IRONY OF SITUATION

This form of irony can occur in life as well as literature: a person or character performs an action with a definite intention but the outcome turns out to have an opposite and significant effect. It produces a sense of "ouch" in the observer, such as when someone superstitious steps into the road to avoid the bad luck following walking under a ladder and is then knocked down. There is often a feeling that the result is fated although it can be comic or tragic. In Jane Austen's Emma, Emma persuades her friend Harriet Smith to look in a higher social rank to find a marriage partner and Harriet, because of this, chooses Mr Knightley, thus making Emma realise that she herself loves him.