Throughout “The Canterville Ghost,” Wilde consistently pokes fun at the differences between American culture and British culture. The structure of the satire itself supports this infusion of humor, demonstrating the clash between “old world” and “new world” values through the Otis family’s reaction to Gothic and supernatural elements. In the following passage from Chapter 1, the narrator remarks on this clash between “old world” and “new world,” or European and American, through the use of verbal irony:
Many American ladies on leaving their native land adopt an appearance of chronic ill-health, under the impression that it is a form of European refinement, but Mrs. Otis had never fallen into this error. She had a magnificent constitution, and a really wonderful amount of animal spirits. Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
Wilde uses verbal irony in this passage to emphasize his satire, stating humorously that the British have "everything in common" with Americans nowadays except language. As shown through the lens of this short story, it would appear that language is one of the only things British and American culture do share. Instead of drawing similarities between the two cultures, this use of verbal irony widens the gulf between them, just as American modernity produces a cultural distance from the Gothic and the supernatural.
