Previous
Similes
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Aunt Beryl’s Hypocrisy:
In an example of situational irony, Aunt Beryl harshly condemns Kezia for associating herself with the lower-class Kelveys, when, it turns out, Aunt Beryl has herself been secretly spending time with a lower-class person. The irony comes across in the following passage, which occurs after Aunt Beryl has yelled at Kezia for inviting the Kelveys over and has “shooed” them out of the house:
The afternoon had been awful. A letter had come from Willie Brent, a terrifying, threatening letter, saying if she did not meet him that evening in Pulman’s Bush, he’d come to the front door and ask the reason why! But now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys and given Kezia a good scolding, her heart felt lighter.
Though Mansfield does not make Willie Brent’s socioeconomic background explicit here, she encourages readers to read between the lines. The fact that Willie saying he will come to the Burnells’ front door is “terrifying” and “threatening” to Aunt Beryl suggests that she is ashamed of the fact that she is in a romantic relationship with him, presumably because he is lower-class. That “frighten[ing] those little rats of Kelveys” makes her feel better implies that the Kelveys, with their lower standing, act as a stand-in for Willie, who she likewise would want to run off of her property out of shame.
Aunt Beryl’s hypocrisy is a key example of situational irony in the story and adds to Mansfield’s overarching message that people with wealth are willing to do anything to maintain their elite status, even if it means isolating and demeaning the lower-class people they care about.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Very Nice Company:
The narrator—who moves between the perspectives of different characters over the course of the story—occasionally channels the thoughts of the upper-class people in town. In the following passage, the narrator takes on this haughty and judgmental tone when discussing the Kelveys, using verbal irony in the process:
They were the daughters of a spry, hardworking little washerwoman, who went about from house to house by the day. This was awful enough. But where was Mr. Kelvey? Nobody knew for certain. But everybody said he was in prison. So they were the daughters of a washerwoman and a gaolbird. Very nice company for other people’s children!
Here, the narrator describes how the Kelvey girls have a working-class washerwoman mother and a (possibly) imprisoned father, concluding with the verbally ironic statement that the girls are “[v]ery nice company for other people’s children!” This is obviously a sarcastic statement, given the narrator’s judgmental tone throughout the passage, as seen in their description of Mrs. Kelvey’s “awful” status as a washerwoman.
This is one of the many examples of upper-class characters speaking of lower-class characters in cruel and demeaning ways in the story. There's also some situational irony here, too, since the supposedly sophisticated upper-class characters are the ones who act like rude schoolchildren while the Kelveys are nothing but polite.
Related Themes:
