“…but not enough to hurt his looks in a woman’s’ eye…”
As an audience we see Tony to be a humours character from his attempts at courtship, he is proven to be weak and indecisive as he accepts and rejects three women in one afternoon. Tony is fickle and disloyal he is proved to be selfish, as he is more concerned with himself and his needs, he is promised Milly his hand in marriage and if he goes back on his word the potential scandal would be traumatic. He behaves like a child with his father’s advice, and does the opposite as he suggests. Tony is easily led by girls, he is more a fool than a villain and is also susceptible to a pretty face.
Rudy is more of a nasty character as an audience he to makes us laugh due to his absurd estimation and physical attributes and gifts to women.
Rudy is more a womaniser, he is an arrogant person and thinks he is a gift to all women:
“Naturally the dames were all after me”
Rudy is very aware of his position of power in his society, this however changes throughout the text, at the dance he pulls the shots and knows it.
He treats women disrespectfully and the language he uses to describe them is in a derogatory manor, and is particularly negative.
“..that heavy-legged ‘un who had me in a tow… My feet never touched the floor for five minutes”
He sees women as a kind of economic bargin – he makes the sacrifice then must make it worth his while with sexual connotations.
Maggie becomes the ‘trophy’ girlfriend - he feels nothing for her but finds her attractive. Everything changes for him as he enters the all female space of Maggies’ grandma’s home. The power shifts
Indeed, the very idea of a 'proposal of marriage' made by a man to a woman (or to members of her family empowered to decide her fate) represents a significant denial of freedom to the woman. This lack of freedom was of course only one aspect of a situation that had many aspects: for example, women had no vote (and therefore no political power), could not enter the professions, had very limited opportunities of education (especially higher education), and so forth.
The implication of such a situation is that a woman will be (or should be) grateful for the chance to marry, and behind this implication is the stark truth that the social status and economic prospects of a woman who either received no such proposals or rejected them would quite likely be dismal.
In the story, Milly, who has been described at the beginning as a 'tender little thing', meekly accepts Tony's not very flattering decision to marry her (''what must be must be, I suppose'') - but who can blame her, when one considers what the alternative to marriage would have been?
It should be remembered that these stories are set in a rural district, where changes in social attitudes came relatively late. In larger, urban centres at this time the campaigns for greater freedom for women were already in progress, though the struggle was to be a long and hard one.
The most revealing aspect to a modern reader is the implications the story carries with regard to the relationship of the sexes and the relative status of men and women.
It is taken for granted that every woman wishes to marry, but that she must wait to be asked - though of course she has the option of turning down a suitor if she wishes. The important point is that the initiative, and therefore the power, rest with the man.
Tony in effect, proposes to three different women, and this might be regarded as a potentially serious theme, since two of them are bound to be disappointed. In the event, though, the situation is handled lightly and nobody is much the worse for what has happened.
Behind this situation are the social and economic facts of life: Tony is a working man and is offering a home and subsistence to the woman he marries, in return for the performance of her duties as homemaker and the mother of his children. There is no real alternative for a woman of this class in this period: the woman who does not marry will have a very hard time of it, and will risk being despised or pitied by the community. This was equally true for middle-class women, as novels like Jane Eyre make very clear. Only a rich woman (like Jane Austen's Emma) could afford the luxury of remaining single if she wished.
In these negotiations an important factor is the girl's ''virtue'', to use the word that Mr Jolliver employs with reference to his daughter Hannah. If the girl has lost her virginity she is at a disadvantage. Hannah's father is well aware of this, and Tony himself is quick to protest that he has not ''taken advantage'' of her (to use another phrase of the period). To have done so would have been a dishonourable act on his part, and would have caused him to be regarded with disfavour by society.
In summary, then, the most significant social attitudes reflected in this story relate to courtship and marriage. Though the tone is light, it must be admitted that some of the fundamental social and economic assumptions of the period are implicit in it.
Conclusion
What is most striking to modern readers, perhaps, is the unquestioned assumption that choices and decisions connected with marriage will be exercised by the young man, and that the young women will meekly accept whatever is handed out to them.
