The unlikeliness of murder
Why would people be murdering each other in a small town? It stands against reason. It is primitive and barbaric, but that doesn't stop the criminals in this small town. As unlikely as it seems to Clement that his emotions could be correct (fear, mistrust, paranoia), he learns on day one that he is already the target of murder conspiracies among the gangs. In other words, this place is so far off the map, sometimes the community slips into feral, horrifying modes.
The ironic husband
The reader might find themselves saying, wait is Jamie The Robber Bridegroom? That seems to imply that their romance has to unfold, but it seems unlikely. Jamie isn't doing any of the normal courting that his cultural context demands. Why? Ironically, it's because he doesn't want Rosamund to have too much at stake. When she allows him to seduce her without knowing who he was, in the woods, he knows she is suitable for trustworthiness. Ironically, it is a courting dance, and the robber is indeed the bridegroom.
The irony of ghost considerations
There is one moment in the novel that feels nearly jarring. Although the tone and mood might lead the reader to suspect this novel is horrific, the first allusion to the supernatural comes just before the wedding, when an archetypal character (literally named "Goat," symbolizing mythic ideas of pastoral, perhaps satanic imagery) tells Rosamund that Jamie isn't real. He says she is haunted by a ghost. Ironically, before she is allowed to marry her husband, her right of passage is to consider the ghost of Jamie, doubting her own understanding of reality. Then, he shows back up! Not a ghost; they get married.
The irony of Clement's weakness
Because Clement is a nice guy, he is completely incompetent in the hellish paranoia of this small town. Jamie's every move seems perfectly predicated on his true understanding of danger, which stems in part from his own willingness to do evil regularly as a career criminal. He has no misgivings about the darkness in a human, but Clement has been insulated by his personality from things like death threats, for instance. Clement is good, but in a rule following way, which makes him poorly adaptive.
The irony of the woods
The things that happen in the woods are not like the things that happen in town. They are ironic and disturbing. Clement would be disturbed to know that Rosamund had lost her virginity to a stranger wearing a mask. Not to mention, the man is a known thief, and he comes on very strong, instructing her to strip. But Clement doesn't know that in the woods, Rosamund is absolutely eager for exactly this kind of sexual endeavor; she's kinky. The woods reveal that about her because they represent distance from society and therefore from the moral views of the majority.
