A ironia como estratégia narrativa em Kate Chopin, “A história de uma hora”

Abstract

This monograph aims to discuss the use of irony as a narrative strategy in the story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (1850-1904) and published in 1894, when the civilized world was dominated by the patriarchal model of social and political organization. Although in Europe and the US, the white and literate women were already claiming their first-class citizenship status. Starting from a brief history about the life and the author's work, such as the historical context that the story is developed, the story is studied and analyzed. Irony is discussed in the theoretical and critical foundations that underlie it, that is, irony depends on the context, since without it its effect vanishes. Our proposal to contextualize irony in the studied corpus proposes to understand as a strategy to explain the protagonist's cause of death without harming the grandiosity of the work on screen. In the analysis, we highlight the presence of three types of irony: situational or observable irony, verbal or instrumental irony and dramatic irony. In conclusion, irony is a trait of Chopin's work and it was used as a narrative strategy which purpose was to compromise neither its readership nor the Puritan American society. The appeal of polysemic dissimulation was the key to Chopin’s work continue to fascinate readers of different cultures throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and it is nowadays considered a canonical work in American literature.