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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
Part V
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:
