Annie's intention
Annie's intention is ironic because she goes into the house to show someone else the value of her Victorian personality and aesthetic, but instead she ends up on an adventure alone with herself, learning the value of that aesthetic in a more direct and sublime manner than she ever imagined. The tantric aspect of the plot (she is trying to impress a new boyfriend) turns into a dark, deathly aspect in the story when characters start dying, but in a way that ends up being thrilling. Annie is defined by a hyper-awareness of the human quality of the past which translates in the book as a kind of ghost-story.
The irony of the past
The past is a source of major drama because of dramatic irony. If a modern person in today's modern world were asked what life was like sixty years ago, they might not really even know. This novel takes Annie over a hundred years into the past, to a time far before the modern era, before the atomic bomb, before the World Wars. What was life like at the end of the 19th century? Because the reader does not have experience that far in the past, they are subject to a great deal of ironic tension—the happenings of the book are inherently surprising.
Death and experience
In addition to the dramatic tension which stems from the reader's understanding that life in the past has the potential to look very different than the modern day, there is also a more personal dramatic irony which Annie experiences through her own story. She realizes that the narrative journey to which she has been subjected might have elements that she does not like. How much might she not like them? Death sets the tone for that answer; because she must worry for her very life, she is unable to return to innocent bliss. The discovery of death gives Annie a dramatic awareness—the novel's symbolic portrait for her entry into experience.
The irony of participation
There is an Anglican kind of theology in the background of this novel where Annie realizes a kind of doom is befalling her. What is to come of her judgment in this community? She was so urgent to participate, to become an insider in this universe of her imagination's most intimate desire. Now, she realizes that her actions had accidental, unintentional consequences that helped evil people to commit murders and conspiracies, and all because she was entertained and involved with her ego. She was not trying to do anything wrong, and yet, ironically, the novel frames her as an accomplice in evil conspiracies.
Florinda's ironic entry
This novel has beautiful counterpoint in it, because there are levels to the plot. The first level is the ironic passage back in time in the old mansion. Secondly, Annie's journey of discovering life in the Victorian fashion. Thirdly, the conspiracies and murders. And lastly, there is the delicate dance of who will marry who, a layer which obviously underpins the conspiracies and scandals of the novel's action. When Florinda wins Stratton's hand in marriage, that is "wrong note" in the music of the novel, and it points to love as an inherently ironic, unpredictable machine—a common motif in Victorian literature as well.
