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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
Key Examples in Great Expectations
Book 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Bringing Up By Hand:
Dickens uses satire in the early parts of Great Expectations to lampoon the unpleasant way Victorian guardians disciplined and guided their children. In Chapter 2, Pip explains to the reader how he was "brought up by hand" by his nasty elder sibling:
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Catechism :
In Chapter 7, Dickens makes a verbally ironic allusion to a Biblical source, illustrating Pip's naivety and ignorance with a clever joke. Pip tells the reader that as a boy he had trouble understanding religious language:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Neither were my notions of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate; I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I was to “walk in the same all the days of my life,” laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—She Beggared Me:
The dramatically ironic motif of "beggaring," or stripping everything from a person, comes up several times in the context of playing games in Great Expectations. When Pip and Estella are asked to play cards to entertain Miss Havisham, this conversation follows:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close. [...] "Let me see you play cards with this boy.” “With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring-boy!” I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer – only it seemed so unlikely — “Well? You can break his heart.” “What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain. “Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.” “Beggar him,” said Miss Havisham [...]
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Silly and Self-Absorbed:
When a character is as pompous and self-interested as Uncle Pumblechook in a Dickens novel, the author is almost always using them to satirize a "type" of character from everyday Victorian life; in this case, a privileged blowhard. When Pip is told that Pumblechook will take him to meet Miss Havisham to "make his fortune," in chapter 8, a scene of the most laughable stuffiness occurs. Pip tells the reader that he was "trussed up" in his "tightest and fearfullest suit" and
Unlock with LitCharts A+delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been dying to make all along: “Boy, be for ever grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 39
Explanation and Analysis—Magwitch, the Benefactor:
One of the most important situational ironies in a novel filled with irony is the true identity of Pip's benefactor. Provis, whom Pip originally encounters as Magwitch the terrifying criminal, is actually a generous and broadly upstanding person who devotes his labor to helping the boy succeed. Provis tells Pip at the climactic finale of the second volume that he has been his patron all along, only wishing to make up for his crimes and
Unlock with LitCharts A+“to know in secret that I was making a gentleman[.]"
Related Themes:
Book 3, Chapter 51
Explanation and Analysis—Estella's Parentage:
Estella Havisham's true parentage is an instance of emotionally intense situational irony in Great Expectations. Mr. Jaggers the lawyer explains in Chapter 51 that Provis is her father and her mother was another convict, and that nobody knew but himself. When he says these things to Pip, he couches the secret's gravity and his difficulty in keeping it in hilariously euphemistic and noncommittal lawyerly language:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for money. That the mother was still living. That the father was still living. That the mother and father unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. That the secret was still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully.
Related Themes:
