Jane Austen’s Use of Irony in Pride and Prejudice Essay

Irony is the art of expressing two heart and intelligences simultaneously the obvious erupt meaning the majority will regard as the only meaning and on a deeper profounder meaning which lies behind the obvious.The tension created by this ambivalency can be and has been put to a variety of uses. Ironies abound in Shakespeare, so do they in Dryden and Poe.Shakespeare employs them to underscore the tragic plight of a man, while Dryden and Pope use them to mock at adult male follies and foibles.among the 40 eight writings, Fanny urneys Cecilia,Comilla and other novels are based on quiet but incisive badinage. Thomas Love Peacocks Headlong planetary house, Nightmare Abbey,Maid Marian and so on are the vehicles of attacks on the cranks and the fads of his day.but very few writers have exploited all possible resources of badinage as Jane Austen.It may not be an exaggeration to say that Jane Austen is nada if not ironical.Irony is her very forteit is in fact the very soul of her a rt. arrogance and Prejudice, for instance, is steeped in irony.To put it in other words, it is an artistic hold out of ironicand dramatic design.almost everything in this novel, be it related to the context or to the style, points to anironic contrast between appearance and reality.it is the complex use of First Impressions thatlends to Austens irony.Perhaps the opening sentence of the book offers the aptest interpreter of irony.It states that a single manin possesion of a good fortune, must(prenominal) be in want of a wife and claims that it is truth universally acknowledged. But as the story unfolds itself we learn that universal truth lies in the opposite direction.Mrs Bennets concern for bushelting her daughters gainfully husbanded constitutes the raw material theme of overcharge and Prejudice.In an essay Reuben Brower writes In analysing the ironies and assumptions, we shall deliberate how intensely the dialogue is, dramatic in the adept of defining the characters thro ugh the charge they speak and are spoken about.The confusion that even very smart people are capable of making between the apparent and the immanent is initially drawn towards Wickham mainly because of his external graces and Darcys first reply to Elizabeth is that of repulsion simply because to quote Darcy, she is not handsome enough to shape him.The situationsat least a good number of them in Pride and Prejudice. are also very ironical. Darcysfirst proposal to Elizabeth is make exactly at the moment when Elizabeth hates him most.When Darcy proposes to her she simply rejects him and blames him for separating Jane from BingleyShe further accuses him of his abominable interposition of Wickham.She tells harshly-..my opinion of you was decided.Your character is unfolded in the recital which I received from Mr.Wickhamcan you defend yourself?Later on Darcy changes,and happily, the changes are mostly for the better. The changed Darcy does not feel shy of confessing I have been a selfish be all my actiontime, in practice, though not in principle.Once Darcy has been humbled,Austen turns her irony on Elizabeth.She shows that Elizabeth in resentment of Darcys conscious superiority, has exaggerated his faults and failed to see that there is much goodness in him.then again. Lydias elopement with Wickham, which Elizabeth fears shall spoil her prospects of conjugal union with Dercy, strangely enough brightens the same.similarly, Lady Catherines attempts to prevent thismarriage succeeds in only hastening it.All these clearly spells out Austens attitude towards life.She knows that human nature and human situations are often too incongruous and contradictory.But she does not deride this aberrations with the cruelty of a Dryden or a Pope,her irony is everlastingly gentle and sympathetic.she uses it mainly in order to raise a square(p) laughter.This, however is not to suggest that her comic is not rooted in any sense of responsibility.She has very certainly a dist inct deterrent example purpose of her own. She will not only expose the antithesis between sense and nonsense,she will at the same time state her preferences in explicit terms.needless to say she casts her vote in favour of sense.there is pride in life as also there is prjudice but life, in order to be ideally lived needs to be a combination of both..Darcy has to stoop to mortify his pride before he becomes worthy to be happy and Elizabeth has to get over her prejudice in order to enter into a life of bliss.It is this moral vision that spells itself out in course of the novel Pride and Prejudice, though Austens irony plays the all pervasive except it never allows this vision to attain the abominable portions of any kind of didactism.indeed, it may be said that one of the greatest charms of this novel is derived from the gentle knife in the cheek way of describing people and situations.For this Jane Austens tales offer a rippling sense of pleasure to her readers.