Getting Serious About Humor: The Value of Repetition

The Madwoman in the Attic Answers Letters Pleading for Her Advice by S. M. Strand at Jane Austen's Wastebasket is a neat piece that I think illustrates how repetition can be used with humor. Do you have to be familiar with Jane Eyre to get the joke here? Because this is Jane Eyre humor we're talking about here, in case you don't know. Take my word for it. It is.

However, I don't think you need to know that because the joke is that the Madwoman in the Attic gives the same, very inappropriate, advice to everyone who writes to her. Additionally, the author doesn't just peter off at the end like a great many Saturday Night Live sketches. She ends her piece with a variation on the, very inappropriate, advice she's been repeating over and over.

Ah, there may be a lesson for me here. Repetition may be just what a humor piece I started earlier this year needs. 

I am so glad I wrote this blog post instead of going out to shovel my driveway for the third time in six hours.