Assignment example

Irony in Literary Works: Short Story, Play and Poem No: Irony in Literary Works: Short Story, Playand Poem
1. Characterize Mme. Loisel. Is her catastrophic mistake rooted more in bad luck or character?
Mme Loisel is characterized as a character who wants appreciation and acknowledgement for what she has not. She is portrayed as young and beautiful, but she is not satisfied with her attractiveness and wants wealth and affluent status for showing off what she is not. She gets birth in a poor and gets married to a clerk who is unable to fulfill all her wishes, but she is lucky to have a loving husband for which, she is never thankful. Her catastrophic mistake of considering an artificial diamond necklace as a real one takes her golden ten years to pay for the cost. She is not unlucky, but just subservient to her wishes and show off die to which, she suffers all her life. After getting an invitation to appear in a party of affluent people, Mme Loisel reaches her friend Mme Forestier and gets a necklace, which she considers is of real diamonds, which she loses. The irony in the story is that the necklace was not real and Mme Loisel and her husband paid for it for whole ten years and appeared much older than their ages because of their struggle to pay the price. She pays for her folly and her showing off.
2. Compare the two women in Strindbergs play. Who is the stronger?
The play, “ The Stronger” ironically depicts only two characters who have no names, but just alphabetic characters, X and Y that distinguish them. Mrs. X is married while Miss Y is unmarried. Mrs. X is the only speaker of the play due to which, the play also appears as a monologue and Miss Y is a silent listener, which is quite ironic. Mrs. X appears to be stronger in the beginning as she uses the power of speech, but after all, Miss Y is much more stronger as she never breaks her silence and keeps busy in her paper. Mrs. X shows the importance of family and married life while Miss Y seems to have no interest in all these matters. She seems to be wanting change in her consideration of men.
3. Characterize the speaker in Brownings poem. Exactly why did the speaker murder Porphyria?
The speaker of the poem, Porphyria’s Lover seems obsessed with Porphyria and in his anxiety and wait, he gets disturbed and with Porphyria’s arrival, he becomes happy. However, he wants full control over Porphyria and wants to possess her completely, which seems impossible while Porphyria is alive. When Porphyria is alive, she appears more powerful than her lover, but her death makes her weak before her lover. He is free to do anything with her corpse having full strength over the lady. He murders Porphyria for possessing her, but ironically, this seems possible for some time only, as the corpse cannot exist longer and must be wasted. The speaker wants full control over Porphyria without any social restriction and pressures, which Porphyria feels in her life. For exercising full control, he murders her, but ironically, his control and possession are just temporary.
References
Maupassant, Guy de. (1999). ” The Necklace.” Trans. Marjorie Laurie. An Introduction
to Fiction. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman.
OGorman, F. (Ed.). (2004). “ Porphyria’s Lover”. Victorian poetry: an annotated anthology (Vol. 2). Blackwell Publishing.
Strindberg, A. (2011). The Plays of August Strindberg. Digireads. com Publishing.