Mansfield uses verbal irony to highlight the Sheridan family’s emotional detachment and ignorance:
[Jose] looked mournfully and enigmatically at her mother and Laura as they came in.
This Life is Wee-ary
A Tear—a Sigh.
A Love that Chan-ges,
This Life is Wee-ary,
A Tear—a Sigh.
A Love that Chan-ges,
And then … Good-bye!
But at the word “Good-bye,” and although the piano sounded more desperate than ever, her face broke into a brilliant, dreadfully unsympathetic smile. “Aren’t I in good voice, mummy?” she beamed.
In the passage above, Jose proudly puts on a performance for her mother and sister Laura. Her face appears “mournfully and enigmatically” to reflect the song’s somber subject matter. However, at the very moment the song is at its most mournful, Jose ironically smiles. The nature of her smile, “dreadfully unsympathetic,” mirrors the Sheridans’ overall unsympathetic response to Scott’s death. Significantly, it also foreshadows the moment Laura views Scott’s dead body, when she feels happy rather than mournful or somber. This moment thus Mansfield suggests that the Sheridans are numb to other people’s pain and thus may be unable to cross class boundaries and empathize with others in a meaningful way.
At the story’s powerful end, Laura’s brother Laurie tries to comfort her after he sees her crying on the road:
Laurie put his arm round her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” he said in his warm, loving voice. “Was it awful?”
“No,” sobbed Laura. “It was simply marvellous.”
Laura cries although she describes her experience visiting the Cottages as pleasant. This is an instance of verbal irony, for she means the very opposite of what she says. Mansfield includes this instance of irony to reveal a lack of understanding between the two siblings.
Laurie responds, thinking he understands, with “Isn’t it, darling?” Despite this verbal agreement, the reader is aware that Laurie cannot possibly understand the nature of Laura’s experience in the Cottages, and that she, in turn, is unable to communicate it properly to him. In doing so, the story suggests that Laura’s visit to the Cottages has created a division between her and her brother, the result of her abandoning social norms and leaving the Estate. However, the reader gets the sense that Laura’s newfound class consciousness has limits, and that she is perhaps fated to return to her blissfully ignorant, privileged life.
