“The Woman Question”
Two men sit in a hotel lounge—drinking tea—next to a table of suffragettes. One of them begins speaking loudly with proclamations of how the Great War would never have happened if women were to allowed to vote. The companion suggests retiring to the bar, but the narrator avers, saying he is thinking of writing about the Woman Question which is what the right to vote was condescendingly referred to then. What follows is the narrator’s argument against women being extended more rights. In its satirical irony, it unintentionally reveals the ignorance of the perspective of men like the narrator.
“The Amazing Genius of O. Henry”
An overview of the literary talents of man who himself was steeped in a certain version of the art of irony. O. Henry wrote stories with the easiest use of irony to recognize as such: the twist ending which reverses the expected outcome. Leacock adopts the more precarious form of irony in writing a story which is nothing but irony in which everything that is stated on the surface is actually intended to be interpreted as the opposite.
“My Financial Career”
A short story told by a narrator who is unfamiliar with the processes involving in using banks who now finds himself inside one of them looking to be more careful with his finances by opening an account to take care of the fifty dollar a month raise he recently received. Anxious about feeling out of place, he asks to see the manager privately and is soon mistaken for a Pinkerton Detective. Upon clearing the manager of this misapprehension, he is then assumed to be a member of a ridiculously wealthy famil like th Rothschilds. Until, that is, he reveals he has but fifty dollars to deposit at which point the manager hands him off to a mere accountant And so it goes, a short quick trip through the condescension show by banks toward customer deemed not wealth enough for respect.
“Are the Rich Happy?”
The narrator of this essay establishes the ironic foundation of the narrative right at the onset with the admission that he is writing it without adequate information to answer his titular question. Why the lack of evidence? Because, he asserts, “I have never known, I have never seen, any rich people.” What proceeds to unfurl from this opening is, in fact, a series of extensive meetings with rich people who claim they are not rich and complain about it because they are comparing their wealth not to those with less, but to those with more. Leacock studied economics under Thorstein Veblen, the great American economist who create the concept of what would come to be known as “keeping up the Joneses.” He termed it pecuniary emulation which defines the standard operating procedure for everyone under a capitalist system to try to gain status by emulating those of a higher economic status. Veblen’s arguments are essentially laid out here in comical form that takes the idea to its absurd conclusion as imagines that if he ever did manage to meet someone as rich as Andrew Carnegie—one of the richest men in the world at the time—he would complain about his inability “to keep up with Mr. Rockefeller” who would, he imagines, probably think the same thing about keeping up Carnegie.
“Fiction and Reality: A Study of the Art of Charles Dickens”
The story begins with the narrator observing that he has been reading the works of Dickens for more than thirty-two years. Sitting in front the fire with a copy of The Pickwick Papers, he soon drifts off into a dreamy slumber in which the characters of that novel spring to life into what becomes a kind of trial. At stake is the accusation set for by Mr. Pickwick, that “we are not real, that we are caricatures, that not one of us, and I beg the company to mark my words, not a single one of us, ever exists or ever could exist.” Over the course of the remaining narrative, more characters from Dickens appear to wage a courtroom battle of sorts over the issue not of whether caricature is as worthy as character, but whether it is, in fact, of a higher degree of accomplishment: is such exaggeration as that engaged by Dickens actually capable of conveying essential truths about reality better than any realistic portrayal ever could.
“The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
Another work written in the ironic mode which marks with sadness the passing of the Devil out of the social consciousness of society. Early in the essay, the narrator remarks that Devil’s passing out of fashion is result of younger generations failing to recognize the valuable functions he provided to civilization. The bulk of the essay then becomes revelation, examination and analysis of those functions and how they benefited mankind in the development of a moral code.
“The Golfomaniac”
A first person account of strangers on a train falling into a conversation about golf. The topic covers the irony of Lloyd George never having been a golfer and the other fellow’s visit to Scotland the summer before for the express purpose of purchasing a certain kind of golf ball. When the narrator asks if he got to see much of the country, the other response that he did indeed and proceeds to discuss the various golf courses in Scotland which he visited. A lull prompts the narrator to pick up his newspaper, pointing to a headline about the U.S. Navy having been ordered to Nicaragua again. When he mentions that this looks like it could mean more trouble ahead, the golfomaniac’s response is that the U.S. Navy has made golf compulsory training at its training school. The narrator then tries to get the other man interested in a story of murder, but is interrupted: “I never read murder cases. They don’t interest.” Nevertheless the narrator persist and is again met with resistance until he informs the other that the victim of this murder was killed with a golf club as the weapon. Finally relenting the narrator asks “How you played golf much” and at that point the irony kicks into typical Leacock-level overdrive revealing, intentionally or not, that rich people and golfers have much in common.
