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Hyperbole
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
Part V
Explanation and Analysis—Tea Time:
The final scene in the story is a key example of dramatic irony. This is because readers are aware that Waythorn does not want to be having a casual cup of tea with his wife and her two ex-husbands in his own home, but he acquiesces anyway, pretending to be totally fine with the situation. The irony comes across in the following passage:
[Alice] stood drawing off her gloves, propitiatory and graceful, diffusing about her a sense of ease and familiarity in which the situation lost its grotesqueness. “But before talking business,” she added brightly, “I’m sure everyone wants a cup of tea.”
She dropped into her low chair by the tea table, and the two visitors, as if drawn by her smile, advanced to receive the cups she held out.
She glanced about for Waythorn, and he took the third cup with a laugh.
Despite the fact that Waythorn has been reacting angrily to both Haskett’s and Varick’s presence in his life for weeks now, he accepts his wife's offer for tea, taking his cup “with a laugh.” Readers are aware that Waythorn is acting composed despite his rage, especially since he hates it when either of them is inside his home (which he sees as his personal space).
This scene is also an example of situational irony, as Waythorn is pretending to enjoy this situation right after criticizing his wife for prioritizing social etiquette over sharing her real feelings and setting boundaries with her ex-husbands. In other words, he is behaving in exactly the way he is expecting his wife not to behave, demonstrating that he understands, like her, the primacy of etiquette in their upper-class New York society.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Waythorn the Shareholder:
In an example of verbal irony near the end of the story, Waythorn metaphorically compares himself to a shareholder and his wife Alice to an asset that he partially owns:
With grim irony Waythorn compared himself to a member of a syndicate. He held so many shares in his wife’s personality and his predecessors were his partners in the business. […] [H]e took refuge in the cheap revenge of satirizing the situation. He even began to reckon up the advantages which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were not better to own a third of a wife who knew how to make a man happy than a whole one who had lacked opportunity to acquire the art.
In this metaphor, Waythorn is “a member of a syndicate”—or a group of people with a common interest—along with Varick and Haskett, Alice’s two previous husbands. In his bitter reflections, all three men hold “shares” in Alice’s personality. This is his way of communicating his frustration over the fact that Alice has knowingly molded her personality in order to make herself desirable to each of the three men, climbing the social ladder in the process. Waythorn extends the metaphor further, stating that he would rather “own a third of a wife” who could make him happy, rather than Alice, who, he implies, can no longer make him happy because she has split herself into three personalities tailored to each man.
This passage is an example of verbal irony because Waythorn is not earnestly comparing Alice to an object that he partially owns. Waythorn’s humorous intentions come across in the narrator's description of the “grim irony” of his reflection, as well as in Waythorn’s awareness that he is enacting a kind of “cheap revenge” against his wife by “satirizing the situation.” Still, Waythorn’s self-awareness does not change the fact that he is thinking of his wife in objectifying and demeaning terms. On some level, he views Alice as an object he possesses and feels threatened by the idea that other men could possess her as well.
Related Themes:
