Question

HELP ASAP! Which sentence in this excerpt from William Dean Howells's "Editha" use an ironic tone?

[The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom's Works was sketching Editha's beauty, which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of a colorist.] It had come to that confidence which is rather apt to grow between artist and sitter, and Editha had told her everything.

["To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!"] the lady said. She added: "I suppose there are people who feel that way about war. [But when you consider how much this war has done for the country! I can't understand such people, for my part.] And when you had come all the way out there to console her--got up out of a sick bed! Well!”

“I think,” Editha said magnanimously, “she wasn’t quite in her right mind; so did papa.”

[“Yes,” the lady said, looking at Editha’s lips in nature and then at her lips in art, and giving an empirical touch to them in the picture.] “But how dreadful of her! How perfectly—excuse me—how vulgar!”

A) The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom's Works was sketching Editha's beauty, which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of a colorist.
B) "To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!"
C) But when you consider how much this war has done for the country! I can't understand such people, for my part.
D) “Yes,” the lady said, looking at Editha’s lips in nature and then at her lips in art, and giving an empirical touch to them in the picture.

Answer 1

Answer: B) "To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!"

Step-by-step explanation: an irony is a statement or a situation that seems contradictory or different of what the reader or the characters expect. It is often used to criticize something or to introduce a humorous element in the text. In the given excerpt from "Editha" by William Dean Howell, the expression "to think of your having such a tragedy in your life" is an example of the use of an ironic tone, because the woman doesn't really think that war is a tragedy.