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Style
Definition of Tone
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical, and so on. For instance... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis:
While Wilde himself is not formally the narrator of “The Canterville Chase,” his tone and that of the narrator are present through the operation of satirical devices. Generally, the narrator’s tone throughout the short story is comedic or ironic, with the purpose of that tone being to satirize Gothic fiction and compare European and American culture. One can assume that this satirical tone is both Wilde’s and the narrator's, and that Wilde's purpose in writing the short story was satire, and not a meta-commentary on satirical writing.
Irony is the primary device used by Wilde to create this narrative tone. The narrator will often call the reader’s attention to certain hallmarks of the Gothic genre, subverting them in due time. One instance of this occurs in Chapter 1, wherein the Otis family discusses their new home:
The conversation in no way turned upon ghosts, so there were not even those primary conditions of receptive expectation which so often precede the presentation of psychical phenomena.
In this passage, the narrator validates the ghostly phenomena that will occur later in the story by asserting that the Otis family was in no way predisposed to see supernatural occurrences in mundane events. The tone in this passage is humorous in nature, outlining the operating mechanisms of a very common Gothic trope and displaying their inherent silliness to the reader.
