Saturday, April 27, 2019

What are examples of dramatic and situational irony in "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman" by Clarice Lispector?

There are definitely examples of situational irony in the story. In The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman, Maria Quitera is a bored housewife who despises her life.
Because of her inner discontent, Maria is hypercritical of her husband. Her constant focus on her unhappiness causes her judgment to become increasingly flawed as the days go by, but she's unaware of her danger. At the beginning of the story, she addresses herself "coquettishly with her hand on her hip." Her solipsism escapes her notice. Maria is too busy dreaming about a better life with a more sophisticated man at her side to recognize the danger of her apathy. When her husband reaches over to kiss her before he leaves for work, Maria rebuffs him angrily and accuses him of pawing her like an "old tomcat."
Her husband firmly proclaims that she's "ill," and the reader is similarly aware that Maria's self-absorption is enervating and destructive. Maria doesn't seem aware her constant focus on her misery is self-defeating; this is an example of dramatic irony, where the reader knows something about a main character that the character seems oblivious to.
When Maria accompanies her husband to a tavern at the invitation of a wealthy businessman, she ends up getting drunk. Her inebriation clouds her judgment, but again, she's oblivious to the results of her actions. Here, we have a bit of situational irony. This is when a character's actions result in a completely different outcome than he/ she expected. Instead of appearing sophisticated and elegant, Maria essentially makes an embarrassing spectacle of herself at the tavern. While she believes she can preserve her self-respect in the face of her intoxication, we know this isn't the case.
Maria becomes so drunk she can barely stand; her husband (who she despises and who she thinks looks foolish in his suit) must physically support her. Maria is determined to prove she's no "provincial ninny," but her lack of self-control obliterates any semblance of elegance and refinement in her. Her judgment of other people becomes more crass and disparaging as she becomes more inebriated. She imagines another female patron is "flat-chested," a "pious ninny," and one of a number of "shameless sluts" and that she's "nothing more than a fishwife trying to pass herself off as a duchess."
The irony is that Maria is inwardly criticizing the other woman for something she's guilty of herself. Maria wants her husband's client to be attracted to her, and she thinks that, by appearing sophisticated, she's capable of attracting a better man into her life. She's not actually very confident in her ability to do so, though. This causes her to drink copiously in a social setting to mask her inadequacies. Her actions only make matters worse; instead of appearing elegant and refined, she embarrasses herself. Sadly, she only recognizes this the next day when she reminisces about the previous evening. That's situational irony: when events don't turn out the way a character imagines they will.

When her husband's friend saw her so plump and pretty he had immediately felt respect for her. And when she started to get embarrassed she did not know which way to look. Such misery! What was one to do? Seated on the edge of the bed, blinking in resignation.

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