Previous
Tone
Definition of Verbal Irony
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging outside and someone remarks "what... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean... 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:
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:
