The World of English Literature

Irony in Jane Austen's Novel

The Use of Irony in Jane Austen's Novel

In the context of Austen, irony is best understood as a mode of expression that calls into question the way things appear. As Marvin Mudrick remarks, ‘irony ... consists in the discrimination between impulse and pretension, between being and seeming, between ... man as he is and man as he aspires to be’ (3). irony, he adds, is not always comic: ‘it becomes comic when its very neutrality is exploited as a kind of relief from man's conventional response of outrage and involvement toward delusion and error’ (3). Austen, however, used irony for satiric as well as comic effect. Often, then, the ironic comments in her novels do more than expose her characters' misguided assumptions; irony helps her condemn the social norms that help foster such beliefs.

In Austen's novels, irony can appear in innumerable ways. It can occur during a verbal exchange. For instance, in Sense and Sensibility, this is how Elinor defends Colonel Brandon's use of a flannel waistcoat: ‘Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?’ (Austen, Sense 38). Obviously, the real object of Elinor's remark is to reveal the absurdity of Marianne's romantic sensibilities. Sometimes Austen's irony is visual. For example, in Emma, the fact that Emma blithely idealizes a portrait of Harriet Smith underscores the fact that Emma imagines much that is not true about her new friend. Austen's irony may also depend upon a disparity between what can be seen and what is invisible. Willoughby's ‘person and air’ are ‘equal to what [Marianne's] fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story’ (Austen, Sense 43); however, he behaves like a cad. The disparity between Willoughby's appearance and character calls into question readers' assumptions about what heroes ought to look like and casts doubt onto novels that glorify excessive sensibility.

In Emma, the heroine's ignorance of her own heart is suggested thus:

Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love [with Frank Churchill]. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of ... she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter. ... But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults. [Austen, Emma 264]

By the end of this passage, the only thing more apparent than Emma's indifference to Frank Churchill is the absurdity of her criteria for judging the extent of her own affections. As Rachel Brownstein points out, the danger facing Emma, and all of Austen's heroines, is that they may ‘let the right man and the chance for action pass them by’ (90). Consequently, she adds, the happy conclusions of the novels depend upon the heroines' ability to know their own hearts and to interpret the world around them correctly (91). Often, as in Sense and Sensibility or Emma, this requires that the heroines reject romantic conventions. Despite her earlier prejudice against them, Marianne finally realizes that second attachments may actually work while Emma eventually accepts the difference between her real and imagined worlds.

Emma is a story about how a girl learns to be kind. Set on a pedestal by virtue of her social position, spoiled by her father, Emma ‘dangerously imagines herself a splendid free young goddess whose connection to most people is an amused puppeteer's’ (Brownstein 104). Throughout the novel, Emma gradually learns that she is like everyone else. However, until she learns to value and join a community, the third-person narration mercilessly exposes Emma's delusions and satirizes the social conventions that nurture them.

Austen herself wrote that Emma was a heroine that ‘no one but myself will much like’ (quoted in Austen-Leigh 157), and to all intents, she should have been right.

posted by Yunita Ramadhana @ 4:22 AM