions about the world, other people, and itself can easily become the subject of deflating irony. Comedians, for example, often puncture the balloons of social prestige through irony. A stand-up comic’s joke will trigger audience awareness of a celebrity’s follies. The humor lies in the ironic comparison between what we hear and what we know. Artists and writers protesting the oppressive dominance of the elite often turn to irony to skewer classical values and styles.
Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen was a literary scholar who earned a Master’s degree at Harvard in 1926. His great literary love was for the great English tradition which had culminated in Romantic and Victorian poetry. He was an accomplished poet who published powerful books of ironic verse displaying the subtle, elegant features of his British models.
 |
| Carl van Vechten. (1941). Countee Cullen. [Photograph]. |
He was also an African American at a time when mainstream society thought it knew that advanced studies were beyond the capabilities of people called Negroes. The fact that he was published at all was a social miracle of the so-called Harlem Renaissance. For a decade or so, African American artists, writers, and scholars were patronized by sophisticated white benefactors. Nevertheless, Cullen could not escape the bitter bondage of African Americans.
Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel,” displays his considerable literary powers. The form is the Sonnet, the voice deft, elegant. The references to Greek myth in the first three sonnets testify to his mastery of the classical tradition. These arcane references lay out a series of puzzles that elude human understanding and, for each, faithfully give God the benefit of the doubt.
Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus[1]
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus[2]
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
[1] Tantalus: a character in Greek mythology punished in Hades by being forced to stand forever in a pool of water with fruit above his head, both of which perpetually shrink away whenever he reaches for them.
[2] Sisyphus: another character punished by endless frustration. Sisyphus was forced to push a large rock up a hill, only to have it perpetually fall back down just before he could reach the summit.
But the real punch of the poem lies in the final, ironic Couplet. Cullen takes full advantage of the compressed power of the Shakespearian Sonnet form to pose a mystery that cannot be accepted by casual faith. While his faith might handle the mysteries posed in the first 3 Stanzas, it is crushed by the clash between a natural poetic gift and the gag that American society uses to silence Black voices.
Cullen’s rage is as great as McKay’s. But he expresses it through ironic suggestion. “This curious thing”—what an understated but powerful form of protest. The poem never directly condemns American racism. It does command us to make an ironic and contextual comparison between the gift of poetry and the fact of the society’s treatment of black people. The bitterness lies ironically behind a cheerful façade. Another of Cullen’s verses is only four lines long. Its maximally compressed irony launches a devastating attack on Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks.
Countee Cullen. (1926). “For a Lady I Know”
She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.
To trace the ironies here, we need to know some of the context. In Cullen’s world, a “lady” would be a White, aristocratic woman of wealth and prestige. A “lady” allowing a black man to “know” her socially was almost unthinkable. A small cohort of sophisticated, avant-garde, elite New Yorkers were interested in African American artists and writers and would both visit them in Harlem clubs and invite them to their homes for cocktails.
The “lady” in the poem, then, approached Cullen’s people from an exceptionally progressive perspective. Nevertheless, the poem deftly captures her patronizing attitude toward a people she sees as serving children. The irony punctures her progressive affectations and indicts the wider society. If the most progressive White attitude is this, what of the rest of the violently racist society? In four ironic lines, Cullen surpasses the impact of pages of commentary.
Sherman Alexei
Sherman Alexei is a Native American of Coeur d’Alene heritage. A poet, novelist, and film-maker, he uses humor to communicate with mainstream audiences. He writes from the perspective of the “Rez” (the reservation). And his relationship with mainstream audiences who come to his readings is both amiable and touchy.
Sherman Alexei. (1996). “How to Write the The Great Indian Novel”
All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.
The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.
If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man
then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white
that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps
at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.
If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.
Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives
of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust
at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.
Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian man
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.
There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.
Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian
then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed
and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.
If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside
a white woman. Sometimes there are complications.
An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,
everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.
For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.
In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.
Alexei’s poem hangs from an ironic hook in the title. Literary folks commonly use the phrase “Great American novel” to refer to a common ambition among young writers: to compose a literary triumph that everyone will celebrate. But what audience do we mean by “everyone”? Let’s remember that literary prizes are awarded by the educated, predominantly White mainstream. To achieve critical acclaim, an Indian writer would need to appeal to values and assumptions of the mainstream,
So the poem relentlessly, with sarcastic repetition recites the clichés and stereotypes by which mainstream society thinks it knows Indian cultures. Each will trigger hooting disdain from the folks on “the Rez” who know better. And mainstream readers will have trouble recognizing the lies masquerading as truths. Ironic humor punctures the illusions of an elite with little sense of its own folly.
Ironic Narrative: Guy de Maupassant
Irony can also be associated with a certain kind of Narrative Voice.
Narrative Point of View
- Third Person Narrative: a narrative told from the point of view of a character who stands outside the action, never participating in story events. Third person narration avoids using I or We to refer directly to its persona, but it frequently invites the reader to identify with a character’s point of view by sharing the character’s inner thoughts and feelings
- Omniscient Narrative: a a form of 3rd person narrative in which narrated information is not limited to a particular viewpoint and may include story information unknown to any character as well as the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters.
- Restricted Narrative: a form of 3rd person narrative in which narrated information is limited to a particular viewpoint, e.g. the knowledge gathered to date by investigators in a murder mystery
 |
| Feyen-Perrin, F. N. A. (1876). Portrait of Guy de Maupassant. Oil on canvas. |
Guy de Maupassant’s contes (short stories) were drenched in the social ironies of the age. In the 19th Century, France was in social flux. The traditional aristocracy had inherited land-based wealth and elite status from feudal ancestors. They had always disdained the middle class of merchants and trades people, but in the industrial age, aristocratic wealth was being displaced by industrialized capital. When the nouveau riche[1] middle class—the Bourgeoisie—tried to climb into the aristocracy, the elite used irony to ridicule their affectations of elite customs and manners. Meanwhile, writers and artists ridiculed so-called Philistines for worshipping money and social position and preferring heavy, crass, hyper-ornamented tastes.
This is the context for the social irony of “The Necklace,” Maupassant’s tale of a bourgeoisie bride striving to rise in society. Maupassant’s view of Mathilde is nuanced and insightful. At times, her irritable social-climbing puts us off. At other times we sympathize with her and, especially, her long-suffering husband, a middling civil servant of moderate affluence.
[1] Nouveau riche: i.e. newly rich, a disdainful expression used by aristocrats to belittle middle class people of wealth who lacked the “breeding” that the elite felt entitled them to privilege
Guy de Maupassant. (1876). “The Necklace” Translated by B. Matthews.
SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education.
She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste[2] and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy[3]; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames.
She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five o’clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired.
When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, “Ah, the good pot-au-feu.[4] I don’t know anything better than that.” She was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after.
She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days, whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much did she suffer as she came away. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress.
But one evening her husband came in with a proud air, holding in his hand a large envelope. “There,” said he, “there’s something for you.”
She quickly tore the paper and took out of it a printed card which bore these words:—“The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to do them the honor to pass the evening with them at the palace of the Ministry, on Monday, January 18.” Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with annoyance, murmuring—“What do you want me to do with that?”
“But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here’s a chance, a fine one. I had the hardest work to get it. Everybody is after them; they are greatly sought for and not many are given to the clerks. You will see there all the official world.”
She looked at him with an irritated eye and she declared with impatience:—“What do you want me to put on my back to go there?”
He had not thought of that; he hesitated:—“But the dress in which you go to the theater. That looks very well to me—” He shut up, astonished and distracted at seeing that his wife was weeping. Two big tears were descending slowly from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. He stuttered: — “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”
But by a violent effort she had conquered her trouble, and she replied in a calm voice as she wiped her damp cheeks:—“Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.”
He was disconsolate. He began again:—“See here, Mathilde, how much would this cost, a proper dress, which would do on other occasions; something very simple?”
She reflected a few seconds, going over her calculations, and thinking also of the sum which she might ask without meeting an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the frugal clerk. “At last, she answered hesitatingly:—“I don’t know exactly, but it seems to me that with four hundred francs I might do it.”
He grew a little pale, for he was reserving just that sum to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting, the next summer, on the plain of Nanterre, with some friends who used to shoot larks there on Sundays. But he said:—“All right. I will give you four hundred francs. But take care to have a pretty dress.”
The day of the party drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Yet her dress was ready. One evening her husband said to her:—“What’s the matter? Come, now, you have been quite queer these last three days.”
And she answered:—“It annoys me not to have a jewel, not a single stone, to put on. I shall look like distress. I would almost rather not go to this party.”
He answered:—“You will wear some natural flowers. They are very stylish this time of the year. For ten francs you will have two or three magnificent roses.”
But she was not convinced. “No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women.”
But her husband cried:—“What a goose you are! Go find your friend, Mme. Forester, and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You know her well enough to do that.”
She gave a cry of joy:—“That’s true. I had not thought of it.”
The next day she went to her friend’s and told her about her distress. Mme. Forester went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large casket, brought it, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel:—“Choose, my dear.”
She saw at first bracelets, then a necklace of pearls, then a Venetian cross of gold set with precious stones of an admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, and could not decide to take them off and to give them up. She kept on asking:—“You haven’t anything else?”
“Yes, yes. Look. I do not know what will happen to please you.”
All at once she discovered, in a box of black satin, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with boundless desire. Her hands trembled in taking it up. She fastened it round her throat, on her high dress, and remained in ecstasy before herself. Then, she asked, hesitating, full of anxiety:—“Can you lend me this, only this?”
“Yes, yes, certainly.”
She sprang to her friend’s neck, kissed her with ardor, and then escaped with her treasure.
The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The Minister took notice of her.
She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness made up of all these tributes, of all the admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this victory so complete and so sweet to a woman’s heart.
She went away about four in the morning. Since midnight—her husband has been dozing in a little anteroom with three other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought to go home in, modest garments of every-day life, the poverty of which was out of keeping with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to fly so as not to be noticed by the other women, who were wrapping themselves up in rich furs.
Loisel kept her back—“Wait a minute; you will catch cold outside; I’ll call a cab.” But she did not listen to him, and went downstairs rapidly. When they were in the street, they could not find a carriage, and they set out in search of one, hailing the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance.
They went down toward the Seine, disgusted, shivering. Finally, they found on the Quai one of those old night-hawk cabs which one sees in Paris only after night has fallen, as though they are ashamed of their misery in the daytime. It brought them to their door, rue des Martyrs; and they went up their own stairs sadly. For her it was finished. And he was thinking that he would have to be at the Ministry at ten o’clock.
She took off the wraps with which she had covered her shoulders, before the mirror, so as to see herself once more in her glory. But suddenly she gave a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her throat!
Her husband, half undressed already, asked—“What is the matter with you?”
She turned to him, terror-stricken:—“I—I—I have not Mme. Forester’s diamond necklace!”
He jumped up, frightened—“What? How? It is not possible!”
And they searched in the folds of the dress, in the folds of the wrap, in the pockets, everywhere. They did not find it. He asked:—“Are you sure you still had it when you left the ball?”
“Yes, I touched it in the vestibule of the Ministry.”
“But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.”
“Yes. That is probable. Did you take the number?”
“No. And you—you did not even look at it?”
“No.” They gazed at each other, crushed. At last Loisel dressed himself again. “I’m going,” he said, “back the whole distance we came on foot, to see if I cannot find it.” And he went out. She stayed there, in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, on a chair, without a fire, without a thought.
Her husband came back about seven o’clock. He had found nothing. Then he went to police headquarters, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab company; he did everything, in fact, that a trace of hope could urge him to.
She waited all day, in the same dazed state in face of this horrible disaster. Loisel came back in the evening, with his face worn and white; he had discovered nothing.
“You must write to your friend,” he said, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it repaired. That will give us time to turn around.” She wrote as he dictated. At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, aged by five years, declared:—“We must see how we can replace those jewels.”
The next day they took the case which had held them to the jeweler whose name was in the cover. He consulted his books. “It was not I, madam, who sold this necklace. I only supplied the case.”
Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for a necklace like the other, consulting their memory,—sick both of them with grief and anxiety. In a shop in the Palais Royal, they found a diamond necklace that seemed to them absolutely like the one they were seeking. It was priced forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.
They begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made a bargain that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand, if the first was found before the end of February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He had to borrow the remainder. He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one, five hundred from another, five here, three louis there. He gave promissory notes, made ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers, with all kinds of lenders. He compromised the end of his life, risked his signature without even knowing whether it could be honored; and, frightened by all the anguish of the future, by the black misery which was about to settle down on him, by the perspective of all sorts of physical deprivations and of all sorts of moral tortures, he went to buy the new diamond necklace, laying down on the jeweler’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.
When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace to Mme. Forester, the latter said, with an irritated air:—“You ought to have brought it back sooner, for I might have needed it.”
She did not open the case, which her friend had been fearing. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Might she not have been taken for a thief?
——————————–
Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed the servant; they changed their rooms; they took an attic under the roof.
She learned the rough work of the household, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing out her pink nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the towels, which she dried on a rope; she carried down the garbage to the street every morning, and she carried up the water, pausing for breath on every floor. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting for her wretched money, sou by sou.[5] Every month they had to pay notes, to renew others to gain time. The husband worked in the evening keeping up the books of a shopkeeper, and at night often he did copying at five sous the page.
And this life lasted ten years. At the end of ten years they had paid everything back, everything, with the rates of usury and all the accumulation of heaped-up interest.
Mme. Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed, with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud, and she washed the floor with splashing water.
But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and she thought of that evening long ago, of that ball, where she had been so beautiful and so admired. What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular life is, how changeable! What a little thing it takes to save you or to lose you.
Then, one Sunday, as she was taking a turn in the Champs Elysées, as a recreation after the labors of the week, she perceived suddenly a woman walking with a child. It was Mme. Forester, still young, still beautiful, still seductive.
Mme. Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid up, she would tell her all. Why not?
She drew near. “Good morning, Jeanne.”
The other did not recognize her, astonished to be hailed thus familiarly by this woman of the people. She hesitated—“But—madam—I don’t know—are you not making a mistake?”
“No. I am Mathilde Loisel.”
Her friend gave a cry—“Oh!—My poor Mathilde, how you are changed.”
“Yes, I have had hard days since I saw you, and many troubles,—and that because of you.”
“Of me?—How so?”
“You remember that diamond necklace that you lent me to go to the ball at the Ministry?”
“Yes. And then?”
“Well, I lost it.”
“How can that be?—since you brought it back to me?”
“I brought you back another just like it. And now for ten years we have been paying for it. You will understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last, it is done, and I am mighty glad.”
Mme. Forester had guessed. “You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?”
“Yes. You did not notice it, even, did you? They were exactly alike?” And she smiled with proud and naïve joy.
Mme. Forester, much moved, took her by both hands:—“Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most they were worth five hundred francs!”
A powerful ending, right? Now, during a first reading, we don’t know what will happen. Read the story again, however, and dramatic irony will kick in. If we know what Mme. Loisel will discover in that last conversation, dramatic irony will reshape our reading of everything she does in ignorance. Irony infuses Maupassant’s narrative, allowing him to imply judgments of these characters. Yet, on some occasions, he does make direct comments in his own remote voice. Pay attention to the narrative point of view. When does the narration enter characters’ minds? Which ones? Does it comment or allow us to judge for ourselves?
A powerful ending, right? Now, during a first reading, we don’t know what will happen. Read the story again, however, and Dramatic Irony will kick in. If we know what Mme. Loisel will discover in that last conversation, dramatic irony will reshape our reading of everything she does in ignorance. Irony infuses Maupassant’s narrative, allowing him to imply judgments of these characters. Yet, on some occasions, he does make direct comments in his own remote voice. Pay attention to the narrative point of view. When does the narration enter characters’ minds? Which ones? Does it comment or allow us to judge for ourselves?
References
Alexei, S. (1996). “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52775/how-to-write-the-great-american-indian-novel
Claude McKay [Photographic Portrait]. (N.D.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_McKay#/media/File:Mackey.jpg
Cullen, C. (1926). “For a Lady I know.” https://allpoetry.com/For-A-Lady-I-Know
Cullen, C. (1926). “Yet do I Marvel.” https://allpoetry.com/Yet-Do-I-Marvel.
de Maupassant, G. (1884). The necklace. In B. Matthews (Ed.), (1907). The Short Story: Specimens Illustrating its Development. New York: American Book Company. https://www.bartleby.com/195/20.html
Feyen-Perrin, Francois Nicolas Auguste. (1876). Portrait of Guy de Maupassant [Painting].Versailles: Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Accession Number MV 6108. https://library-artstor-org.ezproxy.bethel.edu/asset/ARMNIG_10313468296
McKay, C. (December 1921). “America.” from Liberator. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44691/america-56d223e1ac025
Ōhashi, R. (2014). Japanese Aesthetics. (Parkes, G., Trans.) In Kelly, M. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.bethel.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199747108.001.0001/acref-9780199747108-e-424
Woodruff, H. (1928). Portrait of Countee Cullen [Painting]. New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, Amistad Research Center. https://library-artstor-org.ezproxy.bethel.edu/asset/AWSS35953_35953_33065212
Vechten, C. (June 20, 1941). Portrait of Countee Cullen in Central Park [Photograph]. Washington D. C. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004662756/
The master trope at the root of all figurative expressions. An often humorous discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. Common in everyday speech: e.g. “Sure, I can’t wait to give my money to a guy who never pays his debts.” In rich literature, complex and profound levels of ironic implication and judgment are suggested by the text’s materials and expressions.
forms of expression that manipulate normal usage for rhetorical effect. Loosely divided into Tropes (plays of meaning) and Schemes (arrangements and patterns that enhance meaning).
the New Negro Movement of journalism, art, literature, dance and music largely focused in 1920s Harlem, NYC
A short rhyming lyric poem, usually of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.
in the Euro-American tradition, a reference to the works, styles, and themes of Greek and Roman antiquity. More generally, an aesthetic valuing clarity, order, balance, unity, symmetry, and dignity, usually honoring a cultural tradition associated with some golden age of the past.
a verse stanza of 2 lines.
(English sonnet) a 14-line poem arranged in 4 stanzas that rhyme abab/cdcd/efef/gg. The 1st 3 stanzas develop a theme or problem. A thematic turn between lines 12 and 13 sets up a powerfully compact couplet that packs the force of a punch line.
a division of within a poem that functions as does a prose paragraph. Stanzas are labelled according to their number of lines--e.g. a 4-line quatrain-- and are often, but not always, defined by rhyme schemes.
in literature, the patterns of technique, style, and perspective that comprise the narrating text
a French term for the middle class in a society dominated by an insular aris-tocracy which disdained the social stain of having to gain money through work or commerce. Among artists, Bourgeoisie tastes were derided on aesthetic grounds.
a trope in narrative or drama which ironically contrasts a character’s limited knowledge and what an audience knows: e.g. viewers know that Juliet is merely drugged, but Romeo kills himself under the belief that she has died (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1597).
