Tennessee's Partner

Verbal irony involves a distance between what is said and what is meant. “Tennessee’s Partner” frequently uses this kind of irony, as the narrator wittily recounts the events of the story, communicating much by implication rather than explicit statement.

A good example is the narrator’s account of Tennessee’s partner’s marriage. He recounts the tale of how Tennessee’s partner’s wife broke a plate of toast over his head “somewhat coquettishly” before mysteriously accepting his proposal immediately after. The description of the wife’s actions as “coquettish” pokes fun at both her and Tennessee’s partner; violence is neither flirtatious nor (by the standards of the time) feminine, so the anecdote raises doubts about the wife’s morality and the partner’s judgment. Moreover, the seeming impossibility of the events cues the reader to understand that the narrator is relaying the story with a sense of irony; it is town gossip that likely deviates significantly from reality. At the end of the story, Harte’s narrator goes a step further and analyzes his own use of irony; he claims to be “aware that something more might be made of this episode” but articulates his goal of recounting the story as it is told in Sandy Bar (Paragraph 2).