Irony in Pride and Prejudice: the main feature

We can consider the irony as a fundamental part in this novel. This not only happens in Pride and Prejudice, the presence of irony is repeated in Austen’s more elaborate novels where the ironic layer that covers them superficially (and that makes them be very funny) invites us to think and reflect on how pathetic were some aspects of the time.

Austen manages to make us think through this well-founded irony, and this is a reason why we admire this writer.

In Pride and Prejudice specifically, novel that the writer herself consider “too light, bright and shining”, we can see this irony from the beginning with one of the most typical examples of irony: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”.The irony here is twofold because ridicules both those who believe in universally acknowledged truths as mothers desperate to marry off their daughters with a rich man.

The grace of the first episode, in which Mrs.Bennet tries to marry one of his daughters with the newcomer, young and rich, is appeased by a more important idea: Jane Austen understands that Mrs.Bennet is dangerously stupid and she is playing with the most important decision of her daughters’ lives.

We can affirm that Pride and Prejudice is the Austen’s novel that has the most striking irony, irony is part of the novel. However Emma, for example, is characterized by a more subtle, elegant irony.