A Comparison Of John Thomas in Tickets, Please and Tony Kytes The Arch-Deceiver.

Authors Avatar
A Comparison Of John Thomas in Tickets, Please and Tony Kytes The Arch-Deceiver.

Both "Tickets, Please" and Tony Kytes the arch-deceiver are short stories written just before and just after the beginning of the 20th Century, by two very talented authors "Thomas Hardy" (The Arch-Deceiver) and D H Lawrence (Tickets, Please). Both stories are describing the relationships between men and women of their times, as it is easily seen the moods and attitudes of the books change according to the date they were set in. The Arch-Deceiver was written just before the 1st world war. Tickets, please was written in 1918 at the very end of the 1st world war. War can have a huge effect on people including the role that women play in dishounouring and changing traditional ways. This is why D. H. Lawrence tried to set a background easy to relate to, he achieved this by describing his characters in such huge detail and giving them symbolic names.

David H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence was born David Herbert Lawrence in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire on September 11, 1885. Eastwood was a coal mining town filled with hardworking Englishmen and women. D.H. was considered eccentric for his lack of work enthusiasim and his love of literature.

After finishing grammar school, D.H. recieved a scholarship to attend Nottingham High School. Ironically, D.H. did not excell in school and after dropping out of school he gained a clerkship in a surgical appliance factory. It was during this time that D.H. met Jessie Chambers and the two became fast friends. Jessie tutored D.H. and encouraged him to begin writing in 1905. D.H. went on to gain a teaching certificate from University College, Notingham

In 1911, D.H. quit teaching because of a reoccuring battle with pneumonia. He eloped with Frieda Weekley, a German wife of a professor at Nottingham. The couple traveled across Europe and were finally married in 1914 after Frieda's divorce.

During WWI, D.H. and Frieda lived in virtual poverty in England. After the war was over D.H. went to Italy and never returned to his home again. On March 2, 1930 Lawrence died in Vence, France from complications of tuberculosis.

Thomas Hardy

"Thomas Hardy" was born in a cottage in Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, on 2 June 1840. He was educated locally and at sixteen was articled to a Dorchester architect, John Hicks. In 1862 he moved to London and found employment with another architect, Arthur Blomfield. He now began to write poetry and published an essay. By 1867 he had returned to Dorset to work as Hicks's assistant and began his first (unpublished) novel, The Poor Man and the Lady.

"On an architectural visit to St Juliot in Cornwall in 1870 he met his first wife, Emma Gifford. Before their marriage in 1874 he had published four novels and was earning his living as a writer. More novels followed and in 1878 the Hardys moved from Dorset to the London literary scene. But in 1885, after building his house at Max Gate near Dorchester, Hardy again returned to Dorset. He then produced most of his major novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by Jude the Obscure, he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, The Dynasts.

"After a long and bitter estrangement, Emma Gifford died at Max Gate in 1912. Paradoxically, the event triggered some of Hardy's finest love poetry. In 1914, however, he married Florence Dugdale, a close friend for several years. In 1910 he had been awarded the Order of Merit and was recognized, even revered, as the major literary figure of the time. He died on 11 January 1928. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart at Stinsford in Dorset."

Tony Kytes the Arch-Deceiver

"Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver" is a hilarious story of an afternoon when Tony was driving home from the market in his wagon. A pretty girl called Unity to whom he was quite close before he met his present fiancé stopped him and asked him to give her a lift home. They were riding along, having a flirtatious conversation, when Tony saw Milly, his fiancé. Fearing her displeasure on seeing Unity riding with him on the wagon, he manages to persuade Unity to hide at the back of the wagon. Extraordinarily, later in the journey Tony manages to persuade Milly to do the same thing when he sees yet another young lady, this time called Hannah. Inevitably, at the end of the journey the three young ladies discover each other's presence. After a brief period of mayhem, Milly and Tony are alone again, planning their wedding.
Join now!


Both pieces of writing show how young women can be misled by somewhat more experienced men. This is shown by their innocence and tendency to follow the male initiatives, to the extent that the young ladies in the Tony Kytes story are even willing to suspend common sense and ludicrously conceal themselves beneath tarpaulin!

In the Tony Kytes story there were six characters, the four main ones being Tony and the three young ladies. The one we get to know best of all is Tony. Through his conversation with the girls, he reveals himself as being ...

This is a preview of the whole essay