The story ‘Alison Ashworth’ consists of two main characters, ‘Alison’ and the teenage boy. The teenage boy and his friends begin to experience feelings towards girls, but before it seemed as if ‘they weren’t there’, that they didn’t even notice them, but then they became more aware of the girls and ‘all these sisters had…become interesting…disturbing, even’ and ‘they were everywhere’. The way he started behaving around girls, was also different; he called this ‘an imitation of absent mindedness’, which was ‘whistling, chatting or fiddling with a cigarette stub or a box of matches’, or have a ‘flirtation with danger’. By doing this, he would probably try to get girls to notice him, but when he comes face to face with ‘Alison’, he seems quiet and shy about it, as he had ‘no input into the decision making process’. In this story, the author writes it, so that the girl is the leading part in the relationship and makes the decisions. Concerning the boy, it makes us feel quite sorry for him as he gets ‘adopted’ by Alison.
Both of the two stories have differences and similarities, but the main similarity is how both male characters get themselves into different types of relationship issues that arise in their lives. Other similarities include, their personalities like how they deal with the females in each story, that they easily persuade the males into relationships with each other. The differences that they have between the two males are that the teenage boy in ‘Alison Ashworth’ is having his first experience with the opposite sex, whereas, Tony in ‘the arch-deceiver’ is considering marriage. Another difference is that, the time that both the stories are set in, affects their character and how they act towards one another.
The story ‘Tony Kytes’ has three women that Tony goes after, Milly Richards, who Tony is set to marry, Unity Sallet, ‘a handsome girl’, that he was ‘very tender towards, before he’d got engaged to Milly’ and Hannah Jolliver, Tony’s first love. Overall, all the women are basically ‘pushovers’ and easily persuaded, because they’ll do anything to be with Tony. Firstly it was Unity to approach Tony, however, as soon as Milly is in sight, Tony asks Unity to cover herself ‘with the tarpaulin’. As a result, Unity agrees to hide, while Milly passes by, Tony used his charm to ‘avoid all unpleasantness’. Milly, on the other hand, I think is the most convinced that Tony wouldn’t deceive her in anyway, even though Tony supposed to leave her for the other women, because as soon as Tony catches sight of Hannah, he persuades Milly to ‘creep under the empty sacks…in the front of the wagon’, and she is easily persuaded as she answers ‘I don’t mind, to oblige to you, Tony’. Also, at the end of the story, even though all the women found out what Tony had done, she still took him back, because she thought that Tony didn’t mean the things he said to the other women. After that, followed Hannah Jolliver, who was Tony’s first love. As indicated by him, Tony is ‘afeard of her temper’. However, Tony is the one that’s easily persuaded by her ‘dashing’ looks and forgets about Milly and unity, ‘the more he looked at her, the more he liked her’. The time that the story is set affects the way the characters act and alters their behaviours, because of how each woman, just wants to settle down with Tony. This shows that in the past, women would have the role as a house wife once their old enough to get married and the man would support both of them financially. To myself, I think that the author doesn’t want us to feel sympathetic towards the three women, because to me, I didn’t feel supportive towards the three women. I felt that the women didn’t have any self-respect or pride towards themselves, and that they just ‘threw’ themselves at Tony.
‘Alison Ashworth’ is the sister of David Ashworth, who associates with the teenage boy that Alison is ‘going out with’. Alison’s attitude towards the boys is that she gets her ways with things, and is confident. The way that she manages to ‘get off’ with the teenage boy, she ‘peels of from the female pack’, ‘adopts’ him and ‘tucks him under her arm’. Alison is seen as she is in charge of their relationship, as the boy had ‘no input into the decision-making process’. The author makes us see that Alison is a confident character by how she just went to kiss him and became ‘intimate’ with her, which was unexpected. In a way, the author makes us feel that she is quite ‘up’ herself, that she can get her way with boys anyway she wants.
Concluding it altogether, I think that in ‘Tony Kytes, the arch-deceiver’, the characters, both male and female, are typically male and female, because ‘Tony Kytes’ just goes from one girl to the next, without considering any real thought about each one. The female characters in ‘the arch-deceiver’ are typically female; because of the way they just ‘throw’ themselves at men like that. In ‘Alison Ashworth’, the characters are the complete opposite to the characters in ‘the arch-deceiver’, maybe because of the time difference, it has a huge affect on their behaviour. The character that I had the most sympathy for, would have to be the teenage boy, because what he goes through, through his first relationship, he has no absolute ‘input’ into his relationship, what so-ever.