The biggest irony in the story is the fact that the eleven-year-old girl narrator eventually becomes what she'd always despised.

Previously, she'd always been a bit of a tomboy, gladly helping her father with all the hard chores around the farm. She found the idea of housework—"woman's work," as it would've been called in those days—incredibly tedious and resented the constant nagging of her grandmother, who was always on her case about her not being ladylike. For good measure, the narrator entertained fantasies of being a hero, not something you'd normally associate with an eleven-year-old girl.

And yet, despite all this, the narrator turns out to be rather conventional for her age and gender after all. The incident with the horse changes her whole outlook on life, allowing her to get in touch with her femininity, which had previously been hidden beneath a tomboyish exterior.