The Shadow Lines – Significance of the title

The novel ‘The Shadow Lines’ by Amitav Ghosh centers around a young boy, the narrator, whose growth in age and maturity is traced slowly through his understanding of the memories that connect him and his family members. Through the book, we watch him move backwards and forwards in time as bits and pieces of stories, both half-remembered and imagined, come together in his mind until he arrives at an intricate, interconnected picture of the world where borders and boundaries mean nothing, mere shadow lines that we draw dividing people and nations.

The title ‘The Shadow Lines’ is the author’s commentary on the artificial nature of cultural, ideological, geographical and psychological borders, which he asks us to disregard in favour of a broader humanism. The titular ‘shadow lines’ can refer to many different things, but I believe the fundamental allusion he makes is to the borders that separate nations from each other.

Divisions between nations - shadow lines

Amitav Ghosh asserts that the borders that separate nations are nothing more than artificial lines created by men. Thus, the ‘shadow lines’ of the title are the borders that divide people, and one of the main emphases of the novel is on the arbitrariness of such cartographic demarcations.

Why are these lines ‘shadowy’ then? Because like shadows, they lack substance, they lack meaning. Ghosh believes that these ‘shadow lines’, these meaningless borders, can and should be crossed – if not physically, then at least mentally through our imagination and through open-minded acceptance of people, irrespective of nationality, religion or race.

In the novel, the lives of the narrator's family have been irrevocably changed as a consequence of Bengal's Partition between India and Pakistan at the time of Independence and the subsequent experience of the East Pakistan Civil War of 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh. Towards the end, when members of the family are about to undertake a journey from Calcutta to their former home in Dhaka, the narrator's grandmother asks whether she will be able to see the border between India and East Pakistan from the plane. She is puzzled when told that there will be no such visible demarcation and says: “But if there aren't any trenches or anything, how are people to know? I mean, where's the difference then? And if there's no difference both sides will be the same; it'll be just like it used to be before, when we used to catch a train in Dhaka and get off in Calcutta the next day . . .”
This ingenuous response on her part highlights the absurdity of the revisionist map-making of the politicians responsible for Partition. Because the truth is that there really is no difference between this side of the border and that. There’s nothing concrete about these borders for they only exist in maps and in our minds.

Things that transcend borders; that determine where the real lines between people actually exist

Hatred and Violence

In proof of the meaninglessness of borders, the author gives us a glimpse of the reactions that shook Dhaka and Bengal on their separation. There was a striking similarity in the pattern of fear, mutual hatred and violence that gripped the two nations – only, the collective crimes were perpetrated on the opposite country’s people. Thus, the division, the lines of demarcation actually brings the people of the two countries closer together through the mirroring of the people’s reactions and through the similar and tragic deaths on both sides. In their mutual but laterally inverted reactions of violence, the two countries proved how much the same they were.

The narrator realizes the futility of this incessant line-drawing by the politicians, for it never actually manages to separate anything or anyone but only provokes mindless acts of violence that in fact highlight the sameness of human emotions and perceptions, no matter which side of the border people are: “They had drawn their borders, believing in that pattern, in the enchantment of lines, hoping perhaps that once they had etched their borders upon the map, the two bits of land would sail away from each other . . . What had they felt, I wondered, when they discovered that they had created not a separation, but a yet-undiscovered irony - the irony that killed Tridib: the simple fact that there had never been a moment in the four-thousand-year-old history of that map, when places like Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than after they had drawn their lines . . .”

Concern about the same issues and expression of concern in the same way (riots in Bengal)

The narrator of the story was taught by Tridib that the borders drawn by politicians don’t really function as anything but shadows. Then what does bind or divide people? The answer, of course, lies in the riots and the factor that gave rise to them. The narrator (and the author) found that the similarity in the reactions between people of Dhaka and Calcutta, and of Dhaka and Kashmir was proof that their tendency to care about and be concerned about the same issues in India is what binds them with each other.
He tells us: “From the evidence of the newspapers, it is clear that once the riots had started both governments did everything they could to put a stop to them . . . for the madness of a riot is a pathological inversion, but also therefore a reminder, of that indivisible sanity that binds people to each other independently of their governments. And that prior, independent relationship is the natural enemy of government, for it is in the logic of states to exist at all they must claim the monopoly of all relationships between peoples.”
Thus the narrator, through his dialectic of line, in a paradoxical way denies artificial demarcation, exposing the idea of the nation state as an illusion, an arbitrary dissection of people.

Culture and history

The narrator learns to discount the value of artificial lines or distance in the development of human relations when he “discovered that Khulna is about as far from Srinagar as Tokyo is from Beijing, or Moscow from Venice, or Washington from Havana, or Cairo from Naples.”

He goes on to explain that the real ties that bind people are culture and a shared history and not distance or artificial lines of separation. If it was lines or distance that determined how close we were to other people, then we would care as much about China as about Bangladesh, but we don’t. “Chiang Mai in Thailand was much nearer to Calcutta than Delhi is; that Chengdu in China is nearer than Srinagar is. . . Yet did the people of Khulna care at all about the fate of mosques in Vietnam and South China (a mere stone's throw away)? I doubted it. But in this other direction, it took no more than a week . . .”

Memory

Memory is a human faculty that does not heed the boundaries drawn by man.

This is why Robi, commenting on the illusionary aspect of lines that are never heeded by memories, says: “And then I think to myself why don't they draw thousands of little lines through the whole subcontinent and give every little place a new name? What would it change? It is a mirage; the whole thing is a mirage. How can anyone divide memory?”

He goes on to say: “If freedom were possible then Tridib's death would have set me free. And yet all it takes to set my hand shaking like a leaf, fifteen years later, thousands of miles away, is a chance remark by a waiter in a restaurant.”
Robi is haunted by the memory of a seemingly random act of violence that affected his entire family – Tridib’s death at the hands of a Dhaka mob. And yet this memory binds him with that mob in Dhaka and with the other people in Bangladesh that were affected by these riots. An unpleasant bond, but a bond all the same. He struggles to be free of this bond, but in this memory lies the proof that despite borders and lines in between, people will still be linked to the people on the other side through their interlinked past.

On the other hand, the narrator’s grandmother comes back to her old home, Dhaka and despite her nationalistic fervour, her firm belief in ‘them’ as different from ‘us’, she still searches for her past, seeking nostalgia in the country she considers her enemy. “Perhaps, on the other hand, they consisted of some unusual alchemical mixture of the sound of the dialect and the smell of the vast, mile-wide rivers, which alone had the power to bring upon her that comfortable lassitude which we call a sense of homecoming.”

Imagination

Another reason that the narrator believes the borders between countries to be shadowy is that he finds, through Tridib, that precise imagination can transcend them.

Tridib taught him that though imagination is in principle a vehicle for polarization, for division, (the borders between countries, after all, were created and only live in peoples’ imaginations, and it is people’s imagination that romanticizes each other’s home as ‘there’), it can also be the means of crossing these borders. Tridib believed in a different kind of imagination, a precise imagination. ‘Imagination with precision’ is in essence a vehicle for depolarization; it enables natives to transcend borders that they have distinguished between ‘here’ and ‘there’. To put it in different terms, Tridib, and hence, the author, attached great importance to imagination as a counterforce against distinction. Thanks to Tridib, the narrator was able to disqualify those arbitrary boundaries that divided nations and identities.

Shadow lines as basis for identity

While Tridib and the narrator do not believe in the concreteness of borders because they easily cross them with their imagination, bringing together different nations, cultures and ideals in their mind, the grandmother does firmly believe in these borders. In fact, she believes in them so fervently, perhaps defensively, that she disapproves of Ila, because Ila spent her entire life heedless of these borders, crossing them again and again in her travels to different countries.
‘ “Ila has no right to live there”, she said hoarsely. “She doesn't belong there. It took those people a long time to build that country; hundreds of years, years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who has lived there has earned his right to be there with blood: with their brother's blood and their father's blood and their son's blood. They know they're a nation because they've drawn their borders with blood.” ’

Sadly, most people have similar ideas about borders. These shadow lines are what they try to base their identity on. For them, shadow lines are more than just lines of demarcation, the frontiers constructed by politicians. They are to them the signifying acts that construct notions of discrete identity.

The grandmother, too, bases her identity as an Indian, as distinct from a Bangladeshi, on the lines that separate India and Bangladesh. So firmly does she believe in them that she is disappointed with the lack of tangible lines that divide the two countries. Because she derives strength in her patriotism from her belief in these lines and the supposition that her identity is bound with them, her sense of identity is also shaken.

On the other hand, Ila's belief is that her internationalism can liberate her. She wants to be free of these lines that stifle her. So she lives in London with people she believes will affect the history of the entire world, irrespective of boundaries and borders, and who, she is convinced, will free her too from these oppressive lines of demarcation. What is ironical is that the political activists with whom Ila shares her house in London “regard her as a kind of guest, a decoration almost” and "talk of her as ‘our own upper-class Marxist’ ”.

Furthermore, the striking disharmony between her intellectuality and nativity is reinforced by the following irony: it is never brought to her knowledge that her future husband “Nick Price was ashamed to be seen by his friends, walking home with an Indian”. She is thus stuck, even in London, as a stranger, those same lines that she ran away from pursuing her and marking her as an outsider. In what she centralizes as ‘here’, she is thus forced to act as an Other. For this reason, she is in no way free from the shadow lines, nor does she gain her personal freedom.

Separation in The Shadow Lines is never a clean-cut affair; it paradoxically turns out to be an extension, a continuation, something that is indivisible.

The author brings forward to us the inhuman consequences of the creation of these shadow lines of demarcation. He reveals through the riots the absurd manner in which your home can suddenly become your enemy, when those people who cannot separate their identity from their belief in these borders develop and nurture a hatred towards each other.

Thus, the novel implicitly suggests the need for coexistence and strong humanitarian ties across cultures overlooking personal, regional and political considerations. It questions the meaning of political freedom and the force of nationalism in the modern world. It asks a very important, a universal question – what is a nation? What is this great entity that nationalism serves? Does it even exist? Should it exist? And in the answers to these questions lies the key to understanding the novel.

Minor Shadow Lines recurrent in novel

Gender lines

Besides lines between countries, there are other shadow lines that exist within our own nation. Our own culture promotes divisiveness by constructing lines around women that bind them in. These lines, however shadowy and indeterminate, still exist. They are real enough for Ila, who is trying to get free from them, to prompt her to flee the suffocating environs of her home and escape to London. The narrator realizes this one night when he sees Ila forced to be confined into gender roles by her own uncle, unable to act the way she wants to: “I saw Ila's face again as I had seen it that night in the taxi, wet with tears, twisted with anger and hatred, and I thought of how much they wanted to be free; how they went mad wanting their freedom…”

Lines within ourselves

Another interpretation of the novel’s title is as a philosophical statement that the author makes, asserting that the ‘shadow lines', or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light, are an intricate part of all human existence.

The struggles with these shadow lines are most in evidence in May, who has been shown to be a naive idealist, a humanist, through her actions to save the injured dog. Yet, her move to save the old man in Dhaka, motivated by similar promptings, actually results in revealing the shadow lines within Tridib, who chooses the light against the darkness within his soul and sacrifices himself for May.

Robi, on the other hand, arouses admiration in the narrator for his apparent conviction in a clear-cut right and wrong. To the narrator, Robi does not seem to struggle at all with the shadow lines within himself. He seems to know just what he should do, with an assurance that was as impressive as it was puzzling to the narrator. When at his college, Robi refuses to join the strike, he justifies his decision by saying: “Because a rule's a rule; if you break one you have to be willing to pay the price.” “But is it a good rule?”, the narrator asks him. But he gets no answer to this question. In Robi’s convictions, there is no place for subjective interpretation of what is right.

Lines between dimensions and times

The lines between memory and reality in the novel are as shadowy as all other lines. The past, present and future combine and melt together erasing any kind of line of demarcation. The narration jumps from event to memory to current happenings, discarding time as any kind of link between one piece of the narration and the next. Similarly, the personal and the public receive no difference in consideration – the narrator’s perceptions of London are coloured as much by the bombings and war that was public knowledge as by Tridib’s imagination and later by his own experiences. His perceptions of Calcutta and Dhaka are a blend of information from old newspapers, Robi’s recollections of his visit to Dhaka, data collected from maps and globes, and his own experiences in a school bus pursued by a mob in Calcutta. There is no distinction made between any of these means of information, no greater or lesser importance attaxhed to any of them.

In fact, others’ memories, whether they be personal or common knowledge add another dimension to the narrator’s experiences. His experience of the cellar at the Prices’ house includes all these dimensions. The actual three-dimensional material world loses a dimension ("one of their dimensions seemed to dissolve") and its place is taken by the dimension of the imaginary past ("those empty corners filled up with remembered forms").

Tridib as shadow line

Tridib never actually ‘lives’ the story, except through memories of others - the narrator’s, his brother Robi’s, and lover May’s. He is a link that connects them, a shadow line that never materialises. It is with Tridib that the story begins, and it is his death that finally unites the narrator and Robi in their memories of him, and the narrator and May in understanding and love.

The Home and the World – significance of the title

The real significance of the title ‘The Home and the World’ lies in the different choices that Bimala has to make throughout the book – choices between the different ‘homes’ and ‘worlds’ that form a backdrop to this love story. Most importantly, a study into the different ‘homes’ and ‘worlds’ she has to choose between reveals the different levels at which this multi-layered story can be interpreted. In the first layer lies Bimala’s actual ‘home’ – her life behind the purdah, and the ‘world’ – the outer sphere beyond the zenana that she reluctantly enters. If you strip away this layer, the literal interpretations of ‘home’ and ‘world’ give way to the symbolic representation of Nikhil as Bimala’s ‘home’ and Sandip as Bimala’s outside ‘world’. And if you venture deeper into the novel, the ideals that Sandip and Nikhil espouse come to represent the two ideologies she must choose between, that is, Nikhil’s pragmatism that represents the ‘home’ and Sandip’s idealism that represents the ‘world’.

Home - behind the purdah, World - beyond it

Bimala lived her entire life in a secluded, sheltered existence behind the purdah. Yet, this was the life she was reared to aspire to, and it was the life she was happy with. It was Nikhil who, not content with Bimala’s seclusion, pushed his reluctant wife to learn English and explore the world outside the zenana. He almost forcibly dragged her to the outside world to give her the freedom of her own choices.

Yet, for all of Nikhil’s exertions, the real circumstance which finally prompted Bimala to cross the threshold and enter the outside world was Sandip’s entrance into their lives. It was at the sight of him that Bimala, drawn to his nationalistic fervour, made the choice between staying inside her ‘home’ and meeting him in in the outside ‘world’, and chose the latter.

Ironically enough, it was Sandip who came to stay in Bimala’s house, and refused to leave it until he was forced to, proving, as Nikhil observed, that ‘if you will not go to the world, the world will come to you’. Thus, the author uses the purdah – the zenana - as a sort of luminal threshold separating Bimala’s inner sanctuary, her ‘home’, from the outside, or ‘world’.

Home - Nikhil, World - Sandip

Smitten by Sandip's fiery speeches and his vision of her as the ‘Queen Bee’ as contrasted with her own husband Nikhil's ostensibly indifferent attitude towards the freedom struggle, Bimala found herself increasingly attracted to Sandip. Her thoughts on their first meeting illustrate her fascination with him: “I did not know how it happened, but I found I had impatiently pushed away the screen from before me and had fixed my gaze upon him. Yet there was none in that crowd who paid any heed to my doings. Only once, I noticed, his eyes, like stars in fateful Orion, flashed full on my face”. Nikhil was the man of her home; Sandip represented to her the outside world, not only because he was her link to the nation, her source of information to all that was happening outside her home in the country, but also because he was an outsider who embodied all the vitality and passion that she supposed the outside world to contain but that had been absent from her own domestic life. She emotionally tripped, vacillated between Sandip and her husband, and committed a final act of betrayal until she returned home bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding of both Nikhil, her Home, and Sandip, the World.

Home - Nikhil’s pragmatism, World - Sandip’s idealism

The author explored the war between idealism and pragmatism inside Bimala’s mind (through the love triangle) and extended its sphere of influence to encompass the issues dividing India during those times of strife and struggle (through the depiction of the revolution and the Swadeshi movement).

In the novel, Nikhil, who was keen on social reform but repulsed by nationalism, gradually lost the esteem of his spirited wife, Bimala, because of his failure to be enthusiastic about anti-British agitations, which she saw as a lack of patriotic commitment. However, despite seeing clearly that she was unimpressed by his worldview, he refused to compromise his principles and persisted in his quiet belief in humanism over nationalism because in his own words, “I am willing to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it." This measured stance of her husband towards politics failed to win Bimala’s approval.

Unconvinced by this non-flamboyant, practical approach towards freedom and fascinated by the illusive utopia presented to her by Sandip, Bimala was torn between the two extremes. Her choice was between the inclusive humanism practiced in her Home and the militant nationalism followed by the World. She wavered towards the latter, taken in by the goddess image Sandip created of her and the power he seemed to impart in her every time he spoke, and said of him: “I was utterly unconscious of myself. I was no longer the lady of the Rajah’s house, but the sole representative of Bengal’s womanhood. And he was the champion of Bengal. As the sky had shed light over him, so he must receive the consecration of a woman’s benediction…” But in the end, when Sandip was finally revealed for who he really was, her dreams were shattered and reality struck and she came back to her husband “hesitatingly, barefoot, with a white shawl over her head”, back to the ‘home’ she had abandoned and neglected.

Home – India, World - Other nations

The title of the book, ‘The Home and the World’, is the English translation of the title of Tagore’s book Ghare Baire, originally written in Bengali. On first reading, it may seem to be an accurate translation. But ‘Baire’ in Bengali means not ‘the world’ but ‘outside’. Thus, a faithful translation would have been ‘The Home and The Outside’. Why, then, was a change introduced into the title? The answer, I think, lies in another interpretation of the ‘world’ here – it represents the actual world, the countries outside India.

It is well known that Tagore, after a brief dip into the Swadeshi movement, became disillusioned with nationalism and condemned it on the grounds that ardent nationalism, in the process of uniting all Hindus, would end up alienating other religions and nationalities and promoting hatred and exclusivity that would break the country apart and destroy people’s humanism. In that context, the title of the novel can be interpreted as an appeal to strive towards global unity and shun the politics of nationalism. There are several plot points in the novel – such as the harassment of Miss Gilby, and the alienation and consequent uprising of the Muslim traders - that can be considered evidence of this.

In fact, Tagore’s own Nobel Prize acceptance speech is the best illustration of his global sentiments: “…. Now, when in the present time of political unrest the children of the same great India cry for rejection of the West I feel hurt…. We must discover the most profound unity, the spiritual unity between the different races. We must go deeper down to the spirit of man and find out the great bond of unity, which is to be found in all human races…. Man is not to fight with other human races, other human individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and restore the bonds of friendship and love.” Thus, through Nikhil, who was Tagore’s spokesperson and his counterpart in many ways, Tagore tried to explain his dream of his ‘home’ coexisting in harmony and mutual friendship with the ‘world’.

JANE AUSTEN - use of irony in Pride and Prejudice

One of the most prominent features of the literary style of Jane Austen is her frequent use of irony. And in no other book is her use of irony more pronounced than in Pride and Prejudice, in which she investigates social relationships in the limited society of a country with an ironic and often humorous eye.

General Irony

Irony in the themes of ‘pride’ and ‘prejudice’

The title of the novel, which refers to those failings of the main characters that initially prevent them from accepting each other, contains a strain of hidden irony. Jane Austen subtly introduces an inversion in the thematic foibles (‘pride’ and ‘prejudice’) and the characters they belong to. And in this very inversion is another example of Austen's use of irony. It is Darcy who is supposed to have the pride and Elizabeth who is supposed to have the prejudice. But in her misunderstandings with Darcy, she (who is blind to her own pride in her ability to read character and to her vanity that guides her prejudices) accuses him of excessive pride, while he (who is prejudiced against people with less money than he has) accuses her of prejudice.

Irony in the very first line

The reader is invited to laugh at the ironies of human perception and expectations from the very first line of the novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Read ironically, this sentence is turned on its head to mean: “Everyone who knows a single rich man will pursue him with ambitions to be his wife.” This is irony, which allows the author to communicate more than the literal or expected meanings of her language.

Mr. Bennet’s irony

Mr. Bennet’s intentional irony

Mr. Bennet, the intelligent, detached father of the Bennet sisters is an interesting study in the novel’s use of irony. His own sense of irony is very well defined, and he enjoys laughing at his wife’s and his family’s follies.
His ironical comments at the expense of his wife range from the gently mocking: “You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves… They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least” and the subtle and indirect: “Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you chuse” to the harsh and direct: “This is a parade which does one good; it gives such an elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my library, in my night cap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as I can, - or, perhaps, I may defer it, till Kitty runs away”.

But Mr. Bennet's conscious use of irony is for him a game — it serves no useful purpose. It neither serves to shame his wife, who fails to detect the vein of sarcasm underlying all his comments, nor does it educate his younger daughters or make them see how improper their behaviour is.

Mr. Bennet’s unintentional irony

This is why the plot of the novel seems to show, through Mr. Bennet, the limitations of sitting back and observing irony as a response to human experience. Trapped in a bad marriage, Mr. Bennet makes life endurable for himself by assuming the pose of an ironic passive spectator of life, who has long ago abandoned his roles as a husband and a father. And this ironic detachment on the part of Mr. Bennet is closely linked to his abdication from responsibility.

His most spectacular abandonment of duty comes in connection with Lydia’s proposal to go to Brighton. “Lydia will never be easy till she has exposed herself in some public place” says Mr. Bennet, “and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present circumstances.” His statement, seen in retrospect, is even more ironic than he meant it to be. Lydia did, in fact, end up exposing her family. And the expense and inconvenience, which he claimed would be little, turns out to be enormous.

Elizabeth's irony

Elizabeth’s intentional use of irony

On the other hand, Elizabeth’s playful irony is for her both a defense against others whose faults she can perceive, and a weapon which she uses to condemn them for these faults.

In the war against stupidity, she uses irony to skewer the negative traits she is quick to find in people. She targets Mr. Collins’ self-importance and his sycophantic behaviour towards Lady Catherine De Bourgh: “They…were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what carriages went along, and how often especially Miss De Bourgh drove by in her phaeton, which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened almost every day.” Mr. Collins, of course, was too blinded by his self-importance and his infatuation with Lady Catherine’s power and wealth to see that Elizabeth was really not at all indebted to him, and in fact her irritation and contempt of him increased with this behaviour.

Similarly, she criticizes the contrast between Wickham’s duplicity and Darcy’s honesty to Jane: “There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.”

She does not even spare Bingley, accusing him of over-compliance in his reliance on Darcy: “Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most delightful friend; so easily guided that his worth was invaluable”.

She criticizes Mr. Darcy’s lack of social graces to his face: “I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are both of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room”. And she does not spare him in Bingley’s drawing room when she says to him: "I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise." The irony, of course, is that by accusing him of owning that he has no defect, she is actually accusing him of a grave defect: arrogance.

Elizabeth response at Charlotte’s marriage – unintentionally ironic

Yet, Elizabeth’s own behaviour towards Wickham is unknowingly tinged with irony.
Perhaps the worst instance of Elizabeth’s stubborn belief in Wickham’s character is her serene acceptance of his defection to the moneyed Miss King. Ironically enough, just a few months ago, she had expressed shock at Charlotte’s decision to marry Mr. Collins for very similar reasons, and in fact, had partially estranged herself from Charlotte because of what she thought were Charlotte’s mercenary and shallow motives.

In her letter to Mrs. Gardiner, she says of Wickham: “handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain”. Contrast this to her very different response when Charlotte herself said much the same thing to her: “[Elizabeth] could not have supposed it possible that when called into action, [Charlotte] would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte, the wife of Mr. Collins, was a most humiliating picture! – And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem….” This seeming inconsistency on her part reeks of hypocrisy, but the truth is that Elizabeth is simply less clear-sighted in the case of Wickham than she is with Charlotte.
The irony of the difference in her response to Charlotte’s engagement and her own subsequent leniency towards materialism is further underlined by the reaction that the first sight of Pemberley arouses in her ("at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!"). Later, she tells Jane “…I hardly knew when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” People have differed on how ironically this statement by Elizabeth, supposedly dating the beginning of her love for Darcy, should be taken. But however ironically she meant it herself, it cannot be denied that her regard for Darcy received a great impetus when she saw his beautiful house.

Irony of other characters

Darcy’s irony

Darcy is not as humourless and sober as he appears on the surface. He may not laugh, but in his own way he is as attuned to irony and incongruity as Elizabeth is. Their conversation shows that his wit can be as ready as Elizabeth’s. For example, when Miss Bingley accuses Elizabeth of being ‘one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex, by undervaluing their own,' Mr. Darcy’s ironic response that “there is meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation” indicates that he sees through Miss Bingley’s own attempt to “recommend” herself to him by “undervaluing” Elizabeth.

Mrs. Bennet’s irony

Mrs. Bennet is a minefield of unintentional irony. Her ill-natured, materialistic and narrow-minded view of the world is revealed in her foolish comments, such as the one she made about Bingley to Elizabeth on her return from Hunsford "Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.''

Other such comments abound. But in the final resolution of Mrs. Bennet’s deepest wishes for her daughters’ marriages, there lies still more irony. Even though it is the business of her life to get them married, she has only succeeded in ruining their prospects. If her daughters’ futures were left entirely up to her, her improper management of them would have ended up making them ineligible for any respectable suitors. In fact, it is Mr. Darcy who moves behind the scenes and secretly arranges the marriage of all the three Bennet girls. Thus Darcy, who she despises, and who in turn despises her, is the one who is ultimately responsible for her exultation at the end. This, then, is the greatest irony of all.

Jane Austen’s irony in the social context

Finally, the author’s most devastating use of irony in the book is in her attacks on community and on society, such as on the Meryton society. She uses irony as a social tool to direct the reader's gaze to some of the human imperfections that threaten the virtues of her culture.

Independent of any character, she uses irony in the narrative parts for some of her sharpest judgments. Through the Meryton community’s reaction to Lydia’s marriage with Wickham: (“the good-natured wishes for her well-doing, which had proceeded before, from all the spiteful old ladies of Meryton, lost but little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband, her misery was considered certain.”), Austen attacks society’s practice of taking pleasure in others’ ills, and the mean-spirited gossip-mongers that inhabit society.

Austen also pokes fun at society’s practice of suddenly becoming enamoured with a man because of his wealth without knowing his true nature. For instance, upon Darcy's entrance to a dance in chapter 3, Austen writes that “the report was in general circulation within five minutes...of his having ten thousand a year.” She adds that “the ladies declared that he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley” – obviously his wealth recommended his countenance to them. That they retract their approval so fast when they realize that he pays no attention to them is no less ironic.

A striking feature of the irony in Pride and Prejudice is that it is mixed with unmistakable strains of cynicism. This ‘black’ irony is very much in evidence throughout the book. For example, in the following statements
Elizabeth on Bingley: “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
Mr. Collins to Elizabeth: “Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the efforts of your loveliness and amiable qualifications.”
Charlotte Lucas on marriage: “If a woman conceals her affection … from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him. … In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”

The cynicism of all this is striking – especially the suggestions that human attachments spring largely from selfish motives, and that women who do not feign affection for men are likely to be left on the shelf.

Thus, irony is employed by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice as the lens through which society and human nature are viewed. She uses irony not only to create humour and make her books more enjoyable, but also to make veiled, bitter observations about the world around her. And this is why this novel is as relevant in our times as it was in hers, perhaps more – for in her hands irony is an extremely effective device for moral evaluation that exposes those defects in her society which still prevail in ours today.