AI ToolsNew
Tools to make learning and teaching easier
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Mrs. Seton:
Toward the end of Chapter 1, the narrator meditates on the historical position of Mrs. Seton, her friend Mary Seton's mother. In a series of reflections, the narrator uses verbal irony to illuminate the cause of female educational poverty:
If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions.
The narrator knows very well that Mrs. Seton could never hope to own money or property, even if she had worked hard to acquire them. Any money Mrs. Seton made would become her husband's property, dispensed for her benefit only when Mr. Seton chose. The narrator thus uses verbal irony to call attention to this plight that women in general experience, making statements about what Mrs. Seton "should" have done to elucidate society's limitations on women. This passage serves as later evidentiary justification for Woolf's argument that female writers and intellectuals need "rooms" of their own—places where their minds can flourish independently and with self-sufficiency.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Guardian Angel:
Toward the beginning of Chapter 1, as the narrator wanders the Oxbridge quadrangle, she muses on famous English essayist Charles Lamb. The narrator recalls that Lamb once wrote an essay about one of John Milton's poems, which he had viewed at Oxbridge. Curious to see if preserved copies of Milton's poem Lycidas and Thackeray's novel Esmond still dwell within the Oxbridge archives, the narrator attempts to enter the library. She is turned away at the gate for being a woman, by a "guardian," and the narrator's description of him is an example of both oxymoron and situational irony:
[H]ere I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.
In the above example of oxymoron, the narrator refers to the man who turns her away from Oxbridge's library as a "deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman"—a guardian angel. Despite being kindly, this man is also "deprecating," treating the narrator in a demeaning and disrespectful manner on account of the fact that she is a woman. This situation is also ironic, given that the narrator is somewhat of a stand-in for Virginia Woolf herself, and Woolf had a lauded, established writing career when A Room of One's Own was published.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Learned and Unprejudiced:
In Chapter 2, the narrator moves to criticize those male scholars who have their work entombed at the British Museum—men who, on account of their institutional credentials, consider themselves superior and unbiased in their reasoning. Note the narrator's use of verbal irony to satirize these men in the following passage:
But one needed answers, not questions; and an answer was only to be had by consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, who have removed themselves above the strife of tongue and the confusion of body and issued the result of their reasoning and research in books which are to be found in the British Museum.
The narrator states that these men are "learned and unprejudiced"—something she herself clearly does not believe. She speaks from the perspective of a male intellectual, using verbal irony (saying the opposite of what she means) to critique their elitist, misogynistic, high-and-mighty mindset. Such men view themselves as superior to all others, unique in their ability to discern "objective truth." The male intellectuals whom the narrator describes abide by Enlightenment philosophy, differentiating the mind from the body and holding the mind in greater esteem. It is the flesh—not the mind—that leads people astray, toward "strife of tongue" and "confusion of body." From the narrator's perspective, objective truth can only emerge when the mind is free from the confines of the flesh, or when "masculinity" is free from restriction by "femininity."
Related Themes:
