Opening Line
The opening line kickstarts the narrative on a note of irony. In fact, the third word of the opening line is actually the word “ironic” itself. That line goes on to suggest that the irony is related to something—it isn’t immediately explained what—bad taking on a sunny day. This is an example of irony on the very edge of the spectrum and there are stick-in-the-mud types who would even argue that this is not an authentic definitive example of irony at all. Without spoiling things by making the details of the tragic events which taking place on a sunny day clear, however, we all know what the author means and most of us can agree that it meets a certain modern connotative addition to the ironic: it’s an unfair bummer of circumstances.
A Fine Romance
In terms of irony that is closer to the type accepted by those stick-in-the-mud types, the entire story here is harder to argue against. In fact, this story fits into the general template of the Bridgerton stories of romance that all offer some degree of ironic subversion of realism. Most of these stories a slap upside the head of the realism as a literary movement in one very concrete sense: almost none of them would actually have happened historically. In this particular case, the irony is that the two protagonists wind up living happily ever after because they subvert the expectations of real life even as they perfectly align with the expectations of romance literature. This, in essence, is the purpose of such literature. What hard-core critics who reject romance literature with eyes wide shut fail to appreciate is that it is a genre of storytelling that exists on a foundation of subversion. In subverting the almost impossible demands that realism places upon a narrative, romances become the epitome of ironic storytelling.
Dialogue
It is not just the broad strokes of genre subversion in which irony reveals itself. The novel is filled with individual little eruptions of ironic dialogue and descriptive prose. For instance, this example of the ironic self-deprecation type:
He shook his head in wonder. “You are magnificent.”
“I keep telling everyone that,” she said with a nonchalant shrug, “but you seem to be the only one to believe me.”
Understatement
Understatement is a very specific type of verbal irony which is often used for the purpose of punctuating the humor of a situation. What makes this particular example worthy of scrutiny is the way that it builds another layer of irony upon the understatement itself. To fully appreciate the laying of irony here, it is worth remembering that the opening line of the novel situates a day being described here as ironically horrific:
It was a perfect day, with a blue sky and a light breeze, and Eloise didn’t have a single thing in the world to think about.
She had never been so bored in her life.
Hyperbolic Irony
Demonstrating a flair for juxtaposition, nearly the exact same set-up exploited for understated irony is also engaged for a bit of hyperbole. Once again, the irony is related to the book’s opening set-up of a sunny day setting the stage for everything to come:
“It had been another sunny day today. That probably explained his exceptional melancholy.”
