One Focalization, Dual Progression, and Twofold Irony

Abstract

Despite extensive theoretical and critical attention paid to focalization, no effort has been made to discuss how one mode of focalization simultaneously helps convey two contrastive kinds of irony. This is ascribable to three factors. First, such a phenomenon is not often seen. Second, if it occurs, it would take place at once in relation to the overt progression and to a covert progression, but critical attention has not extended to the latter. Third, investigations of both focalization and irony have not yet considered their taking on contrastive functions along different thematic trajectories. This essay explores this previously neglected phenomenon with the illustration of Katherine Mansfield’s “A Dill Pickle,” a narrative focusing on the relationship between a man and a woman. The essay reveals that the woman’s focalization conveys irony not only at the male protagonist in the plot-based overt progression but also at the woman herself in a paralleling covert progression.