Question

Which of these rhetorical devices is used in the opening lines of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

analogy
irony
sarcasm
extended metaphor
hyperbole

Answer 1

@MissSmartiez

Answer 2

Yes?

Answer 3

i dont know much on rhetorical devices

Answer 4

maybe hyperbole?

Answer 5

@hfigert86

Answer 6

it makes the most sense

Answer 7

But I don't know if that would be taken literally? Because it almost makes me want to say sarcasm...

Answer 8

Here, I haven't read the story, so I picked the best source:

'This verbal irony is carried out through the character of Mr. Bennett who banters with his wife as she excitedly informs her husband that a "single man of large fortune is to move into town by the end of next week":
"What a fine thing for our girls!" she exclaims.
Mr. Bennett wrily asks, "How so? how can it affect them?" and Mrs. Bennett feels she must patronize him:
"My dear Mr. Bennet...how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
Mr. Bennet teases his wife, telling her to go with the girls on a visit to Mr. Bingley as he "might like you the best at the party." And, in his best lines of the chapter, Bennet replies most ironically to his wife's accusations about his "delight" in vexing her:
You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.
In this first chapter, Austen satirizes the character of Mrs. Bennet, the shallow, silly mother who would design the marriages of her daughters to prosperous men as was customary in the late 18th and early 19th century. It is not her character, as Austen states, for her to understand a man such as Mr. Bennet. (Later this woman will try to marry her daughter Lizzy to Mr. Collins, a relative who will inherit the family's estate as he is the only male. The fact that he is a buffoon matters not.)'

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-literary-devices-does-jane-austin-use-first-65727

Answer 9

So would you both agree that it is irony then? Given the context?
Thanks for the help by the way!