Is the first paragraph’s description ironic in “Gooseberries”?

Yes, it can certainly be argued that the first paragraph of Anton Chekov's short story "Gooseberries" is ironic. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, irony is a "language device, either in spoken or written form in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words (verbal irony) or in a situation in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs (dramatic irony)." Literary irony is a contradiction of events;...

Yes, it can certainly be argued that the first paragraph of Anton Chekov's short story "Gooseberries" is ironic. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, irony is a "language device, either in spoken or written form in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words (verbal irony) or in a situation in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs (dramatic irony)." Literary irony is a contradiction of events; something is suggested, while the complete opposite happens or is spoken.

There are several examples of irony throughout "Gooseberries," and that ironic tone is definitely present in the first paragraph. The weather is described as "still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes." Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin are walking through fields that "seemed endless to them," and they are tired of it, soon seeking shelter when it begins to rain. Already we have a specific example of irony, and the story's hardly begun. The clouds are described as looking like rain that will never come, and yet, within the next few paragraphs it begins to rain ferociously, like it will never stop.

Another example of irony comes just at the end of the paragraph. When the weather is nice, and "when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and beautiful the country was." Just sentences before, Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were sick of trudging through the fields underneath a gloomy sky. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin claim they love a countryside they're currently in but are desperate to get out of.