This shows that he is using the ladies, Rudy also says
‘I didn’t recon she was worth a four-mile walk with a bit more at the far end. But then she was a Beauty Queen’
This shows that he doesn’t care about Maggie and that he is trying to impress his friends. Both pieces show women can be misled by some what more experienced men. This is shown by their innocence and tendency to follow the male initiatives, to the extent of the young ladies in ‘Tony Kytes’ story are even willing to suspend common sense and ludicrously conceal themselves beneath tarpaulin. The difference between the two pieces of text lie in the period of time they were written in that the consequence of Rudy being too big for his boots in ‘Seeing A Beauty Queen home’ whilst Tony deceives the three girls to protect them, he doesn’t mean to get into ‘such a nunny watch’. Where as Rudy takes Maggie home to look good in front of his friends and to show them that he is better.
In the ‘Tony Kytes’ story there are six main characters, the four main ones being Tony and the girls. The one we get to know best of all is Tony. Through conversation with the girls he reveals himself to be indecisive, weak but well meaning character and the narrator tells us he is a bit of a looker.
‘Little round firm tight face with a seam here and there left by smallpox but not enough to hurt his looks in a woman’s eyes’
He finds it difficult to refuse any of the girls a lift home, and seems blinded by the beauty of each of them when the others were out of sight as when he see’s Unity
‘I never knowed you was so pretty before!’
The female characters are not very diverse, and they are described very superficially as stereotypes of manipulative femininity as he says Milly is
‘ Nice, light, small, tender litlle thing’
And Unity is
‘Dearest’ ‘darling handsome girl’
Finally Hannah is
‘Young beauty, first love’
This shows that these girls are what every man wants. Where as ‘Seeing A Beauty Queen Home’ Rudy’s sees Maggie as
‘Heavy legged’
With a
‘Damn big powdery chin’
But he walks her home because she’s a beauty queen. This shows that ‘the worlds opinion comes before your own’ and this is what matters to Rudy.
‘Seeing A Beauty Queen Home’ has six main characters the two main ones being Rudy and Maggie, Rudy is a manipulative and acts like a malechovinest. This is because he only wants their bodies this shows that he uses women.
The settings for the two pieces of writing are opposites of each other in that the ‘Tony Kytes’ story is set in the country where you expect to see natural beauty ‘young’ and ‘handsome’ where as ‘seeing a beauty queen home’ is set in the town and the girl is artificial with her ‘big powdery chin’ this shows that the settings have relevance to the stories.
The universal theme to both stories is the relationships between men and women. The crucial part is the period in which both stories were set in because its hard to imagine such naivety in women today. At the time in which ‘Tony Kytes’ was set, all women were expected to marry. There was little opportunity for them to work and become financially independent and so a women’s father literally gave her away, in the marriage service to become her husband financial responsibility. Women therefore directed all their energies into finding a husband using whatever cunning was necessary. Most of the women show strength of character: Maggie throws Rudy out in to the dark rainy night because he’s
‘Too bloody smart’,
Hannah refuses to marry Tony,
‘I do refuse him’
As so does Unity. We might feel sorry for Milly because she is Tony’s last choice and she accepts this shows that Milly Has Fulfilled the stereotype I mentioned earlier. Today the situation is very different and women are under no pressure to marry. In the case of ‘Seeing A Beauty queen home’ the period in which it was written is highly relevant, it is only recently that it has been acceptable for two strangers to go home with one another.
The women in both stories appear at first to be from different worlds with nothing in common, however they are, in fact united by their femaleness: vulnerability that they share simply by being women, trying have a relationship with a man.
