Irony (1)

I'm going to blog my way through Sense and Sensibility. Before doing so, I want to go back and remind myself of a few things. I am going to have to remind myself about Northanger Abbey for starters.

Here is the first sentence:

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.

And here we all sigh appreciatively and think, "Irony, irony is there anything as lovely as Austen's irony". And we say that because we appreciate that Austen's actual meaning here is subtle and complex. We need to remind ourselves that that is quite a trick on her part because irony isn't complex or subtle. Irony is about as subtle as a getting hit in the face with a kipper*.

In Austen it is never the kipper itself that is subtle because a kipper can't be subtle. What is subtle is the way Austen wields her kipper.




* This is a tribute to my mother who once let a boy know she didn't appreciate his approach by hitting him in te afce with a kipper.