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Imagery
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
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Liar Liar:
One example of situational irony occurs in Chapter 4, when Mrs. Reed introduces Jane to Mr. Brocklehurst as a liar. Jane rejects this label, and with it the "Child's Guide" Mr. Brocklehurst has given her to caution her out of lying:
‘I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed: and this book about the Liar you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.’
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Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Reading the Room:
The novel sometimes uses dramatic irony to emphasize Jane's relative naïveté when she is young. For example, in Chapter 11, Jane arrives at Thornfield and mistakes Mrs. Fairfax for her new employer:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘She treats me like a visitor,’ thought I. ‘I little expected such a reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult too soon.’
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Perfect Blanche:
The narrator uses a simile that is laden with verbal irony to introduce the character of Blanche Ingram in Chapter 17:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Blanche and Mary were of equal stature – straight and tall as poplars. Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian.
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Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Victim Complex:
Although the novel truly seems to buy into the idea that Mr. Rochester suffers for the sin of colonial entanglement, there is also situational irony in the way he describes his own suffering. In Chapter 27, he describes the "agony" of being married to Bertha Mason, agony that he claims led him to lock her in the attic:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. [...] How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.
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