Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/181

 *cipitates the very calamity it strives to avoid. Thus does Mrs. Tulliver, "a hen taking to reflection on how to prevent Hodge from wringing her neck," when she adroitly tries to persuade Wakem not to buy the Mill, thereby putting the notion of doing it into his head. Lady Glencora, in Phineas Finn, pleading with Madame Max not to marry the Duke of Omnium, unaware of her already made decision not to do so, very nearly meets with the same kind of gratuitious failure. Of a different order is the use of secret knowledge to extract an advantage from the ignorant adversary who misunderstands the allusions; as Sandra Belloni, arousing Mr. Pole's enthusiasm for her as a daughter-in-law, good enough for any man indeed,—except his unsuspected self, who was the only one desired. At three fine banquets dramatic irony sits as an unwelcome guest: at Arthur Donnithorne's birthday feast, where the warm tribute paid him by Adam Bede and Mr. Poyser would have turned to ashes in their mouths had they known the truth; at Mr. Vane's dinner for Peg Woffington, at which his innocent wife appears just in time to assume all the honors to herself; and at the Jocelyn party, where the daughters of the great Mel have him to digest.

Another sort of irony comes from the reversed wheel of fortune. This is also dramatic, being in fact the keynote of the mediæval idea of tragedy, though all such reversal is not ironic. Authur Clennam in the Marshalsea might be an instance, albeit less perfect than William Dorrit fancying himself there when he was really in the perfectly appointed Merdle dining room. There is a double reversal of expectation that turns Fred Vincy into a passable success, through being cheated out of his legacy, while Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate are thwarted into comparative failure. Another subdivision is that com